Quill #75 - Halloween Memories #1

There are always houses you don't visit.

Houses with no porch lights are generally avoided on Halloween night. You expect fun tricks from well-lit domiciles, but nothing mean or nasty.

When I was eight or nine, I went trick-or-treating to a well-lit house. Halfway up the jumblied sidewalk, the porch lights went out. In the sudden darkness, I fell. Sharp pain lanced my palms and I found myself picking thumb tacks from my hands. Crying, I went back to the car and showed my mother. We left and never returned to that house.

Quill #9 - Footsteps (1994)

Jack Sprat's wife had heart
Troubles, became diabetic
From his cigarettes, her fatty diet.
Hypochondria, Medicine called it,
She lost over a hundred pounds in ten.
(Weeks! Thin is in.)

Cancer grew in her hands and knees;
denied insulin, passed sugar for six years,
Several doctors ignored her asthmatic pleas;
Nurse finally saw pain screaming through the tears.
(Angels of Mercy, preserve her!)

Jack took his habit outside then,
Till two sons moved back to the pumpkin,
Brought their young, motherless children with them,
And, exhibiting no intrinsic consideration,
Grown men trailed camel turds all over tarnation.
(Gotta be a man!)

When Jack & Sons dropped her skeleton six feet under
Every orphaned grandchild mourned a beloved lost mother.
A single watcher's thoughts were bitter,
Daughter-in-law, married to Jack Junior,
With grown sons beginning to take over
(Xeroxed chain-puffers like their father),
Dogging Mrs. Sprat ashes to ashes.