The Old Hotel Poem by Jacqueline Czel

They're renovating the old hotel,
amid a din of noise and cloud of
dust, pushing the squatting ghosts
out of their semi-ancient stomping
ground, out onto the busy street
where students and baseball fans
hurry and scurry by daily towards
classes and the popular stadium,
passersby who've often brushed
by the past but never stopped to
notice the Art Deco details on the
facade or the eerie faces of dancing
girls and other down on their luck
ne'er do wells who wasted away
years ago inside that old rent a flea
bitten room by the hour flop house.