Tag Archives: Halloween

Unhallowed Be The Name

Open, dark sepulchers! Autumnal woe
whips the dead leaves, which scattering, whirl below.
Bright orange memories of summer’s cheer
Flame out in phantom grimaces of fear.
Bare eldritch limbs reach out against the dusk
and spectral winds disturb each withered husk.
Thoughts wax sinister, existentially . . .
for such we shall become, eventually.
All hallowed saints acknowledge even this,
Departed from a world they do not miss.

Unable to assimilate true night,
The nation now embraces plastic fright,
Satanic sweetness surfeiting its young
while judgement in the wings, awaits, unsung.
They purchase Chinese plastic slasher-masks
To celebrate those diabolic tasks
They wish were only nightmares of the mind;
And so they show they’re spiritually blind;
Culturally and politically as well,
For thinking there’s no Heaven, nor a Hell.
As if Life’s stunning triumph thrills them less
Than spectral superstitions they profess.
They glorify the grave, though life is good—
Their children freely tour the neighborhood . . .

Oppression that prevails beyond our lands
Bears testament to this. Who understands
How real the threat of gruesome harm can be
Where terror’s costly fear is given free?
Imagine those who fled forevermore
Real graves and bones, blood; homelands wracked by war—
Survivors, having seen such things fulfilled
May wish they could forget how some were killed;
Their Halloween replaced with realer fates:
by bombs, in wars, in dark tyrannic states.
From whence true refugees take flight from death
to live where freedom draws an easier breath.
Uprooted, then transplanted, seeking life,
Believing they have now escaped the strife
Must they be thus subjected yet again
To fear’s oppressive rule, so now as then?
Traumatic scenes are glimpsed, it’s all in fun . . .
Meanwhile, those who have lived it come undone.
Ironic morbid joke: where freedom reigns
To purchase fake cadaverous remains;
Permit the grave to thus enslave our brains.

There was a brighter side to all this rot:
In neighborhoods your adult mind forgot;
So long ago, so lost in childhood’s mist.
Of what did earlier Halloweens consist?
It wasn’t all about the grave, the gore.
You didn’t buy your costume at the store.
Your mommy helped you tailor some disguise;
A character to charm, and to surprise
The neighbors known to live along your street.
Nostalgic masquerade: the bittersweet . . .
Now, our nation’s hypoglycemic kids
Gorge on what diabetes’ law forbids.
Macabre, this epidemic in our streets:
Sugar-addicted specters draped in sheets
Or dressed in Wal-Mart costumes of the damned
who ask for candy (grabbing on demand).

Were I the Lord, I’d find it all less cute
And curse it, as the fig-tree, to its root—
Slam shut the cover on the fearful tome,
Restore true life, reviving every home
Till Treats and Tricks alike speak more of faith
And God’s own Spirit banish every wraith.

The horrors you exhume in idle hours
To haunt your artificial autumn bowers
Are real for some, who question, once a year
What’s wrong with you, romanticizing fear,
When Death and Hell are real—however near.

From the Crypt

The Sleeper

  Edgar Allan Poe  (1809-1849)

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
‘Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

BEYOND the GRAVE HERE

IMAGE CREDITS: photo.net
paris-in-photos.com

 

    Multitudes of spirits appeared beneath the umbrage, and luminous mantles were folded about rapidly moving form. Some wore crowns upon their heads; others tiaras; and others decorations of which I knew not the name, but which appeared to be wrought of clusters of jewels, wreaths of golden coin, and cloth of gold and silver tissue. Others, wore towering helmets; and others circlets filled with glistening and waving plumes. A pale phosphorescence was emitted by every object, and all appeared a splendid masquerade. The apparel worn by these busy myriads corresponded with the ornaments of the head; hence every variety of sumptuous apparel was displayed upon their forms. Kings and queens appeared arrayed in the gorgeous robes of coronation. Groups of nobility of both sexes, also decorated with all the varieties of adornment displayed in the pageantry of kingly courts. Dense multitudes were visible in costume, proper to the highly cultivated nations; and as they passed by, I discovered similar groups composed of less civilized tribes, attired in barbaric ornaments of every form. While some appeared clothed in the habiliments of the present day, others were in ancient attire; but every class of spirits manifested, in the midst of variety of mode, a uniformity of external pride, pomp, and rapidly moving and dazzling luster.

from Scenes From Beyond the Grave
first published in 1865 by Marietta Davis.

Unhallowed Be The Name

Open, dark sepulchers! Autumnal woe
Whips the dead leaves, which scattering, whirl below.
Bright orange memories of summer’s cheer
Flame out in phantom grimaces of fear.
Bare eldritch limbs reach out against the dusk
And spectral winds disturb each withered husk.
Thoughts wax sinister, existentially . . .
For such we shall become, eventually.
All hallowed saints acknowledge even this,
Departed from a world they do not miss.

Unable to assimilate true night,
The nation now embraces plastic fright,
Satanic sweetness surfeiting its young
While judgement in the wings, awaits, unsung.
They purchase Chinese plastic slasher-masks
To celebrate those diabolic tasks
They wish were only nightmares of the mind;
And so they show they’re spiritually blind;
Culturally and politically as well,
For thinking there’s no Heaven, nor a Hell.
As if Life’s stunning triumph thrills them less
Than spectral superstitions they profess.
They glorify the grave, though life is good—
Their children freely roam the neighborhood . . .

Oppression that prevails beyond our lands
Bears testament to this. Who understands
How real the threat of gruesome harm can be
Where terror’s costly fear is given free?
Imagine those who fled forevermore
Real graves and bones, blood; homelands wracked by war—
Survivors, having seen such things fulfilled
May wish they could forget how some were killed;
Their Halloween replaced with realer fates:
By bombs, in wars, in dark tyrannic states.
From whence true refugees take flight from death
To live where freedom draws an easier breath.
Uprooted, then transplanted, seeking life,
Believing they have now escaped the strife
Must they be thus subjected yet again
To fear’s oppressive rule, so now as then?
Traumatic scenes are glimpsed, it’s all in fun . . .
Meanwhile, those who have lived it come undone.
Ironic morbid joke: where freedom reigns
To purchase fake cadaverous remains;
Permit the grave to thus enslave our brains.

There was a brighter side to all this rot:
In neighborhoods your adult mind forgot;
So long ago, so lost in childhood’s mist.
Of what did earlier Halloweens consist?
It wasn’t all about the grave, the gore;
You didn’t buy your costume at the store.
Your mommy helped you tailor some disguise,
A character to charm, and to surprise
The neighbors known to live along your street.
Nostalgic masquerade: the bittersweet . . .
Now, our nation’s hypoglycemic kids
Gorge on what diabetes’ law forbids.
Macabre, this epidemic in our streets:
Sugar-addicted specters draped in sheets
Or dressed in Wal-Mart costumes of the damned
Who ask for candy (grabbing on demand).

Were I the Lord, I’d find it all less cute
And curse it, as the fig-tree, to its root—
Slam shut the cover on the fearful tome,
Restore true life, reviving every home
Till Treats and Tricks alike speak more of faith
And God’s own Spirit banish every wraith.

The horrors you exhume in idle hours
To haunt your artificial autumn bowers
Are real for some, who question, once a year
What’s wrong with you, romanticizing fear,
When Death and Hell are real—and ever near.