All Saints' Evening Roster of Artistes

Standard articles on the origins of Hallowe'en (All Hallows Eve) or eallra hālgena ǣfen / all saints' evening mostly relate the more recent origins of this traditionally macabre holiday, now devoted to children (of all ages) and their pursuits fashioned after harmless once-feared otherworldly spirits.

Rites of harvest can be traced back as far as ancient Greece, up through Anglo-Saxon times. The fundamental belief often embraced in these rites was the idea that the dead's spirits earned - or failed - to earn entry into an otherworldly zone, because of their actions in the inherently less secular Earth. Their 'return' from such an otherworld was the basis of a need for propitiation, appeasing or honoring of such spirits.

Of course, if such spirits returned to find their graves neglected, their memory ignored or even forgotten, their presence not honored with food and drink at the familial or village feast held at harvest time...

Ancient Greeks opened familial tombs yearly to cleanse and purge bad influences. Since these rites of purification began early, torches were used to provide light. Food was shared after this annual purification, and the dead were given their honored portions. To these rites, the Romans added the wearing of masks depicting their most famous family members during funerals, and the wearing of formal clothing to such events.

Our modern rites have been re-imagined from all these. Beyond torches, the use of firecrackers, bonfires, candles, drums and noise, they are all used to frighten off perturbed or demonic spirits all over the world. The eating of candy, apples, spirits and seasonal beverages bond us to rites harkening back to ancient times and their idealized richer feasts. Wearing costumes is a recent addition to Halloween rites, drawing on the Roman example as well as on Renaissance historic-costume events, festivals, and balls. When children go out trick or treating today, what they are really doing is threatening mischief if they are not satisfied with demanded offerings of respect, food, etc. And the historic wearing of masks have become the 'wearing' of stories, in print and on screen, whose horrors shield our psyches from more corporeal malevolence rather too often found in the banal and the 'known'.

October celebrates all this; herein, Danse Macabre XXVIII fetes October. New poetry unfolds the

cornucopia of dreams and the change of seasons. Fresh fiction colors the dark shadows of the soul and the mysteries of the night. Voices shimmer from beyond the grave, with classique supplémentaires from Charles DICKENS, E.T.A. HOFFMANN, Edgar Allen POE, and Sax ROHMER. Graphique frames childhood's dusk to eternity's unknown bounty. Did I mention MOZART's skull, too? There's even a good ol' baseball yarn premiering here!

Eallra hālgena ǣfen / all saints' evening brings you a literary October, in all its macabre opulence. Prost!

♥

♠ Danse Macabre ♦

An Online Literary Magazine™

♣

A Perfect All Hallows' Eve

Bleak dawn. Broad fleeces, smoky-grey, funereal-black
Canopy fanged peaks. Light, rag-clad, pale, spooked,
Crawls out from under and tiptoes where it's lacked,
Down rustic lanes where horse-drawn carts creak--as books
Of raw sketches had suddenly sprung to life.
Hues don dark cloaks, muting, as if they feared
The wind's sword or the razor edge of light
Once Sun's stoked, glaring past black-boled leafless trees.
Gaunt-armed, (like prisoners in a ship) they reach,
As if through gratings, to beg the sky for rain.
Hours flee like hunted things. Villages (each)
Hunch, spell-struck. Then, as Sun's red setting makes
A blood splash on the West's robe hem, bats swarm (thick)
And rays extinguish; now spirits steal out--to drink...
On all side, Murmur speaks, invisible,
A purpose without a body. Branches writhe;
Pastures slant upward; hills stare; cold-voiced bells
Tell cattle late returning, jangling the mind.
Men shutter windows, bar doors; garlic is hung
Beneath the eaves of huts. In castles, one hears
Loud musics scream as costumed dancers, thin songs,
Nervous laughter, clinked glasses strive to deter
Men's thoughts from terror. Then--all freeze: a wolf
(Near human-voiced) howls in the hills; voles in woods
Huddle, shivering. Last, the Moon rises, full,
Burning through rents in the clouds; Silence festoons
Sky's sable-hung vaults. Then one great sigh is heard,
Huge wing strokes; a shadow passes--Lord Dracula!

Rob Cerello

A Loathsome Heaving for All Hallows Eve

During the address rehearsal, everything was pre-said.

The hearse arrived in a sad state of disrepair. I was

stateside, horseless, my voice hoarse, inconsolable.

The corpse remained despondent, unconscious, desolate.

It was all a matter of hearsay. The coffin was hirsute.

Inside, wrapped in his shroud of enameled elegies,

the dearly departed drifted on the affairs of state.

The semblance of our assembly sadly stumbled.

The hallway’s hallmark of couture’s high culture,

standing upon ritual respecting death’s procession,

all the guests paraded before the ghost of honor,

getting physical, booties pounding the dance floor.

The music hissed out the sarcophagus of an effigy;

the body dangled. This manikin was morbidly manic.

* Previously published in Stranger at Home; Amercian Poetry With an Accent (Numina Press)

Alex Cigale

Issue XXVIII

eallra hālgena ǣfen

all saints' evening

♥

♠ Danse Macabre ♦

An Online Literary Magazine™

♣

Volume Four, Number Eight

Adam Henry Carrière / Stonesthrow Publishing LLC.

ISSN pending.

Danse Macabre XXIX

commedia