Tag Archives: Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge

Passion Writ in Blood (For Tourmaline’s Halloween Prompt)

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Passion Writ in Blood

The barker at the Carnival was handsome, dark and winning.
One hand signaled passersby, the other hand was spinning
round and round a roulette wheel covered with glassware jars
around them, painted pentagrams of circles around stars.

“Throw a penny in the jar and win your ticket in.
A Mephistophelian experience—a masquerade of sin.
An excruciating onslaught of abominable sights.
Scenes of hair-raising evil and abnormal delights.”

He pitched a hall of horrors with carriages to carry
all the thrill-seekers who might freeze in fear or tarry
too long before each spectacle of blood-curdling fright
set up to fill the need for fear this All Hallows’ night.

One maiden threw her penny and he drew her in with charm,
folding a gentle prodding hand around her virginal arm.
“My adorable mortal darling, please heed well my advice.
The hawks of evil here are set to feed on you like mice.

Get ready for their onslaught—the excruciating shock
of these All Hallows’ creatures who closely watch the clock
as its hands sweep close to midnight and that hour that decrees
that all the creatures of the night may frolic as they please.

A blood-letting bonanza, a nerve-wracking display
will unleash as midnight calls us to the fray.
So climb into my carriage to begin the eerie trip
that will take you through the fun house. I will keep you in my grip.
See these shadowy images careening through my globe?
they say they see your fortune flashing here beneath my robe.

The dagger that I carry seeks a home in thee,
but I have you in my power. I know you will not flee.
You scurry across the meadow with my shadow far above.
I swoop at thee, my pretty, my quarry and my love.

Some passion’s writ in flowers and some passion’s writ in blood.
I feel your life flow out from you and toward me like a flood.
I’ll drink it like the sweetest wine. With it I’ll take thy soul.
To keep it with me always will be my evening’s goal.

Life is a wicked carnival, my dear, now can you see?
When you threw your penny in the jar, the prize you won was me.”

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Blood Image from the public domain. This poem, written by me, has been formerly published with a different name.

Before

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Click on photos to enlarge.

My friend Leslie is here visiting from the states for a month. Two years ago, she helped me decorate the graves I have “adopted” in the Ajijic cemetery for Day of the Dead, and she wanted to go see how they were faring this year. As you can see, they have become very overgrown again, so I’ve hired Yolanda’s sons to go cut down the year’s growth. Yolanda and I will go clean off the stones and Leslie and her friends want to come help me decorate them–perhaps on Halloween. I had heard the cemeteries will be closed again on November 1 and 2 because of Covid, as they were last year, but rumor has it that that restriction has been lifted. Both Ajijic and San Juan Cosala are having their plaza celebrations, so I guess things are back to normal. I’ll post more photos after the graves are cleared and decorated. Below are links to two earlier posts about past years:

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/11/02/pantheon-afternoon-dia-de-los-muertos-ajijic-mx-2015/

https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/10/27/r-i-p-jnws-halloween-challenge-graveyard/

The inhabitants of the graves that I have adopted are:

Frances Cutting Fletcher, born 1901, died 1966.
Katherine Root Fletcher, born 1873, died 1957.
Charles Arnold Fletcher, born July 19, 1893, died October 4, 1970.

I did extensive research and finally figured out the relationships, but can’t find the notes I took two years ago. Trying to research last night, I discovered from census and military records that there are three generations of Charles Arnold Fletcher, so we never could figure out the exact relationships, but I’ll keep searching.

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Grave

Best Halloween Decoration Ever! (For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Decor)

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Click on link below to see more photos:

Guy Builds Massive Skeleton That Bursts From His Home for Halloween

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Decor

A Vampire’s Lament

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On the Wagon
(A Vampire’s Lament)

I’m facing a whole month of sober
now that it’s almost October.
Passing up my gin and tonic
for a drink more histrionic.

Need I say I merely ask
liquid refreshment from a flask?
All said and done, I much prefer
to drink from glass and not from her.

I find this other way of curbing
my addictive thirst disturbing.
All that blood that sucking draws
is neater when it’s done through straws.

Alas, I find this vampire curse
most distressing. Nothing worse
could be my fate except perhaps
karma so far kept under wraps.

An Easter curse would be the dregs—
to spend all April sucking eggs!

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Vampire Image by Dinu J. Nair on Unsplash.

Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Monster.

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Scary, Huh?

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Monster.

Light and Dark

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Our Children Follow in Our Footsteps

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Our children follow in our footsteps

Light and Dark

Darkness is a costume that light dons every night,
drawing ghoulish shadows around her blinding light.
Outlandish to surrender to midnight’s inky stain,
then return as Aurora—shedding her light again.
Why do we seek our opposites? What could the purpose be?
The mountains meet the valleys. Desert gives way to sea.
Every single element and every creature, too—
Christian and agnostic, Arab, Hindu, Jew,
lives with all these contrasts jostling within.
Goodness gives way to evil. Piety battles sin.
Frolicking or feuding, our inner natures jell—
drawing us toward Heaven and/or jerking us toward Hell.
Day by day how can we know how we’ll go down in history?
This alchemy of opposites still remains Nature’s mystery.

Word Prompts today are shadows, outlandish, ghoulish, frolic, light and costume.

Ode to a Spider, Best Spinner of All, and to a Mosquito, Caught in its Thrall

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To the Spider

Insatiable monster, you spin your fine strands,
creating your trap with abdominal glands.
You then cast your nets out into the breeze
that carries them off to the bushes and trees.
With anticipation, you wait in the center
for mosquitos or flies—whatever may enter
your gossamer trap. Then, their prospects are dire,
for one tremor of contact is all you require
to be off in a flash to put them to bed
with  a cocoon of silk wrapped from bottom to head.

To the Mosquito

“I am” says the spider, as she sips out your sap,
“going to have a light lunch, and then take a nap!”

 

The spider pulls the silk created from liquid in its body through its spinnnerets – silk-secreting organs on its abdomen. Once the thread is started, the spider lifts its spinnerets into the breeze. It’s the breeze that is the secret to the spider’s ability to spin a web from one tree to another.

 

Prompt words today are anticipation, insatiable, monster, require, I am and spider.

All in Everything

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All in Everything

My heart as empty as a room the party’s left behind,
I tell myself I am at peace and that I do not mind;
but it may be pertinent, if I am being truthful,
to admit as I say these words, that I am feeling ruthful.

Day-by-day, I improvise, insisting I am free.
‘I” can pursue anything not limited by “we.”
Driving past the railroad tracks, an engine rushing by
reminds me of those trips when I was young and wild and high.

Cheyenne out to Oregon, Sydney to Melbourne town.
Always a new place and new adventure going down.
That local train in Java, stopping a thousand times
at every local village–the hawkers and the mimes 

flooding all the aisles and all the window frames
insistently proficient in their selling games.
All the places where I went teeming with new faces,
constantly observing as life put me through its paces.

Before old age annexed me, I had a brilliant life
as student and explorer, as writer, artist, wife.
Those inevitable things, grave and prompting sorrow
were always covered over by the prospect of tomorrow.

But now that tomorrow is not such a certain thing,
I simply fall in line with whatever life may bring.
Knowing that I can’t flee fate, still I have seized my power
by finding a whole universe in bee and bird and flower.

 

j

 

 

Prompt words today are empty room, pertinent, improvising, annex, railroad tracks and grave.

Back to the Beginning

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Back to the Beginning

When I began my journey, I was jocular and young—
no hardness in my heart and no burrs upon my tongue.
I hadn’t joined the fracas and the chilling of the years.
I had none of life’s baggage—no heartaches and no fears.

Life had not disseminated all her tawdry facts
and I had not encountered them by gossip or by acts.
No tricksters had deceived me. My heart remained intact.
I knew not what I’d missed. I was naïve of what I lacked.

And now that I am older, I’ve returned to what I had
before I had decided I must follow every fad.
The things that I’ve acquired? I am loosening my hold.
I’ve found that satisfaction is not something that is sold.

I have simplified agendas, taking time to see and do
all the things I overlooked while in the human zoo.
The progress of a caterpillar on a hanging vine
as effective as a church in reaching the divine.

The flutter of a wing, the morning calls of birds
reveal as much about the world as news reports or words.
Drawing back into what’s basic and screening the uncouth
has helped me in regaining the lighter heart of youth.

 

Prompt words for today are journey, trick, fracas, disseminate, chilling and  jocular,

Mall Maven

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Mall Maven

Before the next party, she’ll cut a wide swath
looking for outfits from trendy to Goth.
Choosing her next style can’t be speculation.
It’s got to be something that prompts adoration.

While stalking her merchandise, she walks the walk
that other girls emulate and the boys stalk.
Though she’ll chance being different—ahead of the herd,
if she goes too far, she might look like a nerd!

She saunters the mall looking cool and sanguine,
ignoring her minions, though she wants to be seen.
She’s nubile and nervy and lissome and lean—
a virtual attention-getting machine.

The other girls try to see what she buys,
but the pieces she chooses are not meant for eyes
that might imitate her before the reveal.
She won’t take the risk that somebody will steal

her next novel look before she has the chance
to stun her admirers at the school dance.
Until her grand entrance, she’ll feel a bit queasy,
Being a trend-setter isn’t that easy!

 

Prompt words today are swath, merchandise, stalk, speculation, different and party.