what good Halloween is to us by Debasis Mukhopadhyay

those cut off hands —

however so very preternatural

like a mere spectre autumnal —

choke easily on the finite border

of their semantic mischance.

we go to bed knowing

after the dark

deathwatch beetle & dry rot will swarm about

the wicked genii of metaphors, metonyms, synecdoches or litotes

under the rag of our skin

& we can elude the haunting brute

in sleep.

 

 

what good Halloween is to us if

hands they remain the mere ones

crawling backwards down the gutter of

a Milky Way so full of petrels

hovering over a figure of speech

nailed to the Children under the rubble in Syria

who just boo away

boo away

boo away

the ghosts

whatsoever lazy or fearing

to guffaw over the stubble of hands