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Autumnal Triduum
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Tomorrow is All Saints
The day after All Souls
One day celebrates
Those of us alive
The other celebrates
Those who have died
On the latter day,
There will be picnics
By bright gravesides
Special foods
Candies in the shapes of skulls
We’ll visit with our
Relatives gone on
Come back ironically
And joyfully
To check on mortals,
How we’re getting on
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C L Couch
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Photo by Pieter van de Sande on Unsplash
Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Verenigde Staten
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Mischief Day
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So far, it’s been
A disorienting day
When I just miss the counter’s edge
Or don’t
When I spill something
Then spill it again
When I can’t keep a lock
Out of my eye
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I imagine I’ll be stubbing toes
Missing the finale
Locating many things
But what I need
Tomorrow will be Hallowe’en
Maybe the veils are thinning out already
And someone let
The imps through first
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C L Couch
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When we grew up, there was Devil’s Night, the night before Hallowe’en. I understand it’s Mischief Night as well.
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Bump
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In a week is Hallowe’en
Let’s reach up
Take down the ghosts
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Dust the sheets
Sew a few stitches
Here and there
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This is the time
When ghosts of the past
Year-round
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We know the kind
Deserve some sublimation
For the humanly
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Storied things
Chased with chocolate
Chasers
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While fun
Is fright
All pathologies aside
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Mars is not invading
If you think so,
Happy Hallowe’en
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C L Couch
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Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash
San Francisco 2020, after the Labor Day fires.
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Witchening Hour
When it’s the midnight hour
On Hallowe’en
Nothing, it’s simply the start of
Another hour
I want witches to appear
And magic manifest
Strange lights and an open doorway
Never there before
An hour for the ghosts to dance
While all of us in costume now
Unmask
The thinness torn
Between two worlds
Maybe mortal folk can
Sashay with the eldritch
The thing is that
It might not be terrifying
Simply extraordinary
Occult as in unknown alone
Conjuring an honest gathering
For all of us
To bear an hour
C L Couch
Image by joseph_Berardi from Pixabay
Scream Seam
‘Tis the season Hallowe’en
Things heard and seldom seen
Scared-er I have never been
All these spirits, in between
C L Couch
By John – https://www.flickr.com/photos/flashlamp/229377759/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1117448
Teal Pumpkin Project
Leave un-allergenic treats
On Hallowe’en porch
http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project#.WABLLiQ5pcw
Autumnal Oracle
Eating soft candies,
Scary pre-season
These are, well, all
On sale too early
Shapes of ghosts
And bats, since
Hallowe’en creeps
In from weeks
Ahead
I want rehearsal
Practice of time,
A witch-spell nearly
Ready to be cast
Haunting for a
Fool, the wise
Child’s knowing
Fear for shapes
Of story’s eyes in
Spectral-black
Branches made of
Arms of spikes
That reach down
Toward me
I treat myself to
A bargain invocation,
Reviving the thrill
Of a house of wraiths
Night-dark on
A bright horizon
Young Frankenstein
This phrase came to mind
Out of the season’s time:
When the veil fails, speaking
Of Hallowe’en
This is what those of ancient
Lore believed—that gossamer-
Iron webs and steel-misty
Vapors held the other side
On a spellbound, ritualed
Line
Except for
This one time each year
I don’t know what this means;
The child in me didn’t
Care
I dressed colorfully, unusually
Looked through eyeholes
Of masks sweated ’round
The fabric on my face
I was young and relatively
Free
To run my neighborhood
Receiving chocolate reward
For feeling the thrill of cool
Air as more night rushed
Over my skin,
Through folds in costumes,
The faster that I moved
Ghost
it is like us because it was us
breathing, living once like us
ghost become, be-turned in death, untimely
and unfinished
are they real?—we are real, and
we’re the ones who make the ghosts, for
they were us
we know a ghost of one kind lives
we meet it every day: anything that
haunts us in our daylight lives, the
choices and the acts we want to leave
behind but carry with us in a lingering
way not finished
we make our ghosts, and they haunt us
the other kind?—well, why not, since
so much of us is left behind, undone
so that we carry it in some
unresolving way
after dust, before heaven
what we leave that’s extreme and
exigent persists
so we make the ghosts, and they persist
is it bad, then, on one day a year, we celebrate
the ghosts this once?—and then again next year
Happy Hallowe’en
while remembering
they will be
clcouch123 
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