autumn

Halloween 🎃

What Are You Going to Be?

Scooby doo, and a crocodile
Nod hi when catching
Each other’s eye on the 9.45 into town
As you smooth down your Daenerys dress
In this sudden uncharacteristic moment, you… express yourself.

What would be fun,
What’s not been too done
What am I going to be…

Angels, devils
Jokes or efforts
Some go hell for leather
Could be youtube experts.
Or it’s a costume out the packet
Or somewhere in between
Bits and bobs bought from specialist shops,
Dust off moths from
Clothes at the backs of wardrobes.

What would be fun,
What’s not been too done
What am I going to be…

Confuse the ghouls,
Surprise the spectres
So they don’t mistakes us for kindred spirits,
But what they don’t realise
In the paints and masks
the covers the facades,
Are who we are,
Or part of us, an element,
something underneath.

Our superhero costumes are usually under shirt
As we do what we must to get through trials at home or work.
But for one night, we get a spin of the phone box,
And emerge.

There’s a witch at the bus stop
A pirate on the till
A unicorn in the toilet queue,
While the ring master waits for a free cubicle.
Pop art girls wave their goodbyes, walking Lichtensteins
Two legged spider friends go to dance
A wonderland rabbit running late,
hops quick past,
Dorothy’s plaits twist,
A Stormtrooper’s pissed
Men are women
And women are men
And people are characters
Rules transcend.

When immersed in a night of undress
What you put on uncovers the rest
Who we are, who we want to be.
Who would you be if you could be…

It’s all mixed up, what we want each other to see,
the signals we send, tapped,
to be mapped,
requiring translation,
From the subtle to the blatant.

The morning after
The 1st of November
goth eyeliner down your face,
Braving the walk of shame. Jaws is waiting for the station gates to open,
tomato sauce in their morning roll,
Spell broken.

Every day can hold more scares;
Than beleaguered die or a talking bottle of beer,
Day to day affairs
Can be infinitely more absurd,
Than merely dressing up.

Maybe a costume’s just a costume,
Nothing more nothing less
But the day still begs the question;
What are you going to be?

EMC

For National Poetry Day

It’s National Poetry Day, and it’s now Autumn, which make the following by Keats the perfect fit.

To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44484/to-autumn

Pictured: Keats’ original manuscript, 1819, in the public domain, used under creative commons license