Put On Your Halloween Costume, My Love

Put on your Halloween costume, my love,

limn the world in bone-white light,

draw around you the perfect pattern

of darkening cloud, to sway to and fro

like a magician’s cloak, in the right

moment to cause the heroine’s

stumble, the victim’s fall, the bloody reveal

of a flashing knife.

You, variably huntress, cheese wheel,

man’s face with a capsule in your eye,

werewolf’s delight and terror,

conquered territory of humanity

if only for a moment, if only for

a photo op, symbol of lovers

and maidens, of changing

tides and times.

Put on your best destruction dress,

your best tsunami shoes

(those aren’t you? I didn’t know!)

let’s go dancing, love, let’s skip

through a forest canopy and

let slip a single beam just in time,

illuminate the sickle swing, the grim victory

of a final girl.

You, variably symbol of purity,

symbol of romance, farmer’s tool,

feared omen, cycle of womb blood, of life,

scientific marvel, claimed by every

mystic, every lonely child, and by me,

this night, this poem, this desperate plea,

put on your Halloween costume, my love,

for I have time to kill, and more to kill,

and would see blood by moonlight.