All Hallows' Eve

It is the only time we get to laugh at black So de rigeur at funerals and stogy old photography. Take Dixie Land at home in New Orleans Parading back of happy brass from marble sculpted sepulchers. A mansion in mirage, a wavy misty rambling of rooms. Their mirrors: windows to another, conjured world. An agitated specter's greasy lipstick pleads. How silly in its backward gibberish. Flies frozen in some floes of ice cube trays Or eyeballs docked adrift along a punch bowl rim. In morgues, contracting muscles practice sitting up. Fingers twitch impatient to be dressed in Sunday's best. Around grave yards are cemetery stones Jauntily askew, a sporty take on plumb Due to a lack of rebar steel or poured cement. More foundational than wood and bone alone. Masks flash from unknown alley ways. Our innards struggle up inside our throats Suffocated quiet, still, we ache to catch so thin A claustrophobic breath to be made so easily afraid.