No Rest for Witches and Pumpkins on Halloween By Gary Davis

 

with low gravity
pumpkins grow kid-size on Mars
Halloween in space
zooming candy thief witches
soon get tossed out to the stars


white sheets flap and bounce
while storm blasts windows open
ghosts breakdancing

“need babysitter
must love to cook meat”
witch answers ad

feasts on blood treats
Halloween night vampire
has witch for Uber

back to the Moon
space witch beats NASA
flies rocket broomba

witch bakes pumpkin pie
from Jack’s own lantern
crust is black—witch’s hat

whispers from the dead
echo late on Halloween
sent by ghoul mail

condemned dead pumpkins
slither back Halloween night
bring hellfire with them

Halloween pumpkin
morphs black without pulpy rot
Jack the Reaper’s trick

Druid priestesses
wore black at rituals
the first witches?

high-tech witch
grounded by climate change
no gas-powered broom

Halloween night glut
eat Day of Dead candy skulls
dizzy sugar high

Halloween pumpkin
now Mexican Day of Dead
calabaza

 

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Gary Davis enjoys exercising his imagination through crafting dark and darkly humorous haiku and other forms of poetry. He finds haiku, in particular, both challenging and fun. Writing haiku is like doing a miniature Zen painting and, when you look at the painting, seeing something unexpected (and maybe scary in the case of horrorku). Mr. Davis has published haiku in Tales from the Moonlit Path, Scifaikuest, Star*Line, Lupine Lunes, and It Came from her Purse (2016-2023). He has published other poetry in Tales from the Moonlit Path, Tales of the Talisman, Bloodbond, Illumen, Spaceports & Spidersilk, Zen of the Dead, Potter’s Field 7, The Hungur Chronicles, and a sci-fi anthology, Kepler’s Cowboys (2014-2022).

Published 10/31/23