All Hallow’s Etiquette

/ Just Barry
neven-krcmarek-2Ni0lCRF9bw-unsplash

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash

Hallow’s Etiquette

There is just nothing
remarkable about a
Hallow’s witching hour,

where absence of light and sound
pile upon one another

until the deprived
senses conjure demons, ghosts,
and apparitions of distress

manifested in the failures
of our memories, or
their perfectly successful manner

of projecting memories
of our failures back upon us
like a house of haunted mirrors.

That ghoul is not a ghoul;
it is an eye-floater
casting a shadow upon
your retina

that became entangled
with a stray set of neurons
where an unresolved
disagreement with

your long-dead beloved
continues to take up
residence; our evolved
pattern-recognition

makes us see their sunken cheeks
and disapproving glare, and
nothing more than that.

At the very least,
that is what I tell myself
to keep my heart from racing

and my unspoken words
from spilling into this dense,
uncaring,
unremarkable space
at this ungodly hour,

where no one replies
to my wailing demands for reason,
and for good reason,
as no one is here
to hear them.

But in the extremely
unlikely event
that I’m wrong about this,

all of these reasonable
observations,
which I’m mostly certain
is extremely improbable,

if they truly exist
between our realms,

my first thought would be
probably
that demons, ghosts, ghouls,
and all the like,

in addition to being
needlessly frightening,

in all these years of
ignoring my queries

they’re also extremely rude.
***

Inspired by All Hallow’s Eve and Poets United: Midweek Motif ~ A Million Years Howl When Voices Whisper Among The Trees, hosted by  Sanaa Rizvi.

Also shared at dVerse OLN: Casting a Spell, hosted by Linda Lee Lyberg.

33 thoughts on “All Hallow’s Etiquette”

  2. This is deliciously dark and brooding! 🙂 I love; “and my unspoken words from spilling into this dense,
    uncaring, unremarkable space at this ungodly hour,” … Happy Halloween! 🎃💀

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  6. Barry,
    A magnificent and thought provoking scenario about ghosts and scary instances. I like your conclusion that they might be said to be quite rude, since they provide no real answers to our woonders about them…eye floaters are a familiar situation for myself, so it’s possible to see anything odd, in poor light!

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  9. A very Halloweeny poem. On tv, all day, announcers have been appearing in very gruesome costumes, fraught with blood. Ew. No litle gremlins come to our doors here in the apartment building……I rather miss seeing them. Lovely to read you, Barry.

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  12. You’d hope that ghosts and ghouls would have some manners, but Halloween is their party, so we need to mind our manners too! I love the phrase ‘house of haunted mirrors’, and the way you turn up the tension.

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