Child's funeral in Deir al-Balah, Gaza strip. (Photo: AFP)

“You belong to us, body and belongings, and we can dispose of them 

and do with you as we please.” — Holy Roman Emperor Louis VI in 1343. 

Curtain of darkness drops on ominous orange sky;
on Jack-o’-lantern lit electrically-starved strip—
on smothered civilian sounds; on slashed signals
of cellphone towers creating a
media-less moat of Blacked out lights/Redacted rights…
Perfect shroud for evil spirits, spooks, vengeful skeletons
sashaying from closets, spilling rivers of tears into oceans of
Blood

Halloween’s perfect for degraded devils dressed as Manifest Destiny—
whirling like dervishes —Door-to-door
Perfect for night vision-goggled goblins, goose-stepping genocide to
Gaza. Perfect for hunting houses haunted with ghosts of
Resistance…
Perfect for costumed settlers, soldiers, snipers deployed to trigger-treat!!

Trigger-treat!!
Who’s there in chain shirt? Pot helmet? Breast plate with blood-red
cloth cross—Coming to convert this house to Christianity?
Who’s in Inquisition costume, applying thumb-screw as religious
test? Who’s in Cossack costume practicing pogroms on the West Bank?
Who’s Kristallnacht-costumed…leaving shops shards of shattered glass?

Trigger-treat!!
Who are the ghouls? 3rd Reich realtors? Who’s in crimson-stained
closing clothes—’48 fatigues— going door-to-door… Who’s offering
Lead for land?

Who’s regaled as Goering? Luftwaffe overhead hitting hospitals
with Hellfire missiles? Pockmarking ambulances? Softening up
bakeries with bunker buster bombs? Who’s strafing streams of
traumatized travelers: Declaring babies “bug-splat,” families roadkill?

Trigger-treat!!
Who’s made up as Mengele? Hovering helicopter-like over hospitals?
Prescribing white phosphorus for melting incubator babies’ bones?
Who’s in Goebbels garb bobbing for Big Lies and 1/2 truths?
Whose sack’s filled with heel-clicking high fructose corn syrup goodies—
sending listeners and viewers to bed with scary, sugary, Psy-Op highs?

Trigger-treat!!
Who’s the acne-faced teen—bass finally entering his voice—
with mumbling muzzle recoiling, reddening stolen soil?
Who’s the Eichmann-costumed settler spraying automatic
weapon fire—then holding his bloody hand out for house keys?
Who’s the Wehrmacht-macho marauding as refugee camp re-
enactor, re-slaughtering women and children of Sabra and Shatila?

Trigger-treat!!
Who’s watching this colorized horror film, “Long, Looped Night
of Nakba” by burning book light?
Who’s lighting candles on graves of the dead and commemorating
Martyrs?
Who’s organizing full-throated, hoarse voice chanters; blistered feet
Shoe leather-legislators to drown mass murderers in our atmospheric
River of tears?

© 2023. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe and PayPal.