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THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE
NIGHT |
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Tonight is All Saints Eve,
Halloween, Hallowmass, or Allhallow even, depending on where you live. It’s a night
when witches, spirits, ghosts and the undead muck about. The origin of this popular belief
dates back to pre-Christian times. In the Celtic calendar it falls on the last day of the
year and is the time when supernatural beings take the form of bats, wolves and other
creatures of the night.
Today in 1684 George Talbot murders a Royal Customs collector. Alas Talbot is the nephew
of Lord Baltimore protector of the Maryland County. His lordship is fined 2,500 pounds for
the crime & his nephew is sent into exile for five years.
1793: Girondins is guillotined at Place de la Concorde in Paris. 1926: Harry Houdini fails
to escape death. 1959: Lee Harvey Oswald informs reporters in Russia (where the former US
Marine is living), "I will never return to the United States . . . I would like to
spend the rest of my life here and get a normal life." 1968: Dateline Hollywood
– silent screen actor Ramon Novarro murdered. In 1971 a bomb exploded at the top of
the Post Office Tower in London.
But enough of all this madness and mayhem, stay home and bob for apples or rent
"Bride of Frankenstein" and think of June weddings.
- RM 10/16/1998 |
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Barbara Bel Geddes o
Michael Collins (astronaut) o Dale Evans o Lee Grant o Deidre Hall o Chiang Kai-shek o John Keats o Jane Pauley o Tom Paxton o Dan Rather o Ethel Waters |
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The ghosts that each
of us keep hidden in our hearts are the ones we fear the most.
False faces are the crutch and crotch of sustenance and
substance.
There are choices and choices that go wanting. We
wouldn’t know of ghosts without the haunting.
Fear is contagious. |
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A JACK-O’LANTERN OF ONE’S OWN An October Memory for
Wayne Green |
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It wasn’t the hills or
sledding there.
or chasing the girls down ice-clean streets –
stealing their mittens and paperbagged lunches
and sharing them with each other.
Not even the snowballs aimed at strangers,
then running ‘round corners to staked safe place.
Part of it maybe, not all. What it was mostly
was not knowing what it was. Not even thinking
about it till now.
Some other yesterday back in the distance,
a long-ago twilight, a long time ago. Six
of us boys lined up and boasting, seeing just
which one could piss furthest, longest.
running the risk of bursting our kidneys
till enough was stored up
to write names in the snow.
Having a short name, I won some and lost
some, I carried the day. I stumbled, I fell.
Now’s not so much different from
long time ago.
Many’s the snowman – neighborhood effort.
you bring the carrot, I’ll bring the coal. Hard
Guardian Angel not melting till now.
Spare tires that hung from limbs over water.
A dive when the creek had more water
than mud., A place to go off to where every
injustice, real or imagined, could be
ridden out.
Books, like jeans, were tossed in a corner,
left there dirty, dog-eared to grow.
Homework was building a hut in the cellar
to hide in and ride out fantasy, fiction, mind
fodder and stuffing. Planning a weekend
never a life, breaking the skin on my dick
in the darkness alone and forsaken, bleeding
to death. Hearing those footsteps above in
the kitchen, knowing that SHE must have
heard me cry out.
It wasn’t the floorboards, only the foreskin
under the kitchen cracking from friction.
One-legged jumpers hopping chalked boxes
on cleaned-up sidewalks between heavy snows.
The taw a marble, a half-eaten jaw-breaker,
a rock from a pocket that fell through a hole.
Winter game, summer game, names no longer
known. Red Rover, Red Rover, won’t you
come over . . .
was that Kick-the-can or Sheep-in-my pen?
Whatever, whatever, It comes back whenever
I think of myself as a fully-grown man.
The lines ‘round my forehead and ‘round
my eye corners bunch up like creased
leather on the back of the backseat of old
Buick Sedans.
Me growing older, imagine the irony.
I couldn’t wait, thought it might never happen.
Was sure I’d be cut down before the next season,
let alone grow up, grow older, grow old. A
fatalist then always seeing the dark side. Why,
looking back, is there now only light?
A child builds life around birthdays and
Holidays, what other calendar works for
the young?
Money enough every October
for only one fat golden pumpkin. An eye
for my brother to hollow, the other for me
to carve. The mouth one more problem,
always, an argument.
Shouldn’t Jacks smile?/ No Jack ought to frown.
When did a smile in front of a candle bully
a trick into a treat? No matter how careful
the paring and carving, always one tooth
usually upper, snapped onto the table
dropped into a lap, bounced on the floor
and got trod underfoot.
Oh brother, my brother beginning to bawl
over spoiled jack-o’-lantern,
just part of the plan.
My baby brother cried quicker, easier
than movie star ladies in mush matinees.
Tears would well up at the smell of a
quarter. Hush money, of course, to quiet
the kid. It always did. Then off to the grocery
for jellybeans, Jujubes. Poor old Jack left on
the table. Mama would always redo his
bridgework and always inevitable smile,
not a frown. Still what is a holiday without
family ritual. Thanksgiving, Halloween –
each has its rules. And, anyway, Mama
was some kind of sculptor. God may
have made Adam but ever year Mama
tooled up and turned out a remake of Jack.
Rooms aren’t important to kids growing up
as long as there’s nails and boards to build
boxes.
A box of your own is a must. It gives the head
running room the heart its own hollow,
the body a place to bed down and
bed.
It well might be worth forgoing the ransom
for pumpkins messed up, carved crooked
on purpose
if every kid’s Bill of Rights included a jackknife,
a taw of importance and his own scowling Jack.
- from "Folio No. 56, fall 1986 |
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