All Hallows

As this year's Halloween is drawing closer, I decided to write a small poem in honour of the supernatural beasties that fill our collective imagination around this time...

Halloween is the time of year
When spooky things come round
But calm down and quell your fear
Some weaknesses abound

The perils of lycanthropy
Like howling, teeth and fur
Can be immensely hard, you see
Especially near silver

Vampirism is much the same
A perilous state of blight
But beware, you sons of Cain
Exposure to sunlight

Zombies also have their issues
Like maggots or gangrene
And rotting of their fleshy tissue
Causes stenches too obscene

Mummies, too, are not immune
Despite their immortal state
Bandages and dusty tombs
Don't help their rotting fate

Witches choose to curse with spells
But don't escape scott-free
Cooked in ovens or drowned in wells
Soon ends a witching spree

Giant trolls with yellow jaws
That gnaw and crunch on bone
Are scary, and with good cause
But sunlight makes them stone

Goblins, gremlins and other imps
Are vicious but small and weak
Break their limbs and make them limp
Home to their cavernous peak

So have no fear, enjoy this feast
And pay these things no mind
For the most terrible, frightening beast
Is most certainly humankind

Seville - a romantic pretension in three verses

Heat shimmers, but an oppressive heat
Bearing down on a cobble-like street
I've walked for hours in Mediterranean sun
And I sit writing here, beneath a statue of Don Juan
or Quixote
I forget which
Or maybe I never knew in the first place.
"Is this what contentment is?"
I think, as I glance at her face

Because despite the ache in my feet
And the bastard horses, that cause me to retreat
Into shadowy corners of ancient churches
And a faint hunger as my stomach lurches
From unknowing
At this moment
At this small window of time and space
I feel happiness, as I glance at her face

But its almost a melancholy pleasure
As if I don't deserve this treasure
Like its been plundered by high sea buccaneers
And smuggled to my grasp under polished veneer
I should stop this mental state
And enjoy whats now
I don't believe in fate
But if I did, Seville seems the place
And life is all good when I glance at her face