The Halloween Edition of The International Imaginarium For Word & Verse (October 25th, 2022)

Dear Readers,

Here is the link to the Halloween edition of The International Imaginarium for Word & Verse posted last Tuesday night on our new Imaginarium website for you to hopefully peruse and enjoy at your leisure: https://internationalimaginarium.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-halloween-edition-of-international.html

I want to thank my fellow bloggers A. J. Wilson (AKA poetisatinta), and Tom Ewart (AKA tommywart) for graciously accepting my invitation to participate which I previously posted on this blog. Although the Imaginarium ended up being much shorter than usual, I decided not to repost the entire Imaginarium here on this blog as I have often done with previous editions of the Virtual Poetorium because I feel that it is probably still too long a read, and thus far too overwhelming for most of my readers (as a result, some really excellent poetry might be skipped, and that would be a real shame). So instead, I will just post this month’s Imaginarium group poem (which is probably one of my favorite segments of both the Poetorium and the Imaginarium). This month, we requested people to send us one to eight lines starting with the phrase “Halloween is…” All contributions were then compiled into the following poem which I’m afraid. like the entire Imaginarium, is also rather shorter than usual this month since we only received submissions from just Karen Durlach and A. J. Wilson (aka poetisatinta) besides myself (I hope you enjoy reading it!)…

Just What Is This Thing Called Halloween?

Halloween is the night of scary things
of witches’ brews and flying brooms
of hissing cats and screeching bats
of chills and mists that pierce the soul
and whispering winds that keep you cold
so stay alert, away from witchy spells
then you’ll be safe from the hounds of hell.

Halloween is hanging
by a thread, from a web,
the rattle of bone, in the dark, alone,
a fluttery sheet that has no feet,
a headless hat, a phantom cat,
a spooky night, such a fright delight.

Halloween is a holiday marked by the consumption
Of confection, commercialism crass as Christmas,
A celebration of contradictions when the so-called innocent don masks
to extort the neighborhood, where the ominous and the whimsical
Dance cheek to cheek at a costume ball, and you never know
Either to expect a sack of candy corn or a bag of human bones.

—The October 2022 Imaginarium Halloween Group Poem