All Saint’s Day

~ qbit 
It's Halloween’s sweet tooth hush 
the morning after – werewolves curled 
at our feet, snuffling and stretching 
for belly rubs, shedding hair 
and happy animal sounds.

Our bones return to their homesick limbs
and sleepy, yawning graves. 
We soak our fangs in Polident to fizz away 
the gore. Ghosts in their BVD's await 
warm sheets from the dryer.

Shy monsters are crafting back in their crypts,
witches switched on Bewitched in the den
and practice wrinkling their magic noses.
Zombies tally their overtime pay – 
they will winter in the Azores or Belize,

Somewhere they can catch some z's 
and the sun is as yellow as their eyes.
I walk with scarecrow back to his place
among the cornrows, stand with him 
at his cross, his Golgotha.

He hands me a sliver chain his sweetheart,
the fairy, gave him when they kissed,
then watched her die against the porch light.
Love finally for him, flickering, fleet. 
Trick or treat, without answer.

Better man than I, he mounts the ladder.
Crows toss dice for his robes.

For Shay’s Word Garden

12 thoughts on “All Saint’s Day”

  1. A mob of angry fundies are coming for you! My favorite bit was “our bones return to their homesick limbs.” What a line!

    I’m so glad you linked up, first because I always am, and second because it’s been a ghost town at the List this week.

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    1. Thanks! Glad you liked that line. I sort of had HW in mind for all this, fingers crossed she stops by. Yeah a bit spooky at the list. Watch out for zombies! (Or Zambonis. I mean, hey, one should be able to outrun both, but I don’t want to get iced either way!)

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  2. I love the werewolves waking up with happy animal noises! And I noted the same line Shay quotes. Fantastic. So much wonderful atmosphere in this poem.

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  3. A poem after my own heart, qbit. The elite of the monsters, the zombies(I am seeing yachts and billionaires, somehow,) wintering in the hot spots, the werewolves domesticated, and even our own bones playing tricks on us, all evoke the spirit of a contemporary Halloween, a horror flick with a dab of camp. But the final ten lines hark back to the real feel of All Hallows, to that icy breath on the back of our necks that comes across time to remind us the Other World is closer than we’d think, and Harvest Home may well be a haunted house. Loved this, sir.

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    1. Thank you! I for sure had a “Oooh, HW is gonna love this!” thing going as I wrote, LOL! I’m not sure I landed the transistion to the scarecrow though, might pivot to hard from the domestic to the mortal coil.

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  4. Wonderful juxtaposition of myth and reality. Perhaps it’s just me, but it seemed to me as if the scarecrow was the persona’s alter ego, or conscience (?), putting to rest or death, the night’s dreams and revelry, the death of something precious.

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  6. “Our bones return to their homesick limbs and sleepy, yawning graves.” Love that line. You mix reality and fantasy. I think these days I like to dip my toes in fantasy. The real is too reall.

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