Frankenberry's Attic

Well, it’s Halloween weekend and last year around this time I was in the process of reposting, for about a week leading up to Halloween, a daily poem or story of mine that leaned on the creepy in the spirit of the season.

I didn’t do that this year as I’ve been preoccupied with some health stuff but I did still want to repost this one so at least I wasn’t totally remiss on the celebrating (feel free, of course, to go back here in the Attic to October of last year if you’d like to see what I did post).

From early in 2024, this a letter imagined to Edgar Allen Poe from the Raven.

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Raven’s Night (Dear Edgar)

I am not dead nor demon to be read or written of

I implore you open your door

or window

shutter’s curtains

flitting

with welcome inside out air

and any manner of candlelit care

with which to let me see your stage

please

just to walk that floor

or even alight that door

that I implore

again

you

to open

outside no place for me tonight

in weary last vestige of now blustery light

that casts shadows that scare me from flight

and I don’t scare

for I am Raven

confused of crow brethren

curse-ed cousins

but stronger than they even as they crow foot in a murder of friends

what they needs simple

with simple’s ends

while I seek only solitude and to depart nights

now

tired of taking flight in dark

reputation

just a me to be me but I am scared of he

and what I no longer want see

in the dim

even eves with path clear in crisp moonlight

but worse on nights like  

these

this

this one

this night at hand

and I see your light

window

harks

a place maybe to land

and

I will make amends for this slight into

your solitude

.

For I am Raven

I can build things from sticks and stones

peck and grab and stab and stack and foot place just right

or even

build things from thoughts and words alone

to assist you

in candlelight

I just don’t want to flight

in dark

any longer

and

not this night

in most order

I just need walk a floor

or alight a door

allow

please

me bring inside

at least

for

this just one night