Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, California — The Prison’s Restless Dead
by Dawg
In the chill of San Francisco Bay, on a rock marooned by fate,
Alcatraz stands armored, brooding behind its rusted gate.
Salt wind gnaws the towers, the fog claws at the stone,
centuries of verdicts echo, each cell a world alone.
Shadows unspool at sundown, tracing misery in the yard,
history hardened in mortar, every kindness scarred.
Walk the corridor’s skeleton–cold steel, peeled paint, and dread,
where the living once forgot themselves and the dead refuse to tread.
Iron doors yawn open on the past–no escape, no release,
footsteps clang in the silence, every echo a broken peace.
Ghosts wear uniforms here, some with numbers, some with blame,
they shuffle by invisible, reciting their only name.
You can taste the desolation in the dripping, salt-stained air,
feel the rage of riots trapped, the marrow of despair.
Moonlight spills on gun galleries, whitewashed walls confess
to the bargains made in whispers, to the blood and the regress.
No one dies in comfort–some vanished without trace,
others lingered, punished slowly, dreaming of escape.
In the night, you’ll sense them–hands that never learned to pray,
faces blurred by violence, longing for another day.
Solitude is weaponized–crushing every thread of will,
Alcatraz breeds loneliness, that hunger you can’t kill.
Some nights, a cell door slams–no living hand nearby,
just the echo of resentment, just the spirit’s sigh.
No ghost is ever quiet, no sorrow ever fled–
this rock keeps its prisoners–living, lost, or dead.