The Phantom Ballroom

Airs chilling breeze 

Haunting at the glass,

Crickets group to click 

As the hours pass,

You drop down your mask 

To attend the ball

Covering insecurities, 

Every measure of your flaw

Heads tightened tremble

Sounds impede your thought

You dance around the floor 

As silhouettes grace the wall

You throw upon your hood 

As tree husks crush to creak

Roaming fog then meddles 

And bites your iron cheeks

Handshakes vague, accustomed

As sirens sing their score

Finding it all a bit too strange

That you're solo on the floor.

But you glide and dance 

Enigmatic to the cause,

Your shadow's cast an audience 

For laughter swells the hall

Spin and spin you dazzle

As they talk and chant,

Looming under crystal moon 

These masks were not pretend,

For the fiddle's played, 

The dobro's dance nonstop

All you seen was an applaud from shadows 

As the gallows dropped.

This poem was given as a gift in 2016 to author Juan Thompson son of writer Hunter S. Thompson, Laila Nabulsi a producer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and artist Ralph Steadman at Gonzofest in Louisville, Kentucky.