Poetry Thursday - it's Hallowe'en

Getting in the Hallowe'en mood, Primrose Hill

All Hallows’ EveBy Dorothea Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise.

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Hear bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise

You and the werewolf: newlyweds.

Source: Coming to That (Graywolf Press, 2011)
Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) started writing poetry in her 80s, having worked as a visual artist (painter, printmaker, sculptor, etc). After the death of her partner of 34 years, Max Ernst, in France in 1976, she returned to the US. Her second collection of poems was published shortly before her death, at the age of 101.