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The Monsters are Due on Maple Street

High above dear Maple Street

There looms a cold iron curtain of fear

That dares to drop and let all the monsters

Unleash their dreaded promise of chaos

As in Europe despots gift a new World War

Trembling parlors hug the radio

 

Hallows Eve: the radio

Begins to sing throughout dear Maple Street

The Seventh Trumpet declares all out war

And that heavy iron curtain of fear

Eclipses the sun and invites chaos

In vacant hearts of men into monsters

 

Halloween Night: the monsters

Now dance to the tune of the radio

Raiding the stores, jumping bridges, chaos

Entombing the stretch of this blood strewn street

Parlors gorging on endless waves of fear

Riding hysteria, imminent war

 

O great catalyst of war

Twisting the minds of men into monsters

Diving your hands in that great pit of fear

Now throbbing with screams from the radio

No fences nor faces can save Maple Street

Now plunged in the throes of sweet sultry Chaos

 

And we call it Chaos

This boiling of minds all stewing with war

Once masked with humanity on this street

Now reveals good neighbors make great monsters

Skies of martians (n)or men, the radio

Hissing, twists the knobs and tunes in to fear

 

And when that curtain of fear

Draws, and shadeless light casts on the chaos

And the broadcast fades on the radio

And mere fiction rescinds the throne of war

What will we make of all of these monsters

Scattered about in a daze through the street

 

Where there are minds of fear and war,

Chaos reigns and calls to the sleeping monsters;

Tune in to Welles’s radio on Sterling’s street.

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Written by
jarjarrhine
24 / M
Published
Oct 30, 2018
Lines·Words
39·275
Notes

All Hallow's Eve, 80 years ago today, Orson Welles gave his "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast to an America terrified of war, enveloped in fear. I tied it into one of my favorite episodes of the Twilight Zone by the same name, where a neighborhood becomes engrossed in fear, resorting to an animal-like defense that eventually tears apart their humanity.

Tags
#halloween#sestina#war#aliens#monsters#radio#street#twilight#zone#fear
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