WITCHES’ BREWS AND PUMPKIN SPICES

(This is just a light-hearted piece for Halloween.  It is supposed to be funny.)

Witches’ brews and pumpkin spices;

Costumes, masks, and black cat arches;

William’s ghosts and Haitian zombies;

Vampire teeth and dancing bones. 

They glide through fallen leaves and branches;

Breathe out cold air and diabolic vapors;

Gather into mobs on sidewalks and lawns;

Shriek from broomsticks and dark corners.

They knock on windows and front doors;

Haunt the night with evil howls and scary faces;

Sound like screeching owls and clanking chains;

As frightful as foul ghouls and screaming banshees.

Jack-o-lanterns stand and face them;

Stave off the fiends with scowls and indignation;

Light the night with candle glare and flickers;

Give the fiends an evil eye and carved-out snickers.

In retreat, the mischief makers and hell hounds

Leave tissue on quaking trees and bushes;

Curl back into a rising dawn and setting moon;

Disappear into faint shadows and fading gloom.

©cmheuer, 2017

NIGHT OF THUNDER

After the rapid-fire, flashing light gushes through the windows,

Olympic drums shake the double-hung frames like rattles;

Pound on the walls as if they were doors.

There is no sleep during the brute force of electric rage,

Insatiable and relentless, incessant, recurrent light and sound

Steal the darkness and the silence.

Even as the fierce wrath grows faint and moves away,

Another round appears to cancel the night,

To reassert the meteoric flames, shrieks, and howls.

While the window flickers like an old movie projector

With floods and winds that drown, with fires that burn,

With earthquakes that crush and trap, and

With guns that mow down crowds.

©cmheuer, October, 2017