Pumpkin Are Free

Pumpkin are free. But this is the time of year
when I’m bound, when I’m shackled by fantasy,
enslaved by dreams of going back to school, too,
with the kids, but as some kind of professor,
teaching something like Poetry 101,
where I’d use “The Bonfire” by Frost as a text,
with a different student reading it aloud
every day, letting all the students hear it
every day, letting all the students learn how
every day, a careful poem is always new.

Pumpkin are free. But this time of year scares me,
frightens me, this scary pumpkin time of year,
although even as I type that I’m thinking
it must not be this time of year that scares me
even if all the colors now are like fire—
wood gathered, set ablaze, bright signs through cold air—
but rather I must scare myself, as if school
even existed anymore, as if books
even existed anymore, as if poems
even existed anymore, old or new.

I couldn’t eat anything made with pumpkin,
certainly not donuts that terrify me,
lost and bound in donut-dreams I’ve created
and set ablaze that scare me. Pumpkin are free.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


“Oh, Let’s Go Up The Hill And Scare Ourselves...”

Let’s Go To The Library And Scare Ourselves


This Scary, Pumpkin Time Of Year

This Scary, Pumpkin Time Of Year, Part Two


The Fons Et Origo Of Mad Laughter


Merica Uns On Unkin


*


I took that photo early Sunday evening
and I wrote the words late Sunday night.
I haven’t completely finished with
that Louisiana sinkhole business
but I had a strange weekend
and I wanted to start the week
with this.