The Unseen Halloween

Whilst fatigued from fastidious legal aid applications,

And preventing unlawful deportations,

Online forms demand accurate details

Of the ambiguous lives –

Of Victims to the underbelly world

Of slavery.

Unsavoury bravery

Drifts down copper coated lanes,

Like tumble weeds rolling across the Great Plains

Steeped in the history of indigenous grains.

Shadows of trafficked and traumatised souls
Pass through London’s illicit loopholes,
As nightmares arise in time
For the arrival of a Full Hunter's Moon -
Gravely lingering past forenoon.

Writers club in Peckham

Summons her back to the streets

Of autumnal visions

And fallen dreams –

Floating under October’s sunbeams.

This season for her is a whirlpool of wishes

Dancing in a crisp sun-kissed sky,

Where leaves fly high

Before they eventually wither and die.

Yet no one will cry

As the memories which dwell in

October’s wistful winds persist.

They Continue to exist

In the midst

Of a bronze-brushed world.

Wishes balance on the precipice of time,

Not yet caught in the web of London’s organized crime.

They wait to be grasped and

Solidified into something worth saving -

Not enslaving.

Jack-O’-Lanterns with

Illuminated triangular eyes,

Carved into seasonal pies,

Listen to the howls of Hades

Echo through pumpkin-spiced homes,

Where cosy festivity roams

On All Hallows' Eve.

October obfuscates time with the sudden descent
Of bewitching burgundy
In Bermondsey.
Phantom figures saunter down streets
Saturated in obscurity –
Undefined by social security.
Prophecies prance patiently down the avenues
Of Covent Garden,
Ducking into Leicester Square underground –
Hell-bound.
Buried hands embrace the muggy warmth
Escaping from ascending witches
Draped in the feathery riches of Raum;
A Great Earl of Hell
Ready to sell
Souls into slavery.

Crimson lids of Pret coffee cups

Cuddle one another

As cold couples press together

On increasingly cramped trains –

Daubed in ruby red stains.

Faces reflect in diabolical forecasters -

Exposing slaves and their masters.

These pendant shaped hexagrams

Paint a picture of lambs

And rams;

A portrait of an unseen

Halloween.

The visions dissolve

As bakeries are brought onto the tube in October –

Encasing each carriage in cinnamon-dusted dreams,

Under Hunter’s mystic moonbeams.

Nostalgic nutmeg showers through the night,

When trick-or-treaters crave a fright.

Queues of tourists line up outside

An ostentatious outlet in Soho –

Waiting to buy the single product sold:

Chai apple and almond puff pastry tarts –

Poisoned by macabre hearts

Practicing the dark arts.

Standing on a tightrope between fiction and facts,

She watches bodies enter into wicked contracts.

This is the Halloween

Which remains unseen.