We cursed the dark
but woke the cold plague wind,
cracked summer's 'crypted spell,
talked the pretty into hell.
And so the show begins.

Black cat's-paw on bleeding-stone;
two speakers in a field of bone
bite down a forgotten kiss.
Whispers from the too-full skull
laugh in the pumpkin's cut-out hull,

but never the voice I miss.



~October 2017