Spooky season is upon us at last
Reminders of witches and ghosts of the past
The air is so crisp, and the sun sets so fast
The vibrant decay of the leaves do contrast
As you gaze at the pumpkins, delight in the spice
Caramel apples and flannels and things not so nice
Do you search for the poems that spook and entice?
Read on, as these choices will surely suffice
Nicholas Nemitz
It’s that time of the year again
where the harvest ends for most,
but also begins within the selfish and wicked.
The leaves in which healers
have kept green for so long,
turn a bright orange
as if the color
had been slowly strangled out of it.
Those leaves fall to the ground,
raked into graves
and the hands that held them
are no longer hands
they are tombstones.
‘Here lies change,’
who knew
that death could be this beautiful.
Lydia Raven, “Witch Crossing”
Bewitching and charming,
my lady in black.
A glance so alarming,
I had to look back.
To ensure that no dream
could excite or beguile,
to subdue or redeem
her half-crooked smile.
I could never withstand
the way she enthralled
with a mind to enchant,
Her romantic assault
For you ravished and thrilled me
as our spirits entwined
and that look nearly killed me,
Now it rests in my mind.
Beth Vermander, “Black”
“Black…
as Pitch,
as still
water in
cast iron,
as rotted
figs, or
hatred
wraPPed in
sackcloth.”
Reading Under the Radar, “Haunted”
“We are all preoccupied,
haunted by the people
we should be.
By the ghosts of everything
we promised ourselves,
as children we would be,
until we faced life with all its cruelty
and it turned us into graveyards
of our dreams, our choices,
of what should have been our history.”
John Grover, “Seasonal Spirit”
Autumn nights, witches in flight,
The ghosts remember when,
The pumpkins grinned, and the veil was thin,
On a night when scarecrows dance again.
When bats spread their wings, black cats screech,
From moonlit graveyards where ghouls roam,
To barren roads where skeletal trees reach,
The denizens of the dark have come home.
Seas of dead leaves herald the season,
The nights grow long to remind us,
We once feared the dark for a very good reason,
It’s Halloween night and the dead are ravenous.
Jess M. Collette, “Sink”
Down in the depths
of the murky deep
are the discarded Jack-O’-Lanterns
That no one ever keeps
After that night
Called All Hallows’ Eve
When they light up the dark
Until the trick or treaters leave
Then their candles grow dim
And at the chime of midnight
All the Jacks are collected
Under filtered moonlight
By a glowing specter who drops them
In a swamp with no name
Plunk, plunk, plunk
The dark water douses their flames
One after the other
The Jacks sink into the moat
Beneath the fallen tree
Where the autumn leaves float
There they lay in wait
For the same night each year
When a new crop of Jacks
Will slowly sink and disappear
Halloween is a chance to explore the spookier themes that haunt our minds as we transform them into poetry. Like a witch’s brew, the emotions boil over onto the page and allow us to confront the things that scare us the most.
Happy Halloween, readers! Do you have a Halloween poem? Be sure to share your work in the comments!
