Since November 2010 – can it be that long? – I’ve challenged myself to post fourteen 14-line poems on the blog in November. You can browse past efforts here, or you could even buy one of the seven little books I’ve made out of them – here. Pretty much all the poems are in the form of the Onegin stanza, so called because it was used by Alexandr Pushkin in his epic poem Eugene Onegin, which you can read in translation at this link.
Oddly, given that the starting date has been 1 November for 17 years, I haven’t tackled Halloween until now (unless you count this from 10 years ago).
Here goes:
Verse 1: Halloween
Hip-high vampires, ghouls and witches,
bog-roll mummies, Pikachus,
hats with horns and bonkers britches,
parents walking shotgun, cruise
the suburb, toting bags for lollies.
Zombie skaters practise ollies.
E-bikes keep sheet-spooks afloat.
Someone's made a pumpkin coat.
Samhein once threw death's gates open
letting ancient terrors in,
to make all sinners rue their sin.
Now terror has a snowflake's hope in
hell at Halloween. At most,
we mock the old religion's ghost.
