Ghosts – This Jolly Beggar

Dead Rights

The sun had taken flight with midnight near
The killer stops uncertainly, afraid,
Behind a sound he hears, sinister, clear,
A hollow breathing, ice-cold hand now laid
Upon his shoulder, grips; he springs away,
As if the fiends of hell were at his heels,
But still pursued, his face with terror, gray.
At last he turns, with courage bold, then squeals
As dead Lucille peals, “Now see how it feels!”

Well, Halloween’s just around the corner isn’t it? 🎃👻 Update: And right on cue, I’m number 13 on Mr. Linky! Haha.

Laura at dVerse's MTB: "Since today is the 9th of the 9th month it is fitting for that numeral to inform today’s poetry form –  so let’s meet The Novelinee!. . . Yes, it’s a nine line stanza poem overlaid with this rhyme sequence:
a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,d" also written in iambic pentameter.

Fear

Genre: Fiction
Word Count: 100

Fear

I’ve heard it said that a woman should never be afraid of her own life. Yet I am. Every day the crowd multiplies. I grow old. The room grows smaller. Am I to be buried alive? Not with grave dirt, but with ghosts. The more confined I, the more rampant they. What diabolical art is this, that the dead suck life out of those they abhor? My nights are theirs to engorge upon in hopeless pain, my days spit out remnants of their celebration. For as vines strangle and overgrown briars encroach, my ghosts encircle me. And I am afraid.

Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers and Eugi’s Weekly Prompt. Eugi asks us to use any variation on the word prompt (“celebration”).

Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (above, © Alicia Jamtaas) and limit our words to 100 or less. Click on the frog to read more stories and participate.

Seasonal Ghosts

Fallen leaves, sudden colors surround our steps
this season of the encroaching frost, where breath
shivers surfeit with ghosts, phantasms of shade and shape
lingering on the outskirts of our gaze, entrapped
to swirl in gossamer guise of follies unguessed
flesh and blood whose course ran verdure green
but now, as the dry veined leaves, pose beleaguered
papery skinned revenants awaiting All Hallows’ Eve
as if deserving no more than our own fading grins.

note: Charles Baudelaire’s famous poem “The Revenant” should haunt every evocation of revenants. Check out this translation of the poem at Sublime Terror.

Lisa hosts Dverse's "Poetics 427: Mussenden’s Temple"
Write a poem (in any form) using the word "folly."
Check out all the responses at Mr. Linky.