Hauntings at Willowbrook

By: Hunter Christian

A palatial home for the discarded;
sat in silhouette before a peaceful backdrop,
where gently rolling hills blanketed in green grasses,
covered remnants of ancient mountaintops,
perpetuating a false sense of calm,
like young children taught to sing,
the comforting words of sacred psalms

The institution was called a school;
a place where,
children from eastern New York state communities,
were sentenced to life imprisonment there

Born deviance adorned smiling faces;
parents who called their children “retarded;”
innocence thrown away and disregarded

Parental obligations tossed aside amidst feigned eyes of the guilt ridden,
casted downward to the campus lawn surrounding that peculiar institution,
a sense of self respect raped and forbidden

A courtyard blooming with myriad flowers and shrubbery,
beckoned wayward souls,
hiding the wretched conditions within,
perennial sin begat perennial sin

Deciduous trees swayed in calming breezes
In autumn, the homestead-like grounds were transformed;
peppered picturesque,
as fallen from naked trees,
by late October, through early November,
yellow, red, orange, and brown leaves,
descended to an inevitable finality,
absent from purview,
the inherent banality,
within brick-encased buildings that sat amongst those deciduous trees and leaves,
colorful, beautiful as nature can be,
hiding the evil that lay beneath the surface

A child's finger that traced,
those trees in her background,
in the condensation gathered on thinning windowpanes,
beyond walls that imprisoned,
driven borderline insane,
children mired in wanton derision,
as they were mired in the mundane

Calm silence shattered by shrieks of agony
A beautiful lie that denied the sullen and bereaved within;
children labeled disfigured, ugly, a sin

A shadowy figure stood like a sentinel;
gazing longingly beyond border walls,
from a window eight feet tall,
guarding a wretched threshold,
between a visual calm,
and the horrid innards

The putrid stench of stale disease hit unready heads hard;
mingling inside walls imprisoning the menaced,
as thickset storms of urine and feces swirled,
into the wretched air of the Willowbrook State School,
where naked souls lay on cold concrete floors,
behind locked doors,
that sequestered away souls so hauntingly cruel

Children abandoned by society, by families, by their fathers and mothers
Twisted bodies begat twisted minds,
a disturbed reality,
Surreal incongruity, if ignored,
was rendered,
unreal if only by the fates of souls who surrendered

All semblance of humanity lost
An inhumane existence molded by guardians;
rendered impressionable minds insane,
Vulnerable folks preyed upon by workers who would readily accost

Corrupted caregivers who raped their charges,
as tears of forgotten children flowed,
when abuse unrelentingly harsh,
left broken hearts and broken bones,
inside the bodies of children that called,
that hell-on-Earth home

Around darkened corridors gaunt zombie-like ghosts roamed,
Writhed agony echoed off cinder-block walls,
as distended bellies hungrily groaned

The sound of water rhythmically dripping into ignored puddles became,
a ubiquitous ambient backdrop,
as did the smell of mold and mildew, soiled bed linens and hospital-like gowns

The wretched stench permeated every room, hall, office, crawlspace, closet, and crevice,
where air could slither

Learned manipulation for staff and residents alike;
became a cunning tool-of-the-trade

Cockroaches and rats battled for food scraps fallen unto filthy floors
Body lice and myriad parasites found safe haven at Willowbrook
Vermin that fed upon the detritus,
that fed upon skin covered with seeping sores,
that fed on the blood,
that burrowed deeply into the blood

For within the blood,
the anger, the angst, the disdain, the choler
the raging emotional tempest,
that shattered silence when tortured souls screamed and hollered

Rife was the anguish
The strife of those famished
Starving for love
Starving for life
Starving from the strife
Starving from hopelessness formidably rife

The dead still walk Willowbrook;
in the halls, the rooms, in the courtyard too,
somewhere between the weeping willow and the brook,
somewhere absent of truth,
from whence the name of the place came,
where within, the scent of death still hits the curious hard,
and Willowbrook was its name