October's Monsters, a Halloween Poem

under heavy capes and plastic

masks, but painted orange on black

announces the arrival of Death's holiday.

Adolescent skeletons dance with vampires

to the devil's fiddle in their decorated

boxes and sip on goblets of eyeball
daiquiri, dipping witches' fingers

into a bowl of toxic waste, while children,

young, run from a Yorkie dragon named Bama

Queen who snaps out chirping barks instead

of flames and tugs with tiny teeth

on bags, full of poison, chocolate

treasures stolen from the princess

kept behind the streamers and stuffed

porch guards who watch the neighbors nearest

hide from October's favored evening

with blackened lights and closed curtains and toilet

paper decorations hanging from their haunting willows.

All the while wizards and hags, zombies and werewolves,

snooze behind closed doors with heavy

bowls on their laps, waiting for the arrival

of ballerinas and superheroes and little demons

in need of chomping and singing for sugar rewards.

And as the howls and cackles and hoots subside,

the human's arrive home with tired eyes,

and the monsters are packed away until another cool

October night, the only evidence of their wicked ways

in a bowl of half-eaten treats.