A Halloween Story
It all begin as grains of sand,
covering a place both wide and flat
open to the moonlight as Luna rises.
When the first breeze blows,
from a whisper to a howl and back
the dead trees, like skeletons,
shiver from cold and fear.
One by one the trees uproot
crackling and rustling, yet silent.
The open space becomes bigger
as they retreat from old knowledge,
waiting for the tide to rise.
One younger stays behind and watches.
Stares at the sand, and ponders,
reaches out and touches it with a root.
The elders, black and dead,
the home to owls and spider webs,
already mourn the youth.
At a touch the grains flicker
like starlight come to life for a moment.
Black shadows, where spirits might hide
if they weren't afraid, too, creep upward.
The sand begins to bubble,
darkness shifts and flows with purpose.
Youth is lost on the youth, foolish youth.
Its root, pulled back at the darkness,
has turned black and gray with ash.
Like torpid terror the ash crawls
up the root and outward, up the trunk
to where leaf and branch shake
and fruit falls like tears of regret.
Now the sand heaves and towers
over the remnant of the youth.
Quickly dispersed by the wind,
dusty ash rises up into the dark clouds
gathering over a moon now red.
The ceremony is nearly met.
Tiny, pitch black grains of sand stand up,
now given meager life by this evil,
and run away as individual thoughts.
Past the trees they scatter, screaming
warnings and imprecations and horror.
The grove stands its ground,
given purpose and meaning by this night.
Where the sand once was, now a bulge grows
pale, even in the blood of the moon.
Rising higher and higher,
until even the clouds eschew the sky.
This abomination is pale like bone
covered by an aura of black so deep
that its meaning has never been needed
except for this moment, this single instant.
A terrible beast smiles at the night
and a tongue of rancid mold slips out
between teeth like tombstones.
When the world begins to shudder
at the presence of this cancerous evil,
the grove moves, and moans as it goes.
Lightning laughs from the clear sky,
lashing out at the wood song's meaning.
Calling back the black sand, to its duty,
repairing the wound in the veil.
Frozen images cover the wound
where the pale monster rose up to consume,
like moonlight shining through stained glass.
In the images, spirits swirl and play,
calling back to their master, no longer afraid.
Their night is over.
All in the space of the moon crossing the sky
these events took place: the running,
the rising, the loathing, and the calling.
Now come the true screams. Painful and
invigorating they slip into cracks
where humans cannot hear them, but they shudder
and they flow, across the wound, into it.
As the beast is put to slumber once more,
sand grains poised as cowards among the tree roots
run out and jump into their place.
A flat field of creeping black.
Then the black flows inward, to the center,
and downwards to the depths and is gone.
And the trees settle once again around the clearing
to again await the culmination of their existence
next Halloween.
poem by Poet Dragon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Aura
The air was dark
The moon was dark
The night was dark
The cloud was dark
The heat was dark
The stars were black
The birds were black
The eyes were black
The shadows were black
The planes were black
A sound of night
The hearts of night
A chase at night
A fall at night
No help at night
The night is night
Where is my sight
I have no sight
Your light was sight
No light no sight
No one in sight
The dark in sight
Don't call my name
What's my name
They call my name
That's not my name
Who said its my name
I have no name
You took my same
It was our same
She was our same
She's now your same
Its all the same
I'm not the same
Judas and my hand
You took my hand
'I do' my hand
You kissed my hand
You broke my hand
You fell my hand
A tear in sand
A heart in sand
A body in sand
Alone in sand
A dust in sand
At home in sand.
poem by Jenim Dibie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Hourglass Sand
Through the hourglass
watching
grains of sand falling.
I see time slipping by.
To myself I wonder.
Do we pass with such ease
through the hourglass of life?
Like tiny grains of sand cascading?
When that sand has gone.
Does that mean time has stopped
until I turn the glass over?
And the sand again begins to fall.
Through our hourglass
as we pass like grains of sand.
How many frowns can we turn to smiles?
How much good can we make from bad?
When our sand has run out.
Has our time stopped as well?
Who will turn over our hourglass?
Restart our time renew our opportunities?
poem by Kurt Hearth
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Song - Sea of Sand
You sent me to the moon
Across a silent sea of sand
I was reaching for your hand
But you were standing on a hill
You launched me to the moon
Across the wind between the stars
I was reaching through the sand
But I was fading out of view
I was just a photograph
An old fading black and white
Taken by a passer-by
When the sun was out of sight
You sent me to the moon
I caught the desolation bus
There was no-one there but us
I saw your shadow on the sand
You sent me to the moon
Down every road we’ve ever walked
Every place we strayed or talked
When we were higher than the wind
I went searching all the stars
Between the avenues and bars
You were everywhere I went
In a different universe
You sent me to the moon
Across the frozen wastes of old
Where the howling wind blew cold
Where I lost you in the snow
You sent me to the moon
Although I didn’t want to know
But I built myself a home
Between the rainbow and the stones
I was frozen to the bone
In the icy wind of truth
I was free and on my own
In my castle on the moon
You sent me to the moon
Across a silent sea of sand
I was reaching for your hand
But you were standing on a hill
(Thanks to Tailor Bell for 'higher than the wind')
Black Moon
Oh the devil is rising with the moon
He cries and my blood runs cold.
Oh no never was the darkness so black,
No light and nowhere to go.
My spirit is crying for a love
So tired of being alone.
I remember he came here to steal,
And you are his stealer of souls.
I see a black moon rising,
And its calling out my name.
Oh its calling my name.
Ive been blinded, lost and confused,
Darkness will call me no more.
Heaven is no friend of mine,
No God ever knocked on my door.
I see a black moon rising,
And its calling out my name.
Oh its calling my name.
Im standing on the dark side of time
Reaching for the power of her hand.
Shes weaving an unholy light
And calls from lucifers land.
I see a black moon rising,
And its calling out my name.
An angel of hell is rising,
Heavens no friend of mine.
I see a black moon rising,
And its calling out my name,
I see a black moon rising,
And it causes so much pain.
An angel of hell is rising,
Heavens no friend of mine.
I see a black moon rising,
And its calling out my name.
Its calling my name,
This spirits crying for love.
Heavens no friend of mine.
song performed by by Black Sabbath
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Ghosts Of The Bunurong
On the sand dunes at Powlett river in the dead of the night
Dark shadows are moving in the faint moonlight
The Ghosts of the Bunurong dance their Corroborees
In a circle they jig to the music of the breeze.
And as they dance they sing an old Dreamtime song
This Country to their spirits always belong
When white people are sleeping the black tribes come out
And they sing on the sand dunes as they dance about.
The old ghosts of the Dreamtime have not gone away
Like the frogmouths they hide from the bright lamp of day
But on the stroke of midnight they come out from the trees
And they dance on the sand by the southern seas.
The ghosts of the Bunurong they have not died
They dance in the moonlight on the beach at low tide
And by old Powlett river their old Countryside
At dawn they return to their old trees to hide
From the bright lamp of day but on the stroke of midnight
They dance on the sand dunes in the faint moonlight
And to the music of the breeze they sing their Dreamtime song
This Country to their spirits always belong.
poem by Francis Duggan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Wood And The Shore
The low bay melts into a ring of silver,
And slips it on the shore's reluctant finger
Though in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,
Forsaking her because the moon persuades him.
But the black wood that leans and sighs above her
No tide can turn, no moon can slave nor summon.
Then comes the dark: on sleepy, shell-strewn beaches,
O'er long pale leagues of sand and cold, clear water
She hears the tide go out towards the moonlight.
The wood still leans… weeping she turns to seek him,
And his black hair all night is on her bosom.
poem by Muriel Stuart
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
GRAINS of SAND
Grains of sand
on which I stand
burn my feet
from the sun's intense heat.
I bury them quickly
to keep them cool.
The grains of sand
can be too cruel.
And now I know
I played the fool
for I left my sandals
where it was cool.
Afraid to move,
I see a child.
I call to him
as if I'm wild.
'My shoes, my shoes
please bring them here.'
He looks and waves,
then disappears.
And so I stay
and face the day
stuck in grains of sand.
poem by Edwina Reizer
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Last Split Second
Sometimes in the heat of despair
we lost sight of perspective
It bends and curves and distorts
Like light round a black hole
and what we think of as truth is wildy out of proportion
yes the grains of truth are there running through the narrow waist of our preception
but each individual speck is not the beach, the beach is more than grains of sand
is this your last split second? will you spend it looking at a grain of sand or at the beach?
poem by Jilted BUTTERFLY
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Shifting Sand
Do you see that post a-stickin in the sand?
Just the point of it a-poking thro' the sand?
Me and Madge put in that fence.
Yes! We should have had more sense!
We was young, you see, and didn't understand.
Twenty years come next November we began;
There was nothing here but scrub when we began --
Sold the farm on 'Dingo Flat,'
And put all we had in that!
Into blasted shifting sand and 'Take-all pan.'
This here paddick--which? Why where you're standing now
(Oh! it was one, tho' you wouldn't think so now!)
Well, we grubbed it, nice and neat,
And we gut it in with wheat;
And we didn't reap enough to feed the cow!
In the early spring the sand began to shift ---
In a 'Norther' have you ever seen it shift?
Well, it all went in a night,
Not a blade was left in sight
When we come to look next morning at the drift!
Round the back there, by them stunted pepper-trees;
Hardly anything will live here but them trees.
Madge is lying there, asleep,
With the sand above her, deep:
Deep and loose enough to sink you to the knees!
Many other things are buried on the land,
Things you can't get back from any kind of land,
Youth and hope, and tears and sweat,
Wasted work and vain regret,
In the sneaking, creeping, greedy, shifting sand!
poem by Charles Henry Souter
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Time, For Jim Troy
grains of sand
falling through
our grasping fingers...
a dandelion held
up in the wind,
blown away in a moment.
a collection of photographs,
black and white, some
in color... put away in a box.
the strike of a match,
a quick blaze in the darkness,
lost in the black womb...
of eternity!
poem by Eric Cockrell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Strong Black Woman
I am
a black woman strong
beyond definition
standing tall by my words
humming a song to defy my place
and claim my space till time
looks on me with tears
and renew itself
I am a black woman
poised to vanquish night
and usher in the day
veer the wind southward
that moist clouds rise for me
to feel joy that kindles blue meridian skies
I am a black woman
fulfilling my call
as a strong black woman
never to bow nor bend to heartaches and
the pain that brings tears to eyes
I am a black woman
still carrying the warm smiles of my youth
I am a black woman
gathering my songs into fiery Zulu spears
to kill tears still dancing on our foreheads
and when morning star rises tomorrow
everything will be bright before us
because yesterday ended last night
poem by Padmore Enyonam Agbemabiese
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Circle In The Sand
Sundown all around
Walking thru the summers end
Waves crash baby, dont look back
I wont walk away again
Oh, baby, anywhere you go,
We are bound together
I begin, baby, where you end
Some things are forever !
Circle in the sand
round and round
Never ending love is what weve found
And you complete the heart of me
Our love is all we need
Circle in the sand
Cold wind, tide move in
Shiver in the salty air
Day breaks, my heart aches
I will wait for you right here.
Oh, baby when you look for me
Can you see forever ?
I begin baby, where you end
We belong together
Circle in the sand
round and round
Rising of the moon as the sun goes down
And you complete the heart of me
Our love is all we need
Circle in the sand
Circle in the sand
Baby can you hear me ?
Can you hear me calling ?
song performed by by Belinda Carlisle
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Sandpiper
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.
- Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,
looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.
poem by Elizabeth Bishop
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Sand On My Shoes
As I sit by the sea
Drink tequila by the shade of a tree
Theres a seniorita sat on my knee
Sprinkling sand all over me
Ive got sand on my shoes
Ive lost everything that Im gonna lose
Ive got nothing but the sun and the moon
And the sand thats on the beach
I am happy though my shoes are tattered and torn
Because the sea is so shiney
Ba ba-um-ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba-um-ba
Ive got sand on my shoes
Thought I was civilized
Till I saw the sea and I realized
That the city life was just not for me
Left my troubles behind me
Ba ba-um-ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba-um-ba
Ive got sand on my shoes
Ive got nothing else that Im gonna lose
Ive got nothing but the sun and the moon
And thats plenty for me
Ive got sand on my shoes
Ive got sand on my shoes
Ive got sand on my shoes
Sand on my shoes
Ba ba ba ba-um-ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba-um-ba
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
In Silent Winds
In that darkness lurking in-between
Deep sleeps and hazy waking
There resides a clear and clean
Whisper of brisk air that has me quaking
Like dark sand running through my fingers
Like water dripping from the leaves of nettle stingers
Smooth and rushing
This dark sand silently gushing
Like the stars in the sky lament
Shining and dark with every twinkling moment
The dark sands of a beach far away
Rushing in the oceans waters astray
Waking once red embers, now black
Like death, revived to enkindle
My heart, the strings have gone slack
Dark sand repair, filling the spindle
The one that holds the flame, it dwindled
Reclaiming that pain so aptly swindled
The peace of mind and half of my light
The candle flickers in black and white
In silent winds, taken aback,
Sweet were those dreams that attack
Sewed into the present and past
Somewhere with dark sands so vast.
poem by Deep Dark Soul Poet
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Ghost Train
A straw headed woman, and a barrel chested man,
A pocket full of posies with a hat brim full of sand,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
A dog chasing the tumbleweeds, across the sandy floor,
That drift along the platform, through the ticket office door,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
But don't tell me there's nothing coming, you don't fool me,
I hear the ghost train rumbling along the tracks - set them free,
And i hear them,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
The station master's writing with a piece of orange chalk,
A hundred cancellations, still no one wants to walk,
Keep the hungry children from the skeletons in the back,
Paid to keep an eye out for the gipsy caravan,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
I hear the ghost train rumbling along the tracks - set them free,
And i hear them,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white (don't try),
It's black and white (don't try),
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
And i hear them,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide...
song performed by by Madness
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
(Waiting For) The Ghost Train
A straw headed woman, and a barrel chested man,
A pocket full of posies with a hat brim full of sand,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
A dog chasing the tumbleweeds, across the sandy floor,
That drift along the platform, through the ticket office door,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
But don't tell me there's nothing coming, you don't fool me,
I hear the ghost train rumbling along the tracks - set them free,
And I hear them,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
The station master's writing with a piece of orange chalk,
A hundred cancellations, still no one wants to walk,
Keep the hungry children from the skeletons in the back,
Paid to keep an eye out for the gipsy caravan,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
Ooh - waiting for the train that never comes,
I hear the ghost train rumbling along the tracks - set them free,
And I hear them,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white (don't try),
It's black and white (don't try),
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
And I hear them,
It's black and white don't try to hide,
It's black and white don't try to hide
song performed by by Madness
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Dark the shadows haunt the night
If I began to cry
The tears would never end
If I lowered my guard
Then how could I defend?
From every side the walls close in
And there is no place that you could stand
That would hide you from this world
And all that it demands
Whoever said that life was fair
Has not lived long enough
When the path takes you along the edge
You'll see them fall off the bluff
But the problem is
If your guard is high
You will wither away
And begin to die
How could something so small
Cast such a shadow on the land?
How was it that it stood so tall
Yet it was just a grain of sand?
I made my way through this world
With the Sun forever at my back
And the shadows went before me
And the shadow it was black
One grain of sand in my eye
Tormented me for many years
And I could never hope to fly
For I was blinded by my fears
Then Jesus came and turned me round
To face the rising Sun
His light it shone upon my face
And my journey had begun
When you walk into the Son
The shadows fall behind
The Sun removes the grain of sand
Now you're no longer blind
Who is your grain of sand my child
That made you stumble, made you fall?
In the light of Christ perhaps you'll find
That persons not so very tall
Dark the shadows haunt the night
That cause you to run and hide
Look to the Son that shines so bright
And He will shine that light inside
O to be filled with the light of Christ
And see the shadows disappear
To lift my eyes to heavens heights
And finally to shed a tear
poem by Frank McEleny
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Playing Golf at Midnight
Playing golf in the moonlight,
at midnight, at night, when light
cannot be trusted, when sight
deceives, it can’t be right.
He drives the sphere with the craters
like the moon, white like the moon,
orbiting like the moon; soon
it will collide with grass or sand, and
the black night will swallow the white
moon and the driving sphere
and no one will know where
went the white and where went the black
and why.
And after the ball has divorced its tee
and after the moon laughs
and retires behind the roofs
of the neighborhood houses,
the silence of the green
and the heartbreaking loveliness
of the green emerge and converge
and here in the suburban
wilderness, the only home he has,
he sees for the first time
how clouds absorb
and disperse
the light of the moon.
poem by Sonny Rainshine
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
In A Time Of Dearth
Before me,
On either side of me,
I see sand.
If I turn the corner of my house,
I see sand,
Long, brown
Lines and levels of flat
Sand.
If I could only see a caravan
Heave over the edge of it:
The camels wobbling and swaying,
Stepping like ostriches,
With rocking palanquins
Whose curtains conceal
Languors and faintnesses,
Muslins tossed aside,
And a disorder of cushions.
The swinging curtains would pique and solace me.
But I only see sand,
Long, brown sand -
Sand.
If I could only see a herd of Arab horses
Galloping,
Their manes and tails pulled straight
By the speed of their going;
Their bodies sleek and round
Like bellying sails.
They would beat the sand with their fore feet,
And scatter it with their hind feet,
So that it whirled in a cloud of orange,
And the sun through it
Was clip-edged, without rays, and dun.
But I only see sand,
Long, brown, hot sand -
Sand.
If I could only see a mirage,
Blue-white at the horizon,
With palm-trees about it;
Tall, windless palm-trees, grouped about a-glitter.
If I could strain toward it,
And think of the water creeping round my ankles,
Tickling under my knees,
Leeching up my sides,
Spreading over my back.
But I only feel the grinding beneath my feet.
And I only see sand,
Long, dry sand,
Scorching sand -
Sand.
If a sand-storm would only come
And spit against my windows,
Snapping upon them, and ringing their vibrations;
Swirling over the roof;
Seeping under the door-jamb;
Suffocating me and making me struggle for air.
But I only see sand -
Sand lying dead in the sun.
Lines and lines of sand -
Sand.
I will paste newspapers over the windows to shut out the sand;
I will fit them into one another, and fasten the corners.
Then I will strike matches
And read of politics and murders and festivals
Three years old.
But I shall not see the sand any more,
And I can read
While my matches last.
poem by Amy Lowell
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!