Every other yard on the way in to nearly every borough and township sports a ghoulish display of bones and the Undead.
And not the silly, cartoonish inflatable ghosts and pumpkins -
these yards and porches are meant to scare trick-or-treaters. To actually SCARE them. This is not a holiday for the sheepish, after all, here in the land of the witch hunts.Out of balance in the Western World. We live out of balance.
Koyaanisqatsi, eh?
where did the balance go?We banaished all things dark or mysterious (or unknown, strange) to the land of the brimstone and eternal suffering, and by doing so, banished a part of ourselves to silence...
It's the silent part that speaks best on Halloween.. through the mask of a ghoul, a devil, a corpse, ghost, monster or other wild thing; the silent, wild part that speaks the anxious uncertainty of the animal kingdom that we Stewards have so long brutalized. It speaks the silence of the last acre of land that still lies in true dark on a moonless night, and speaks in moans and howls with fangs and horns while wars are waged for shiny rocks to throw at glass houses.
I want to go home and make ghouls out of old clothes and dried corn stalks and animal bones.. and the antler and skull that showed up out of nowhere five years ago at the edge of the woods, in the biting, ragged grass -
bits of skin and fur still on it. I want to put them everywhere, everywhere, everywhere in the world. And howl.. maybe like Ginsberg, because he heard it out there, too.. in the quiet, at the edge of a dark woodMaybe like my dog, who says everything while saying nothing at all, but who howls when he hears the coyote calls that I never will.
However it happens, I'm tired of the silence. I want to wake up the wild part and look it in the teeth and then howl a ragged, bleached-bone lifetime at the sliver of a Halloween moon.
Five days from now I'll cut the first dried stalks and dig up the bones the dog buries behind the barn...
Howl.
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As the sun sets before the dawn, as the coyote howls behind the moon, I shall join your chorus, for it is true.
ReplyDeleteI'm howling with you, and I'll decorate my bone collection for Halloween and talk to the coyotes in my field! Dark Song Week starts in Sturgeon bay next week, lots of songwriters singing about the part of life no one wants to talk about. Howl, howl, how? Lets be loud!
ReplyDeleteRagged edges of crackling leaves, brown stalks bent low
ReplyDeletewhirligigs and samars flutter down.... Fall, fall; What was green and growing has browned and bowed towards returning to the pull of mother.
Wild you say? Nothing is as wild as the soul who has known comfort and given it up to run in the cold moon light.
Howl? Dogs howl, humans scream and push their souls from out of their flaming bellies,
Fire flash tears of love of life and loss of life and the confusion our minds have surrounded us with.... We are the most unnatural natured creatures that nature has ever devised (So we say) We lay down and dream, we arise in dream and wait.
More than anything we wait.