Hope you all found a few prompts that inspired a poem or story. While I will occasionally be posting a prompt, that’s it for now.

It’s HALLOWEEN!

Remember that classic line: “It was a dark and stormy night. . .” by Bulwer-Lytton and also immortalized by the Peanuts cartoon? While you’re sitting in the pumpkin field awaiting The Great Pumpkin’s arrival, perhaps you, too, will arrive at some existential insights. . .

Halloween is almost here! What is gestating beneath the house? The walls? Or perhaps your characters live in a haunted apartment building complete with a pregnant spirit in labor? Or maybe they are at a haunted mall or a fine restaurant when the spirits want to have their fun. How about a haunted cruise? A haunted space station? It’s been said no one can hear you scream in space. . .but what about within the airlock? The galley? Engineering?

Machines malfunctioning? Electric lines down? Sporadic Internet connections? What else could go wrong – or right – depending upon your story’s plot?

it’s been awhile
since this medium
conjured up the dead

I should know better
than to leave the house
while they fight
among themselves
for a chance to speak

I sit on the porch
by candle light
wishing I had a clove
cigarette and more time
to decide
who speaks first
who may have to wait
at the end of the line

there’s the elderly couple
dressed in pale grey suits

they say I’m their daughter

have I seen my brother?

the disembodied poet is
looking for a distraction

a little action
and he thinks it’s me

then there’s the bored ones
they’re more than a bit peeved

as there’s nothing vaguely arousing

in the bedrooms that they haunt

I can’t help wondering
who I’ll visit
when I’m dead
I’ve got a list started
it’s not that long
but I wave it in friends’

and family’s faces
say, you don’t want to be
on this list

they get quiet for awhile
cock their heads at odd angles

as if they almost hear me
almost see me
sitting on their porch

*

This poem was previously published in a Sam’s Dot Publication about ten+ years ago. I’m planning to do a series of these. . .

Make a grab bag of words and other items you associate with Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. Get a group of friends together and take turns reaching into the bag! Write about it!

Marigolds and sugar skulls, photographs and jewelry, tequilla and empanadas. . .

As your character creates his or her Dia de los Muertos shrine, who are they thinking of? Honoring? What other spirits might come to call?

Does one of  your leading (or secondary) characters have noisy – or nosy – neighbors? Why not concoct a spell (or two or three) that takes care of them or the situation?

Just about seven more days until my daily promptings will end. I would love to post yours! Now’s the time. . .

Let’s take Halloween and/or Dia de los Muertos to a space station far into the future. Or, you could set it on present day Io or Europa. Why not another galaxy altogether? You could also create a world complete with a culture – or several – that honor their dead.