A little ghost story for Banned Book Week [View all]

Last edited Sun Sep 28, 2025, 12:29 PM - Edit history (1)

I present my newest video A ROSE FOR EMILY for BANNED BOOK WEEK (Oct 5-11) early because a week is too short a time for such a long list. It is also a good old fashioned Halloween ghost story -- about a woman who wanted to burn her poetry after she was gone and a man who was hellbent on digging up her corpse and mocking her for eternity. Not sure if there is any lesson here or just more peeling wallpaper. Copyright Law does allow me to steal Faulkner's title for my video like he stole Miss Emily's corpse for his story. Fair is fair.


"Hope is the thing with feathers."
—Emily Dickinson

"I’d rob my own grandmother for a good story."
—William Faulkner

A Rose for Emily D.
The first time Faulkner read Miss Emily's lines
He traced her breath between the rhymes
A twirl in the meadow, so light, so bold
Like a ghost in cotton, fearless and cold
Arms raised high, she surrendered to the sky
He felt the pull, he couldn’t deny

He pondered the daring in her gentle command
The swirl of bees in her porcelain hand
No clocks ticking, no buzz in the trees
Just her secret scrawl on mothy leaves
Sealed in boxes, brittle with time
Labeled in ink: *Burn what you find*

[Chorus] With scarlet ribbons he bound each word
Lashed to a poem that he once heard
He spread out lime like a sacred vow
Around her house, beneath each bough
Night after night until the morning sun
Ghosted all that she had done

He blinked at the grave, her roses gray
Petals falling where shadows lay
The coach rolled on, wheels dull and low
And still he couldn’t let her go
No fire rose from the poet’s chest
Just boxes nested where silence rests
Ribbons red, the heart’s cold bed
Lime laid thick where her footsteps bled

[Chorus] With scarlet ribbons he bound each word
Lashed to a poem that he once heard
He spread out lime like a sacred vow
Around her house, beneath each bough
Night after night until the morning sun
Ghosted all that she had done

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