halloween dissenter

 

 

 

Sadly, I have no ghost stories to share; everything about

the dark is a mystery. No pitch-black room episodes where

the floor rises and lowers like the levels

of a vampires sun.

 

I want to take out of the tomb those

souls I loved so, destroyed, harmful. The way

the aged spirits rub their sapphire corium

against that tiny doughnut shaped

piece of magnetic string that follows

your sweet wool, all day, then

sleeps in your shoe.

 

No bat resembling dark skinned birds. The fugitives

of dead bees hide in the shoo of an old corner

gone silent with October. The same way the shadow that lives

in the shadow knows rebublican from old man. I know of a guy

 

who arrives in his coracle, wearing the same Moses costume

each Halloween, as if we wouldn't remember from year to year

his fake beard and how he faithfully chooses a foreign voice, not his.

But we play along, pretending his cardboard tablets

the awakening, wet lips of God. Some even touch his

robe as if living on the outskirts of Detroit

could lead us, blackened with burnt cork,

out.

 

Nothing tugged me from behind or pulled my imagined

ponytail. I heard of people when Omen, the first movie, played

who ran for the exists when that head rolled down the isle.

Not me.

 

Fall uses all the air as flavoring/ the old barn,

together with it's membranes and skeleton. That old

woman, no one dares to remember, calls me to come closer,

and I do.

 

This Halloween, after taking the last 32 years off, I

shall go out as a witch,

a male witch,

 

earthy, suggestive of wind. Just

your plain, old run of the mill

Black guy scaring the b-jesus

our of everyone without a cape

or broomstick or bag of colors

 

to raise as some coprophagous fable

over the horizon.

 

 

Reviews

[Sarahnade]

Gah! All I want to do is sit down with this and tear it apart so I can make sense of every angle you've presented. From what I do see immediately... I really, really loved this. No rhyme or reason, only a story to tell. Everything about the dark truly is a mystery. My favorite line: "Some even touch his robe as if living on the outskirts of Detroit could lead us, blackened with burnt cork, out." So well done. Adding it to my library so that I can come back and take another look at this... in a month. When the semester ends.

[Emily B]

if you ever need a ghost story, i started collecting those when i was six, i love your voice in this

my oldest daughter decided to go trick or treating last year at 14, she had a bigger time than she ever did when she was little, makes me wonder if we shouldn't open the treats up to kids of all ages

[writing mojo]

you can even put soul in such dead celebrating holiday...amazing stuff

[Sami Khalil]

Nice one. I like the term :
Everything about the dark is a mystery. Well penned concept.

[Tree]

Delicate, and melancholy. A true poetic journey of remembrance using October and Detroit as location, your backdrop. Your tone was hypnotizing, and you took me into a dark, sad but beautiful/complex place. A brilliant poem, Dana.