Halloween Poetry: Halloween Party

Happy Halloween! Enjoy this poem, and share it with everyone you can so poetry takes its place as a Halloween treat!

Halloween Party

We’re having a Halloween party at school.

I’m dressed up like Dracula. Man, I look cool!

I dyed my hair black, and I cut off my bangs.

I’m wearing a cape and some fake plastic fangs.

I put on some makeup to paint my face white,

like creatures that only come out in the night.

My fingernails, too, are all pointed and red.

I look like I’m recently back from the dead.

My mom drops me off, and I run into school

and suddenly feel like the world’s biggest fool.

The other kids stare like I’m some kind of freak—

the Halloween party is not till next week.

by Kenn Nesbitt

from When the Teacher Isn’t Looking from Meadowbrook Press

Halloween Poetry Wednesday: All Souls’ Night, 1917

Have you read your scary book this month? Don't wait: start today!


All Souls’ Night, 1917

You heap the logs and try to fill 
The little room with words and cheer, 
But silent feet are on the hill, 
Across the window veiled eyes peer. 
The hosts of lovers, young in death, 
Go seeking down the world to-night, 
Remembering faces, warmth and breath—
And they shall seek till it is light. 
Then let the white-flaked logs burn low, 
Lest those who drift before the storm 
See gladness on our hearth and know 
There is no flame can make them warm.

by Hortense King Flexner

Halloween Poetry Wednesday: The Vampire

There are thirteen shopping days until Halloween — and plenty of scary books to buy and read!


The Vampire

A lily in a twilight place?
A moonflow’r in the lonely night?—
Strange beauty of a woman’s face
   Of wildflow’r-white!

The rain that hangs a star’s green ray
Slim on a leaf-point’s restlessness,
Is not so glimmering green and gray
   As was her dress.

I drew her dark hair from her eyes,
And in their deeps beheld a while
Such shadowy moonlight as the skies
   Of Hell may smile.

She held her mouth up redly wan,
And burning cold,—I bent and kissed
Such rosy snow as some wild dawn
   Makes of a mist.

God shall not take from me that hour,
When round my neck her white arms clung!
When ‘neath my lips, like some fierce flower,
   Her white throat swung!

Or words she murmured while she leaned!
Witch-words, she holds me softly by,—
The spell that binds me to a fiend
   Until I die.


by Madison Julius Cawein

Halloween Poetry Wednesday: Ghosts and Fashion

Here is another poem to help you get ready for Halloween, however you choose to celebrate!

Ghosts and Fashion

Although it no longer has a body
to cover out of a sense of decorum,

the ghost must still consider fashion—

must clothe its invisibility in something
if it is to “appear” in public.

Some traditional specters favor
the simple shroud—

a toga of ectoplasm
worn Isadora-Duncan-style
swirling around them.

While others opt for lightweight versions
of once familiar tee shirts and jeans.

Perhaps being thought-forms,
they can change their outfits instantly—

or if they were loved ones,
it is we who clothe them
like dolls from memory.

by Elaine Equi

courtesy poets.org

Halloween Poetry Wednesday: Antigonish

In honor of Halloween, Hedgehog Lover will celebrate Poetry Wednesday with a Halloween-themed poem weekly in October, culminating in a poem on Halloween. Feel free to share your poetry ideas with me. Also, if you want more poetry, check out some of the other poems published on this blog.

Antigonish [I met a man who wasn’t there]

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away...

by Hughes Mearns
courtesy poets.org