Halloween Night
"Halloween Night"
That was the name of the game
my father made for me as a small child,
a Hypercard stack on our old
black-and-white Macintosh computer.
It was a simple game:
a living room, a doorway,
a bowl of candy to the left,
an occasional knock at the pixelated door.
Behind it was an endless horde
of snarling, angry creatures:
furious birds, like Jim Henson's nightmares,
vicious, toothy-mouthed cats
quite eager for the sweet taste
of a supple, succulent four year old.
They were scary, I remember;
but I also remember how I tamed them.
A click on the candy bowl,
a deposit in the maw of the beast;
this was all it took
to change those angry phantoms
into smiling, contented caricatures,
their fearsome features revealed
as charming silliness.
A candy was all I needed
to change my fears to friends.
I grew up, and the game was long forgotten,
lost in countless stacks of floppy disks,
a victim of changes in operation system.
Yet the lesson remains;
I doubt I could ignore it now,
even if I cared to try.
So let me reach into my bowl of candied words
and pick for you my favorite kinds;
for surely you, my reader, must be my greatest fear.
But like my childhood monsters,
I am sure that beneath, a friend waits inside.
-8/7/2006
That was the name of the game
my father made for me as a small child,
a Hypercard stack on our old
black-and-white Macintosh computer.
It was a simple game:
a living room, a doorway,
a bowl of candy to the left,
an occasional knock at the pixelated door.
Behind it was an endless horde
of snarling, angry creatures:
furious birds, like Jim Henson's nightmares,
vicious, toothy-mouthed cats
quite eager for the sweet taste
of a supple, succulent four year old.
They were scary, I remember;
but I also remember how I tamed them.
A click on the candy bowl,
a deposit in the maw of the beast;
this was all it took
to change those angry phantoms
into smiling, contented caricatures,
their fearsome features revealed
as charming silliness.
A candy was all I needed
to change my fears to friends.
I grew up, and the game was long forgotten,
lost in countless stacks of floppy disks,
a victim of changes in operation system.
Yet the lesson remains;
I doubt I could ignore it now,
even if I cared to try.
So let me reach into my bowl of candied words
and pick for you my favorite kinds;
for surely you, my reader, must be my greatest fear.
But like my childhood monsters,
I am sure that beneath, a friend waits inside.
-8/7/2006