HAUNTING … MONSTER NIGHT There are few tricks or treats in dreams, more screams And terrors than mean pranks brat children play … Cold sweats that beg for morning’s open eyes Before unearthing graveyard memories Of parents passed, lost friends to cancers, Aids And crashing cars; depressions over hopes Betrayed, shrill lists of failures, wishes still Beyond the grasp of possibilities. SOON … A pounding surf on nothing’s foreign shores Where dim realities are swept away in fog And measured time that clocks are trained To keep is lost to phantoms taking shape. “HELLO OUT THERE! I hear your footsteps in The hall. You can’t disguise yourself with hints The wind is rattling my window panes Or wheezes are just radiator noise. I know you’re there because you live in me!” THEN … Night’s carnivals of dark processions: death Masks on parade, the click click clicks of bones When skeletons come marching into view With headless choirboys chanting requiems; Sad wizened faces etched by acid’s tears, Sour toothless mouths all howling names I can’t Recall until a hush gags whimpers and One voice from nowhere whispers: “SLEEP WELL DEAR?” jo_dis 2010