All Hallows Eve
Some seasonal ghostly poetry from subscribers to Sixty Odd Poets
Hallowe’en approaches. The dead shall walk the earth. Ghouls, ghosts and reanimated skeletons will abound - and subscribers to Sixty Odd Poets will have the opportunity to make their mark on a page dedicated to the creepy, the macabre, and the terrors of death. And here they come!!! Twelve terrifying poems from the crypt!
Poems
Halloween Wedding - Adam Strickson Meon, A Hill in South Warwickshire - Adam Strickson Ghost’s To Do List - Liz McPherson Plain Sight - Liz McPherson The Deerson Series - Roger Bloor Rebirth - Roger Bloor You Are My Certainty - Alan Davies Shared Spaces - Donna Faulkner The Grim Reaper’s Closet - Sharron Green Ghosts - John Curry Restless Dream - John Curry Ghost Words - Dawn Kirby
Halloween Wedding - Adam Strickson
For Ruth and James, 31 October
After the blood-moon of this September, the nights grow darker, striped like wildcats, unsettled, like long fingered shadows. They stretch and slither towards this day you have chosen for your intricate ceremony. So grimly understood, this day, bright with ghoulish ancestors and wicked finery, invites you both to meld into a night of immense possibilities, of pillowed friendship and sacrifice sweet as sugar skulls. Hang on in there with the faithfulness of wolves. Live like the sheet that stays pegged in the storm. Blaze like the cut eyes of pumpkins. Dunk for the fallen apples of love and dance dem rattlin’ bones like teenagers. Marriage can be shaky as a ghost train – claw to each other in the screaming gloom and you will always emerge into the light. On this auspicious day, you enter the mystery: it has no fixed shape, no definite rules.
Heaven is described as having no fixed shape, no definite rules in the Taoist book Huai Nan Tzu.
Meon, A Hill in South Warwickshire - Adam Strickson
That view, doused in lark-light. That view, through the white May, a here and there of swallow-dive. That view, through the window panes. That view, my childhood’s distance: Meon Hill – a billhook, blood stains. That hill, tump of eerie witchery for weirdness came this way a lifetime ago, a harrowed mystery. That hill, where they found a wreck of bones and flesh, pinned to the ground by a pitchfork on his gaping neck. A hedge-trimmer, a farmhand more than three score years and ten, curled up in death on the furrowed land. They say he cursed that land with natterjack toads harnessed to a small plough with his own hands. As Shakespeare knew, this was a witch-place: every woman a healer, symbols on bark – even now, a folksy out-of-time place. As Shakespeare knew, every hedgerow is a book of potions and the white May carries the sickly stench of a corpse row. Three days after the farmhand’s death, the locals found a black dog, hanged from a bush, and that stops the breath because it’s not so long ago that a witch was killed, with a ‘sticking’, a Saxon pitchfork pinning by a field edge ditch. That view I grew up with beyond the white spears of Jack-by-the-Hedge, oilseed rape, fern fronds, sheep bleat, that view dreams itself into me, the haze that never leaves the summer slopes, the chill always, in the elm-naked air. ..... Adam Strickson’s life is enhanced by working with refugees and Indian dancers using the creative arts. He makes masks and lanterns. He gardens, walks and writes quite a lot of poetry. <<<
Ghost’s To Do List - Liz McPherson
Check weather and moon Get out gravecloth, order more gloom Practice howling and lurking Practice gliding and skulking Open windows for icy breeze Loosen floorboard at top of stairs Make sure doors are creaky Round up bats and shut them in the belfry Remind owls to hoot suitably (or book ravens to croak spookily?) Pull out lighting fuse Decide what stenches to use – wet fur/rotting meat/brimstone Special FX - damp patch/mould/bones Fog (might need help to get it right) Set alarm for twilight. <<<
Plain Sight - Liz McPherson
It starts in Accounts with an outbreak of food poisoning. WhatsApp goes mad. An eviscerated cat is found in the water tank, Environmental Health attends. Weirdly, the Boss insists the animal gets a decent burial. The man in the next office is the first real victim. The Boss feigns shock but there is something in his face. Random stranger, most unusual, the report says. After that there’s a gap, coincides with the symposium in Vilnius which, she thinks, is proof, though colleagues don’t make the link. When people disappear in twos and threes, silent men and women are appointed, no job adverts, no interviews. They all wear white coats, like medics. Or butchers. By now she is clinging on by a claw, mirrors reflect dark shadows, she is fading away. All Hallow’s Eve, there’s a knock on her office door. The shock of bone-splinter, a single silver bullet. ..... Liz McPherson’s poems have been published in print and online journals. Her pamphlet, Shivering in the Wind (2024) is available from Yaffle. A version of Plain Sight was first published in Leeds Trinity University Anthology, Monstrous, Indigo Dreams, 2024. <<<
The Deerson Series - Roger Bloor
Response to an installation by John Davies at The Turner Contemporary 2017
The bus for the hospital departs from stand thirteen weaves through the town - and stops just outside the A&E The queue today is longer than normal - is less normal than usual the regulars are there the frequent flyers the halt the drunk the lame and this week the five scarecrows are back - strictly speaking they are beyond help beyond dead - Do you want to tell them? - I thought not Surely the one in the black body bag must know and the smell from the one in the rotting bandages is certainly a clue the smell of death is rarely wrong but still they stand and chat unsteadily – hats at an angle their eyes fixed forward on the future never looking right or left avoiding the sight of death existing happily in that narrow focus of life that death’s periphery surround <<<
Rebirth - Roger Bloor
\ Response to Exhibition at the Turner Contemporary, Margate 2017 – ‘My Ghosts’, John Davies – Arp the Poetry of Forms – ‘My Bed’, Tracy Emin / JMW Turner – ‘Another Time XXI’, Anthony Gormley.
Her ghost awakes from life throws off the sheets to leave her bed her room the wreckage of her past naked in a seascape she stands with angels guarding right and left head gently rested on a strange man’s arm she calls the clocks to stop and wait for chants and songs to start the songs of death and change of broken finger nails sweat and grease and dust the songs of Maypole dancers chased by phosphorescent rats the songs of zombie scarecrows faces pressed against the glass singing with tongues of flame of lives lost in stone forests her cases lost locked and out of reach are chained to figureheads of this ship of time past the onrush of the mad her tide-dragged body merges back into the deep Look no more my child leave behind the orange coat and purple tights the patchwork dress the bobble hat and yellow shoes move on ..... Roger Bloor lives on the Isle of Man, he is co-editor of The Alchemy Spoon poetry magazine. His second collection ‘Mapping Broken Roads’ is due out in February 2026 with Barnard Publishing. < < <
You Are My Certainty - Alan Davies
You’ve been my close companion for many years. You know I have cheated you. Despite this you have not abandoned me. You are always there. A constant reminder to me of your duty, To cut me down. A harvest, one of many in a day’s work, For your bony hands, as they reap. Your face stripped of flesh, Peers from within your dark hood. Your teeth give a semblance of a grin, But not a grin at all, Just what remains of you, laid bare. As bare as your purpose, Putting your scythe to work, In the wheat field of mankind. I shall stand proud when it’s time. Look you in the eye, once again, And forgive you, as I forgive myself. I now realise that you will take no pleasure in the act. You will merely be marking my time. I hope that one day, your penance paid, You will be released from eternal servitude, And like me, able to find peace. ..... Alan grew up in South Wales and now lives in Bath where he contributes to the Stanza 25 Poetry Group. He explores ideas fuelled by imagination and experience with key inspirations being the influence of industrial landscape and culture as well as the challenges of living with chronic leukaemia. <<<
Shared Spaces - Donna Faulkner
I live in a house with dead people. I live upon dead people’s land. Thinning carrots, I sense ghosts in the garden. kneel in sod, sift through dirt heretofore toiled. Buried deep beneath pink Damask roses A dead dog barks at the backdoor. The good boy’s still guarding the porch. There’s a hobby horse blithe in the bedroom. Faint laughter drifts between walls. I mingle with spirits in the kitchen I make bread on a dead woman’s bench. I stare out at the paddocks and plantings. Rock at dusk in a dead woman’s chair. I live in the shadow of dead people. I tread lightly in old borrowed shoes. ..... Free spirited and unconventional, Donna came to the business of writing later in life. Her first poetry collection In Silver Majesty (2024) was published by erbacce press. <<<
The Grim Reaper’s Closet - Sharron Green
The Grim Reaper’s work clothes are terribly grim, composed of a cloak with a raggedy trim. Made of dark sacking that’s heavy and loose, the rope belt he sports doubles up as a noose. His outfit’s not changed, since death was invented, so the stink of BO cannot be prevented. To preserve work-life balance the job is now shared, and 2 career killers have strike rates compared. When one is out stalking the soon to be dead, the other’s out clubbing and out of his head. At the end of a shift they disrobe, and with glee, they go to the closet and joyously see a range of the sparkliest, colourful suits with bright cowboy hats and Elton John boots. Once dressed most flamboyantly each of them finds that death is the last thing that crosses their minds. Sharron is a member of the Booming Lovelies poetry trio. She has published four chapbooks, the latest being Rhymes for the Mind which is available through her Rhymes n Roses website. She was previously featured in What I Did in My Summer Holidays on 60 Odd
Ghosts - John Curry
In autumn’s half-light footfalls fade beneath dusk’s hush, where pavements remember the weight of souls long gone. No wailing banshees, just pasts echo’s, like an exhale after breath held too long. these ghosts, keep to the margins, content with the company of forgetfulness, moving only when the past stirs, I do not fear them— they are nothing more than the memory of what was, replaying in the quiet theatre of now. <<<
Restless Dream - John Curry
Beneath a moon thin and wan, shadows stretch with a ghastly yawn, A whisper cuts through hallowed air, voices long gone, still linger there. A raven’s cry—a fractured scream— splinters through my restless dream. Eyes like coals at midnight’s hour, trees breathe secrets, dark and dour. In corridors of creaking gloom, the clock beats out our doom. Each tick a nail, each tock a breath, hammering time’s dirge to death. horror’s face, with spectral leer, dwells not without—but festers here. ..... John is relatively new to poetry. He featured in 60 Odd Poets Men Only Special. He broadcasts a music and interview show - Ordinary People on Sine FM radio. He will Feature in a Sixty Odd Poets page of his own in the New Year <<<
Ghost Words - Dawn Kirby
‘You are now leaving the future’ Says the writing on the wall And yet you’re here tormenting the graffiti Suspended in your own portal pondering every perfectly painted vowel, consonant and syllable Playing for time while your brain runs a thousand computations on the conundrum How can one leave if one hasn’t yet arrived? Future scrambled is ‘u fret u’ Well don’t you? And if the words wax philosophical then you only have yourself to blame If you come to the conclusion that you’re about to die…
Dawn is a regular contributor to Sixty Odd Poets specials and recently featured in her own page on the site.
Fantastic collection, thanks for including my work 😊