Halloween: Night of The Sheep
written by: Stanley Wilkin
@catalhuyuk
From Halloween’s darkening centre the farmer’s sheep
Wake, open their glimmering eyes, and move effortlessly
Around the fields shaking their haunted heads
In confusion. Their baas like griffin roars in the still
Cold night. They stand on freshly cloven hooves
And in practised phalanxes steadily move
Opening and closing gates with thoughtfulness.
Clomp, clomp. Shoulder to shoulder, they head for town.
On this night, the town’s nervous citizens
Shut their shutters firmly, bar their thick wooden doors,
Extinguish the candlelight. They gather their guns
And wait as the clomping sound comes nearer
And the ghastly baas becomes a grim crescendo.
The moon becomes a ghostly silver ball,
During Halloween, pock marked and sallow,
Filling the reshaped land with its reflected rays
Bouncing off the cold white wool, demon halos
In the lunatic beams. Clomp, clomp as a single mass they
Flood the town square, gather by the fountain before the cypress
Trees like dead soldiers on a battlefield,
Baaing in unison, their glimmering eyes empty like the dead,
Seeking as one.
Fear paralyses the townsfolk, their bladders burst;
Baa! The attackers bleat together and seek their prey.
Mrs Sands was concealed within a laundry basket
Standing unceremoniously in her hall. Clomp, clomp
They came across her newly-built patio, their teeth chewing at the wood.
For effect and exercise. The sheep bury their heads
Within the basket, pulling out the plump
Protesting woman and rend her toe by toe. Her floral
Dress floating above their frenzied forms, lamb turned into mutton.
Clomp, clomp, baa, baa, their menacing sounds travelled far.
Their victims’ screams fused the Halloween air
As they ate their way through dentist, baker, tailor, baby and bride,
Leaving not a morsel unchewed, stopping only as the morning
Drew near. As dawn breaks they begin
Marching together back to the farm, shoulder to shoulder,
Muzzle to muzzle, their incarnadine wool
Beaming in the rich rays of the morning sun.
The gates swinging open they return and lay down on the grass.
Exhausted and full, they sleep.
A hundred townsfolk survived the woolly onslaught,
Mainly young men who could run astoundingly fast,
And as the sun soared over the horizon like the burning
Flares of revenge, with clubs, axes and guns shoulder to shoulder
Silently climbed the blood soaked hill, faces tight and grim.
The gates grind with a hellish growl!.
They slip into the field steadfastly slaying the
Sleeping sheep. They crush their heads, slit their throats,
Shoot them, stab them, beat them to death, club them,
Hang them, eviscerate them, shear them and burn them.
Never again would each Halloween the sheep invade,
Driven to murder like Roman legions advancing over a cliff.
Never again! Marching down the blood covered rocky hill
As the gleaming eyes of the chomping cows watched them and,
As only cows can, they smiled.
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