issolving Walls (7th Nov.)

She lived in Hallowe'en without the treats:
away, with the hobgoblins, gremlins and tricks.
The plaintive charm of clarinet practice
through walls replaced by shouts not appropriate.
Of gibbering all spippery and sounds
and angry exchanges from spydery imposters.

Her hope was to deliver suicide
dressed in pastel shades and white.
'I want them to find me decent. Looking decent.
In my best. Not dirty, but clean.'

She'd started riding the raves in the '90s.
These days she didn't need the tabs to go
raving: the raves came to her now - alone.
'My aim is to reincarnate as a decent person
named Hope, as my brilliant friend
that I must die to meet. Does that sound mad?'

The medley of voices and croons through the walls
sometimes had the clarity of the old clarinet,
when the hobgoblins retreated to the attic.
'I'm not always ill. I just feel terrible sometimes,
because terrible things were done to me:
the costumes, the knocking, the eggs.'

The scary thing was her calendar:
her head calendar trapped in late October.
'They call people names who talk to the walls.
What about people who listen through walls?
Or don't listen enough to the bumps and the fools?'
she sang.

Hope landed on a fence post in my garden
a week later. She was feathered.