Halloween grins in smokey whisps through the cloaked cracks of tombstone clouds. As mercury made vapor, it snakes the petrified air, poisoning what Lady Autumn had sanctified arboreal-rare. I beseech you to beware, for even Winter's first tide, even as frost is raindrop's cold comfort, the ghosts come. As specters of that unholy night they form from such quick-silver mist into sight. Always they heave their misery chains, crying of Old Marley's ways. As a mobbing crowd they come, they come a-clanking, a-moaning, a-crying all through key holes unguarded. And all the while the flickering Jack-o-lanterns peek a-plenty and all gift wrapped in mercury. 

September 2026.

 

A urine moon soaked pillow clouds, as the bloomin' sky was pissing down. Halloween clouds shifted as coffin lids. Icy wind snapped with glinting fangs. The final leaves thrilled with their zombie scuttle upon the freeze-thawed street. Sweet wrappers lay as fallen petals from some plastic flower. Pumpkins lurked extinguished, now 'twas it striking the bewitching hour.

October 31, 2025.

 

A sugar-spun sky hugs a lemonade sun as gummy bear leaves play air-tag for fun, wild and free in season’s recess. Summer days done, pumpkin days fresh lit, sweeten the way ahead. Halloween whispers its spooky tales, tales of darkness, tales of woe. Cinnamon aroma is a knitted air-scarf as nature takes her well earned rest. Slumber she will, dreaming of spring, of floral raves and butterfly wings.

September 20, 2025.

 

Sauron Needs a Bath
 

Bungee jumping Sauron got toffee dunked,
In molten river as Halloween feat,
Drat! Blocked ears! Dark Magick’s eye fully-funked,
Mr. Sour On mistakes ant-hill for seat,
Swarmed in a flash, gnashing biters galore!
One growling spell and stuck ant-river flows,
To Yeshua’s heavenly bath bomb store!
A pumpkin warning label glitter-glows,
“All bombs will insta-melt icy-heart parts,
Active ingredients munch evil-rot,
Contains essence of holy water farts,
Angel’s top tonic, demons better not,”
Bath steaming, in jumped Sauron! Hiss! Gone! Hell!
Ants boating merrily on toffee-shell!
*****

May 14, 2026, found in ‘Sweet 'n' Salty Poems,’ Collection One.

 

A mama ghost, a papa ghoul and a stingray sister and brother went a-trick or treatin.' Black ice street. Black street-lights silent. Dirty-dun clouds hover. Air a stink-bomb stench. Roses had cried their last petals and stood with proud thorns. Jack-o-lanterns blazed. Cackles echoed. Mischief was a-foot. Mischief was at All Hallows command. Yet they skipped blithely on, that mama, that papa, that sister and brother too.

October 31, 2025.

 

Come dayshine! Come moonshine! Day rays! Moon rays! Yes! Day rays, sister! Moon rays, brother! Halloween is but a mere twenty-four hours of trickin' no treatin.' Rise! Glow! Make-up on! Costumes on! This is our one day to monster mash and party on!    October 31, 2025.

 

Beneath a banana peel moon, amid the scuttle of rubbish and the stink of God knows what, it was Halloween on Benny Hill. Near the junction of Beadle Street and Carthage Avenue a black cat of greenest eye lurked, tail switching this way and that. Hiss. Hiss. Was it the cat or the ghostly wind of spectral howl? Did the stars shift above? Were they in on the joke too? I swear they moved. I swear they did. Then the lamps flickered an eerie morse code and the street cratered as a lunar surface. Each house stepped back from the street as if on well shined black shoes. A bell struck. Car engines - driverless - spluttered to life. What was left of the colours - drained to monochrome. Halloween this year was different. Very different indeed.

October 31, 2025.

 

The old church donned a dark cloud halo, one that swirled thick and fast. ‘Twas as dark as mountain rock. ‘Twas as turbid as fields mid-flood. To the rustle of fervent trees came no nightingale song. To the echoes of thunder’s roll came no owlish hoot. ‘Twas as if the words of nearby pages had bled from white leaves to dovish clouds and turned them to an oil slick scowl. The air took the aroma of the land, licking all with fall’s chill. Eerie. Eerie. So Halloweeny. As if the gargoyles dreamed it so.

October 27, 2025.

 

A bruise of clouds blossomed in that Halloween sky. They lurked as if they would be there forever, a never-fade echo of misery. I watched them billow. I watched them swirl in the coldest of currents. Yet it was a pumpkin spice wind that blew, a soft aroma of better days. And so, costume on, masked for the parade, I skipped on rain-washed concrete.

October 25, 2024.

 

As they laughed at the idea of evil spirits, they were easy pickings to influence into foul deeds; happy Halloween indeed.

September 29, 2023.

 

Halloween drifted in as a question mark to a daydream, inviting my creative self to laugh ever louder at my fears.

September 22, 2023.

 

To take on the monsters who transform what was once the potential for "monster-ism" within you and transform it into "heroism." We ride each Halloween... we slay monsters... and we get to say when Halloween is... and guess what? We get to say how often it is too.

December 16, 2020.

 

This Halloween we make monster pie, and of course, they key ingredient is monster steak and ale.

December 16, 2020.

 

Halloween arrives so that we may enter the realm of monsters and slay them where they stand.

December 16, 2020.

 

Each Halloween we showed that no matter how we loved to dress up as monsters, we were still angels in our childish souls.

December 16, 2020.

 

This Halloween the night sky is mother, the perfect black to hug newborn starlight, the scene set for a million pumpkin grins.

December 16, 2020.

 

Upon hallowed ground we ride, we terminators of the monsters, we assassins of evil, dressed this night as the ghouls we seek.

December 16, 2020.

 

The gooseberry jam was the most cheeky of greens, as if it knew folks thought of jam in the hues of flamed reds. We'd spread it on our toast at Halloween and add edible eyes for garnish. Every year it was the same script from Dad, "Here's looking at you kid!"

October 27, 2020.

 

Halloween came to let our inner sense of joy play in monster masks and costumes.

December 16, 2020.

 

Halloween arrives as a knight upon black horse, as if the light was concentrated in the shadows this very eve.

December 16, 2020.