Teal Pumpkin Project
Leave un-allergenic treats
On Hallowe’en porch
http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project#.WABLLiQ5pcw
Autumnal Oracle
Eating soft candies,
Scary pre-season
These are, well, all
On sale too early
Shapes of ghosts
And bats, since
Hallowe’en creeps
In from weeks
Ahead
I want rehearsal
Practice of time,
A witch-spell nearly
Ready to be cast
Haunting for a
Fool, the wise
Child’s knowing
Fear for shapes
Of story’s eyes in
Spectral-black
Branches made of
Arms of spikes
That reach down
Toward me
I treat myself to
A bargain invocation,
Reviving the thrill
Of a house of wraiths
Night-dark on
A bright horizon
Young Frankenstein
This phrase came to mind
Out of the season’s time:
When the veil fails, speaking
Of Hallowe’en
This is what those of ancient
Lore believed—that gossamer-
Iron webs and steel-misty
Vapors held the other side
On a spellbound, ritualed
Line
Except for
This one time each year
I don’t know what this means;
The child in me didn’t
Care
I dressed colorfully, unusually
Looked through eyeholes
Of masks sweated ’round
The fabric on my face
I was young and relatively
Free
To run my neighborhood
Receiving chocolate reward
For feeling the thrill of cool
Air as more night rushed
Over my skin,
Through folds in costumes,
The faster that I moved
Ghost
it is like us because it was us
breathing, living once like us
ghost become, be-turned in death, untimely
and unfinished
are they real?—we are real, and
we’re the ones who make the ghosts, for
they were us
we know a ghost of one kind lives
we meet it every day: anything that
haunts us in our daylight lives, the
choices and the acts we want to leave
behind but carry with us in a lingering
way not finished
we make our ghosts, and they haunt us
the other kind?—well, why not, since
so much of us is left behind, undone
so that we carry it in some
unresolving way
after dust, before heaven
what we leave that’s extreme and
exigent persists
so we make the ghosts, and they persist
is it bad, then, on one day a year, we celebrate
the ghosts this once?—and then again next year
Happy Hallowe’en
while remembering
they will be
Goblin
Made long ago
Beneath the earth
Though there’s the curious way it
Adorns cathedrals—look at the spouts of
Notre-Dame, which end with gargoyles’
Wide mouths mouthing, through which
Rain water flows (hence the word for
Throat that gives over “gargoyle”
And gives the English “gargle”)—
Beings that are warped yet lifted high, that
Serve a purpose for the holy
On the ground below
Say they are not goblins, but I think
They might be goblins
It likes the cave and has been seen
Through centuries’ shadows; some say the
Creatures are responsible for changelings, stolen
Children replaced by theirs in human homes, though
I’m not sure I’d understand
The benefit of that
For the goblin in surrendering its own would
Lose its own and thus die out
Within a generation
The goblins in folklore are frightening; but
To this child of the suburbs, I think goblins
Are cool
Although, like you perhaps, I am not anxious
To meet this child from under the earth
Witch
what a word
“rhymes with” I guess is still popular
and there are the re-broadcasts of
Samantha, Tabitha, Endora (Agnes Moorehead
of the Mercury Theatre), and Maurice Evans
as the father (of Samantha)
I know, he’s a warlock, though if I know
anything about witches (and I don’t know
much), they can be male
was there ever a witch like the one we once
invented then feared? I don’t think so—a
creature who leeched power from the devil
to cry havoc on the earth to wreck it toward
her ways, which must be
bent like her, like the witches in the Scottish play
(“cry havoc,” by the way, from Julius Caesar), as
fearsome pillars of fog and night—or so
they are portrayed; the witch
of Endor notwithstanding (and I don’t know
ancient Hebrew to find if there’s a
better, closer word for her), I think
if there’s a witch who she likes a friendlier
power, the kind from nature, the kind
that heals
the one who studies nature better than Hamlet’s
mirror, as if to use what nature freely gives
to those who care, who want to make the
broad world better
white witch, black witch; red, yellow, blue, and
green witch (have I counted the Olympiad
flag, remembering that its field is white?)—all
who love the world, who heal, who kiss, who
touch our wounds in knowing ways, perhaps
these are the witches now and maybe ever were; if
the rest of us had behaved in better ways, maybe
witch-hunt would not be a shameful part of our
vocabulary: the rest is cant or, better yet, simply
modern Hallowe’en
Hallowe’en is a celebration of the evening before All Hallows’ or All Saints Day. It coincides with the old autumnal celebration of Samhain (the m is pronounced like a w—hey, I said it was old) practiced by those who lived in England before the Romans and then the Christians came. When the Scots and Irish came to America, they brought many Hallowe’en traditions with them—dressing in masks to scare off (by resembling) demons, the carving of the Jack-O-Lantern (though the Irish carved many vegetables such as turnips). Now the celebration is celebrated—or can be—by everyone. For us, Hallowe’en is a safe way to enjoy being scared. We enjoy being scared, just enough. And we have dressing up as who we’re not. And, oh yeah, there’s candy.
Have a Happy!
Hallowe’en Season
Why don’t I mind when Hallowe’en is overdone,
when stores stock up and pander to us
the colors, the candies, the costumes, the scares
of Hallowe’en time?
Because that’s what Hallowe’en is, folks.
For the ancients, a time to celebrate harvest
and express hope, through ritual, of a better
crop next year.
For us, a celebration of fright, the good kind (yes,
there is a good fright), the kind that children
can enjoy—and by children, an adult
admission, the child is any of us.
Orange and black, brown, red, and yellow,
colors of fall turned into colors of festivities.
Can it be overdone, over-sold, and over-lived?
Sure—what can’t?
This cool season (in the East) we enjoy beyond
the mask, the crafted holes we look through
to see a tunneled, focused world bent on
cheer and scare in equal measure,
I’ll take it, as it is. How much definition is
there, anyway? Wear anything (a pillow with
big holes and elsewhere black—you are a floating
ghostly head), and take the candy courteously
at the front door, in the mall, in the community
hall, or at the party. Enjoy. Enjoy the fright.
Enjoy the minor excess, dependant on the love of
chocolate and dark nights.
clcouch123 
Recent Comments