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Night of Dread

Night of Dread

“Halloween” night – “descending” “gloom” –
  Lost in a forest of “living” “silhouettes”
Tangled branches obscure the skies
In veils of opaque ebony blackness
As phantoms of thick “dread”
Rise
From “open” crypts of “darkness”
Where “walking” echoes chant elegies of doom
 And set a pounding heartbeat’s panic
  As “creepy” creeping ghostly fingers
  Graze the naked neck
To claw at crushed leaves
 That snap like brittle bones
  Under panicked feet
Looking – 
  Frantic searching - 
For escape from this twisted labyrinth
  Of screaming angst,
   Where prowling wraiths with cold lips of frenzy
    And souls lost to the daylight
Breathe from exile, musty breaths
 In fogs on vanishing paths of vertigo
And torpid lethargy
Until ascendent midnight 
Lifts up this vale of fainting frights with moonlight,
Shadows glinting through bare boughs,
For All Hallows Night.

10-25-22
Contest: Halloween 14-30 Lines  - 27 Lines
Sponsor: Emile Pinet
Use ten words as written: creepy, descending, silhouettes, gloom, darkness, living, open, walking, Halloween, dread.
Chosen words italicized.

Copyright © Sam Kauffman

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Book: Shattered Sighs