Halloween PoetryA Poem by Michael R. Burch Halloween Poetry O, the Horror! Halloween Poetry!
Will we frighten you, The picture above was taken in the front-yard "graveyard" of our house. The children in our neighborhood call our house the "Halloween House" and it has been on the front page of the local newspaper in the past. I wrote the poem above to go with the ghoulish picture. It is a bit spooky to consider that one day we will all be skeletons!
The Witch
Vampires
Still, late at night, when the bat-like vampire sings, Centuries have taught us: We are his prey, plump and fragrant,
Charon, the ferrymen who carried the dead across the River Styx to their eternal destination, has been portrayed by artists and poets as a vampiric figure.
You can check it out on your computer: Kids, if you’d like more treats this year So if you eat treats on the drag NOTE: If you recite the poem, get the kids to huddle up close, then yell the all-caps parts like you’re one of the unhappy monsters, and perhaps "goose" them as well. They'll get the message.
If goblins loom If spirits scream it's Halloween!
Love it is commonplace; Our love is not here Lost in darkness, I fear
In the ruins when the moon when a star we will dance if nevermore again.
born of the night dreaming of blood, revealing her lust, Like Angels, Winged
shimmering, misunderstood ― They are as they are ... Their eyes ― hypnotic, alluring ― trap ours with their strange appeal Held in their arms, enchanted, Solicitation
He c***s his head as though something he heard intrigues him The moon shines ― maniacal, queer ― as he takes my hand whispering Our time has come ... And so we stroll together creaking docks Moonlight washes his ashen face as he stares unseeing into my eyes. His teeth are long, yellow and hard, his face bearded and haggard. Sometimes the Dead Sometimes we catch them out of the corners of our eyes ― Once they have become a cloud’s mist, sometimes like the rain Sometimes like a pale gray fog, they drift Sometimes they haunt our dreams like forgotten melodies yet they are us. Someday soon we will meet them in the graveyard dust Siren Song The Lorelei’s How can they resist Soon she will savor How Long the Night (anonymous Old English Lyric, circa early 13th century AD) It is pleasant, indeed, while the summer lasts The Wild Hunt Our Halloween is an inheritance from the ancient Celts. The Celts believed that the "otherworld" can sometimes merge with the "real world," so that elves, fairies, witches, warlocks and other fantastical entities are able to either help or harm human beings. Near Devon, the hunters appear in the sky Valerin, the King of the Tangled Wood, They seek the white stag on a moonlit moor, They appear, sometimes, on Halloween The Vampire's Spa Day Dream O, to swim in vats of blood! The poem above was inspired by a Josh Parkinson depiction of Elizabeth Bathory up to her nostrils in the blood of her victims, with their skulls floating in the background. Nevermore! Nevermore! O, nevermore! And the salivating sea The waves will never rape her, She sleeps forevermore, And, yes, they sleep together, He does not stroke her honey hair, their skeletal love ― impossibility! Dark Gothic Her fingers are filed into talons; Epitaph for a Palestinian Child I lived as best I could, and then I died. Athenian Epitaphs (Gravestone Inscriptions of the Ancient Greeks)
Does my soul abide in heaven, or hell? Passerby, by Michael R. Burch Walk with me now, among the transfixed dead who kept life’s compact and who thus endure harsh sentence here―among pink-petaled beds and manicured green lawns. The sky’s azure, pale blue once like their eyes, will gleam blood-red at last when sunset staggers to the door of each white mausoleum, to inquire What use, O things of erstwhile loveliness? Reclamation by Michael R. Burch after Robert Graves, with a nod to Mary Shelley I have come to the dark side of things where the bat sings its evasive radar and Want is a crooked forefinger attached to a gelatinous wing. I have grown animate here, a stitched corpse hooked to electrodes. And night moves upon me―progenitor of life with its foul breath. Blind eyes have their second sight and still are deceived. Now my nature is softly to moan as Desire carries me swooningly across her threshold. Stone is less infinite than her crone’s gargantuan hooked nose, her driveling lips. I eye her ecstatically―her dowager figure, and there is something about her that my words
transfigure to a consuming emptiness. We are at peace with each other; this is our venture swaying, the strings tautening, as tightropes tauten, as love tightens, constricts to the first note. Lyre of our hearts’ pits, orchestration of nothing, adits of emptiness! We have come to the last of our hopes, sweet as congealed blood sweetens for flies.
Deliver Us ... by Michael R. Burch The night is dark and scary under your bed, or upon it. That blazing light might be a star ... or maybe the Final Comet. But two things are sure: your mother’s love and your puppy’s kisses, doggonit! the Horror by Michael R. Burch the Horror lurks inside our closets the Horror hides beneath our beds the Horror hisses ancient curses the Horror whispers in our heads the Horror tells us Death is coming the Horror tells us there’s no hope the Horror tells us “life” is futile the Horror beckons, “there’s the Rope!” Belfry by Michael R. Burch There are things we surrender to the attic gloom: they haunt us at night with shrill, querulous voices. There are choices we made yet did not pursue, behind windows we shuttered then failed to remember. There are canisters sealed that we cannot reopen, and others long broken that nothing can heal. There are things we conceal that our anger dismembered, gray leathery faces the rafters reveal. Duet by Michael R. Burch Oh, Wendy, by the firelight, how sad! How worn and gray your auburn hair became! You’re very silent, like an evening rain that trembles on dark petals. Tears you’ve shed for days we laughed together, glisten now; your flesh became translucent; and your brow knits, gathered loosely. By the well-made bed three portraits hang with knowing eyes, beloved, but mine is not among them. Time has proved our hearts both strangely mortal. If I said I loved you once, how is it that could change? And yet I watch you fondly; love is strange . . . Oh, Peter, by the firelight, how bright my thought of you remains, and if I said I loved you once, then took him to my bed, I did it for the need of love, one night when you were far away. My heart endured transfigurement―in flaming ash inured to heartbreak and the violence of sight: I saw myself grow old and thin and frail with thinning hair about me, like a veil . . . And so I loved him for myself, despite the love between us―our first startled kiss. But then I loved him for his humanness. And then we both grew old, and it was right . . . Oh, Wendy, if I fly, I fly beyond these human hearts, these cities walled and tiered against the night, beyond this vale of tears, for love, if it exists, dies with the years . . . No, Peter, love is constant as the heart that keeps till its last beat a measured pace and sets the fixtures of its dreams in place by beds at first well-used, at last well-made, and counts each face a joy, each tear a grace . . . Horror by Michael R. Burch What I ache to say is beyond saying no words for the horror of not loving enough, like a mummy half-wrapped in its moldering casements holding a lily aloft. No, there are no words for the horror as a tormented wind howls through the teetering floes and the cold freezes down to my clawed hairy toes ... What use to me, now, if the stars appear? As I moan the moon finds me, fangs goring the deer. Strange Corps(e) by Michael R. Burch We are all dying, haunted by life dying, but the living will not let us go. We are perishing zombies, haunted by the moonglow. With what animation we, shuffling, return nightly, to worry Love’s worm-eaten corpse, till, living or dead, she is wholly ours. We are the dying, enamored of “life” the palest of auras, the eeriest call. We stagger to attention ... stumble ... fall. We have only one thought―Love’s peculiar notion, that our duty’s to “live,” though such “living” means night’s horrific wild hungers, its stranger dreams. We now “live” on the flesh of eroded dreams and no longer recoil at the victims’ screams. Love, ah! serene ghost by Michael R. Burch Love, ah! serene ghost, haunts my retelling of her, or stands atop despairing stairs with such pale, severe eyes, I become another pallid specter. But what I feel most profoundly is this: the absolute lack of her kiss, the absence of her wild, unwarranted laughter. So that, like a candle deprived of oxygen, I become mere wick and tallow again. Here and hereafter ... gone with her now, in the darkest of nights, the flame! I lie, pallid vision of man―the same wan ghost of her palpitations’ claim on my heart that I was before. I love her beyond and despite even shame. Eden by Michael R. Burch Then earth was heaven too, a perfect garden. Apples burgeoned and shone―unplucked on sagging boughs. What, then, would the children eat? Fruit indecently sweet, redolent as incense, with a tempting aroma ... Outcasts by Michael R. Burch There was a rose, a prescient shade of crimson, the very color of blood, that bloomed in that garden. The most dazzling of all the Earth’s flowers, men have forgotten it now, with their fanciful tales of apples and serpents. Beasts with lips called the goreflower “Love.” The scribes have the story all wrong: four were there, four horrid dark creatures―chattering, bickering. Aduhm placed one red petal in Ehve’s matted hair; he was lost in her arms till dawn sullen and golden imperceptibly streaked the musk-fragrant air. Two flared nostrils quivered, two eyes remained open. Kahyn sought me that evening, his bloodless lips curled in a grimacelike smile. Sunken-cheeked, he approached me in the Caverns of Similitudes, eerie Barzakh. “We are outcasts, my brother!, God quickly deserts us.” As though his anguish conceived in insight’s first blush might not pale next to mine in Sheol’s gray realm. “Shining Creature!” he named me and called me divine as he lavished damp kisses upon my bright scales. “Help me find me one rare gift to put Love’s gift to
shame.” “There is a dark rose with a bittersweet fragrance as pungent as cloves: only man knows its name. Clinging and cloying, it destroys all it touches . . .” “But red is Ehve’s preference; while Envy is green.” He was downcast a moment, a moment, a moment . . . “Ah, but red is the color of blood!” Disagreeable child, far too clever for his own good. Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) No One by Michael R. Burch No One hears the bells tonight; they tell him something isn’t right. But No One is not one to rush; he lies in grasses greenly lush as far away a startled thrush flees from horned owls in sinking flight. No One hears the cannon’s roar and muses that its voice means war comes knocking on men’s doors tonight. He sleeps outside in awed delight beneath the enigmatic stars and shivers in their cooling light. No One knows the world will end, that he’ll be lonely, without friend or foe to conquer. All will be once more, celestial harmony. He’ll miss men’s voices, now and then, but worlds can be remade again. Bikini by Michael R. Burch Undersea, by the shale and the coral forming, by the shell’s pale rose and the pearl’s white eye, through the sea’s green bed of lank seaweed worming like tangled hair where cold currents rise . . . something lurks where the riptides sigh, something old and pale and wise. Something old when the world was forming now lifts its beak, its snail-blind eye, and with tentacles about it squirming, it feels the cloud above it rise and shudders, settles with a sigh, knowing man’s demise draws nigh. Ceremony by Michael R. Burch Lost in the cavernous blue silence of spring, heavy-lidded and drowsy with slumber, I see the dark gnats leap; the black flies fling their slow, engorged bulks into the air above me. Blue and green, shimmering hordes of bottleflies sing their monotonous laments; as I listen, they near with the strange droning hum of their damp, lustrous
wings. Though you said you would leave me, I prop you up here and brush back red ants from your fine, tangled hair, whispering, “I do!” . . . as the gaunt vultures stare. Contraire by Michael R. Burch Where there was nothing but emptiness and hollow chaos and despair, I sought Her ... finding only the darkness and mournful silence of the wind entangling her hair. Yet her name was like prayer. Now she is the vast starry tinctures of emptiness flickering everywhere within me and about me. Yes, she is the darkness, and she is the silence of twilight and the night air. Yes, she is the chaos and she is the madness and they call her Contraire. Dark Twin by Michael R. Burch You come to me out of the sun my dark twin, unreal . . . And you are always near although I cannot touch you; although I trample you, you cannot feel . . . And we cannot be parted, nor can we ever meet except at the feet. East End, 1888 by Michael R. Burch Past darkened storefronts, hunched and contorted, bent with need through chilling rain, he walks alone till down the glistening cobblestones deliberate footsteps pause, resume. He follows, by a pub confronts a pasty face, an overbright smile, lips intimating easy bliss, a boisterous, over-eager tongue. She barters what she has to sell; her honeyed words seem cloying, stale pale, tainted things of sticky guile. * A rustle of her petticoats, a flash of bulging milk-white breast . . . the price is set: a crown. “A tip, a shilling more is yours,” he quotes, “to wash your privates.” She accepts. Saliva glistens on his lips. * An alley. There, he lifts her gown, in answer to her question, frowns, says―“You can call me Jack, or Rip.” East End, 1888 (II) by Michael R. Burch He slouched East through a steady downpour, a slovenly beast befouling each puddle with bright footprints of blood. Outlined in a pub door, lewdly, wantonly, she stood . . . mocked and brazenly offered. He took what he could till she afforded no more. Now a single bright copper glints becrimsoned by the door of the pub where he met her. He holds to his breast the one part of her body she was unable to w***e, grips her heart to his wildly stammering heart . . . unable to forgive or forget her. Originally published by Penny Dreadful Evil, the Rat by Michael R. Burch Evil lives in a hole like a rat and sleeps in its feces, fearing the cat. At night it furtively creeps through the house while the cat sleeps. It eats old excrement and gnaws on steaming dung and it will pause between odd bites to sniff through the scat, twitching and trembling, for a scent of the cat ... Evil, the rat. Temptation by Michael R. Burch Jesus was always misunderstood . . . we have that, at least, in common. And it’s true that I found him, shriveled with hunger, shivering in the desert, skeletal, emaciate, not an ounce of fat to warm his bones once the bright sun set. And it’s true, I believe, that I offered him something to eat a fig, perhaps, a pomegranate, or a peach. Hardly the great “temptation” of which I’m accused. He was a likeable chap, really, and we spent a pleasant hour discussing God how hard He is to know, and impossible to please. I left him there, the pale supplicant, all skin and bone, at the mouth of his cave, imploring his “Master” on callused knees. Published in The Bible of Hell (anthology) Role Reversal by Michael R. Burch The fluted lips of statues mock the bronze gaze of the dying sun . . . We are nonplused, they say, smacking their wet lips, jubilant . . . We are always refreshed, always undying, always young, forever unapologetic, forever gay, smiling, and though it seems man has made us, on his last day, we will see him unmade we will watch him decay as if he were clay, and we had assumed his flesh, hissing our disappointment. Excelsior by Michael R. Burch I lift my eyes and laugh, Excelsior . . . Why do you come, wan spirit, heaven-gowned, complaining that I am no longer “pure?” I threw myself before you, and you frowned, so full of noble chastity, renowned for leaving maidens maidens. In the dark I sought love’s bright enchantment, but your lips were stone; my fiery metal drew no spark to light the cold dominions of your heart. What realms were ours? What leasehold? And what claim upon these territories, cold and dark, do you seek now, pale phantom? Would you light my heart in death and leave me ashen-white, as you are white, extinguished by the Night? Liar by Michael R. Burch Chiller than a winter day, quieter than the murmur of the sea in her dreams, eyes wilder than the crystal spray of silver streams, you fill my dying thoughts. In moments drugged with sleep I have heard your earnest voice leaving me no choice save heed your hushed demands and meet you in the sands of an ageless arctic world. There I kiss your lifeless lips as we quiver in the shoals of a sea that endlessly rolls to meet the shattered shore. Wild waves weep, "Nevermore," as you bend to stroke my hair. That land is harsh and drear, and that sea is bleak and wild; only your lips are mild as you kiss my weary eyes, whispering lovely lies of what awaits us there in a land so stark and bare, beyond all hope . . . and care. This is one of my early poems, written as a high school
sophomore or junior. The Watch Moonlight spills down vacant sills, I watch the minutes test the limits Originally published by The Lyric
© 2022 Michael R. Burch |
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