It is best to rise sleepy-eyed and crusty in the middle of the evening,
In the midnights and threes of the witching hours,
To experience the gruesome galafests of Halloween.

What better shroud than darkness to gird around one's shoulders
As tight as mummy wrap,
Hunched over due to chill and thrill,
Inviting thoughts, impulses, wishes, fears to reveal themselves.
Looking for a Moundshroud introduction to the treats of Halloween.

Fall,
Late in its thrust,
Submits the last of its shivering leaves through the crisp air--
Orange Autumn dies, turns to gray; the last of life sighs away.
Wind-paths slice through the night.
Leaves find its trails like frightened mice--
A-shiver, a-quiver through the silver moonlight--
Confetti adorning the pack just out of sight.

Here comes the grand and gruesome parade.

Rotting brains did not forget--
a tombstone turned,
a gallipot blood-let.

A funeral procession, not for the dead,
but of the dead--
The pieces, the bits of humanity
when life, at last, has fled.

Their approach pulses through the ground, beating in rhythm
Rising up through the floor, into my room, into me!

Yes! On their way!

I mentally touch each latch, each window--locked, shut, bulwarked,
braced against all the monsters of the morgue.
And I wish to possess some magic.

I shiver. And tug the edges of midnight closer around me as I face the awful truth--I carry a skeleton inside of me!

Enough!

I rise from my bed,
ebony cloak dragging long behind me to the nearest window.
I slide my head around and behind the curtain -- to see. . .

Ooooh, I crave to see them now. (Here, safe in my haven.)

What blackened beast lurks out there? Ogre? Werewolf? Grizzled ghoul?
What blister-faced demon will soon haunt my door,
Waiting to peal off its festering fleshy shell like layers of onion skin?
Is that a sin?
(I can enjoy sick atrocities, here, safe in my bastion of life.)

Clouds of smoke and dust rise
And dance their wicked sultry hip-twist swirls,
Thick, then thin, only to begin
again.
And from the moke-ish mesh and spin,
Resurrects the Beast with sulfurous chin.
What shadow-sorcerer could spell-cast,
To call this demon from the past?

A black brute bellows in anguish,
The Ancestor--the ancient Beast.
Foe of priests.
Head high against the pale full moon--a halo for evil,
This Harbinger of Doom.

And as I see that shadowed moon,
That cragged and horned head,
I have no doubt that I have viewed
The god of demons, dead.

He bellows through time.
(Humans no longer quake in fear.
His reign is practically forgotten.)
But his minions hear--
his lament vibrating their crisped skin,
rattling their dry bones.
They hear and cackle and curse and cry and sigh
in answer and tribute;

He clutches, he claws the pitted earth, rendering sod,
defying God,
carving avenues for ghoul-escapes.

Swoosh! His tail scythe-cuts the stones
planted in the death bed bones.
Swash! Gravel flies. Granite sheers.
The wooden coffins rise.
Termites scatter. Hinges creak.
The dead rise up, his will to seek.

To what end?

The minions rise to surround, to crush all that is living,
To leave empty leather husks and hollow sockets for eyes.
Ah! The sweet suck of life!
The dragon reaches through time,
through his evil-tide brethren
to grasp more than the children--
to grasp the children in all of us.

I see, feel, hear, taste as they
claw, stomp, clamber, fall, rise, slither, snake.

The blood-tasters, the blood-letters gabble and slurp.
I can hear the slosh of their near-empty bellies.
And see their Hell shadows assault my walls
in an All Hallows Eve galanty show.

Obedient to his beseeching, to his commands,
They force-march on rotting feet,
Beating those slow with spinal cord whips.
No lagging tonight! Not on this Halloween!

An emerald storm is on their heels.
Cats hiss. Worms squirm.
The silent salamanders slither their way,
Leaving a thin trail of rustled leaves overturned.
The airs--entities (breaths from corpses laying in now-open graves)
Whisssh through the trees, agitating bats; owl-heads turn.
Below they take a path where the shadow of the Church steeple
does not fall,
no matter how tall.

The glowing Jack-o-Lanterns light the trail
with their fiery features. To the open ear,
they are black magic teachers.
They chant their song in the byways--

"Our thousand candles flutter. Our thousand candles burn.
Witches oaths are chanted. No grave is left unturned!"

A macabre marching band pass between the pumpkins,
pass between the trees . . .
The phosphorescent skeletons play their xylophone rib cages. . .
Small skulls are shaken, rattled--maracas
One for each beheaded victim, discarded, left behind,
Rotting in the mire--dire deaths.

Scratch board thigh bones.
Flutes of hollow ulnar bones.
Piccolos of empty radius bones.
Tongues drooling bitter gadinin gourd soups.

"Come out and play! We',ve needles and pins,
And are terribly good at every sin!"

Gabbles, gargles, ulcerous lips; starving ticks and bloated maggots.
Blood bubbles into the ground, gurgling dark humor while going down.

Dragging feet through urine trails.
Bloody swashbuckling--marks on post and rail.

Between the lighted pumpkin glare,
The forest infestation nears.
Spiders tip-toe as only spiders can
And cling and sail on coarse threads. The plan?
Spider web banners decrying Doom! Soon!

Nightmare fleshes that perhaps once looked human thump,
roll,
shimmy,
and thump
with limbs that are not limbs. . . at least, not any more.

I feel ill.
Sulfurous stench upon my sill.
So able they are to trigger the pressure points of my mind,
releasing streams, waterfalls of fear--icy cold--freezing my body, my brain, my nose runs hot mucus
which slows to ensconce an icicle off of the end of my nose. My knees, shivering.
My chin, quivering.

The clock tolls! Midnight struck five hours ago.
All Hallows Eve--dead! The leaves have all been shed.

As the last of the howls drift away, up through the chilly night,
Up toward the scintillating specks of stars,
Their diamond glints of light.
I sigh . . . relieved.

With morning soon to break,
Like a tortoise,
I pull in my head and retreat to my bed,
feeling safe from the raid
and ready to gloat
wrapped securely in my chimerical cloak.

But, like a shadow upon the wall,
I see something there and can only stall.
Oh, marasmus, in you creep--
On my pillow lies a single, Fall leaf.

Copyright 1997 Kasin Hunter (All Rights Reserved.)