There’s a fun prompt over at Poetic Bloomings today. Prompt #357 is Featured Presentation: choose a Halloween movie as a title or make up a Halloween movie title of your own as the title of a poem.

The Gathering

We savor our horror
especially this time of year
to experience fears
vicariously in dark safety
to shiver and quiver
while others face danger
mouths filling with blood
while we taste butter-flavoring
and salty-crunch while
the sound of bones breaking
screams and mangling
bring us no pain
except that brought
on by the empathic brain

my hands itch and tremble
sweat breaks at my temple
a freeze from my scalp
shivers down as I wheeze
My horror movie
is titled The Gathering
imagining the panicked
drive through the rain
in applied discomfort
conscious of all the
possible deaths along
the way. White knuckles
clutch the steering wheel
knowing the true horror awaits
questions, whispers, and plates
tones, bones and nothing to say

No, I scream, No!
shield my eyes
but spread my fingers
she has made it through
dinner, her offering praised
but then I shut my eyes tight
I can’t take a sliver
of projected light
I must look away
when someone says
diet while she’s
eating her cake
I