Pacific Halloween

This is the night when they all come out—

This is the night when you just might lose yourself.

This is the really crazy night, this is the madness all come out night.

This is the night of streams from the strange & weird hinterlands converging

upon our town.

This is the parade of ocean washed ashore phantasmagoria on Pacific Ave,

this night of the crushing waves & waves of the promenade, back & forth,

& back & forth,

how they sweep & how they sweep the full length overflowing

both sides the Ave—

This is the night of anything you might imagine, whatever is whatever this night—

This night of the grotesque, the ridiculous, the fabulous & outrageous

This night of harlequins, of the bizarre & creepy, of clowns & the absolutely goofy

This night of risqué, of unexpected temptations, of free-floating roving desires

This night of big hair & all the queen’s makeup, of the trans-dressed & androgynous

This night of creatures, monsters, elves & fairies, ghosts, ghouls, gremlins & gnomes,

of werewolves, warlocks & witches

This night of butterflies, angels & space aliens, of the coming cyborgs,

androids & robots

This is the night of the thronging throngs of the unconscious gushing forth,

of subpersonalities let loose by the thousands—

20,000 converged on the Ave, they say of this night.

This night of the Face—faces, faces, the compulsive looking into faces,

masked or unmasked, partially hidden, utterly Other, whatever, doesn’t matter,

it’s the compulsive looking into faces looking back,

looking into faces of who or what we are below the surface revealing—

Faces of another of who we might be.

Endless the posing of our madness, the pictures taken, the so willing exhibitionists

& everyone a voyeur.

This is the night you wonder just who all these people are.

This is the night your own secret interior goes flaunting out in the public

without a blush.

This year the city brings out the floodlights like an eerie, lunar-light-bathed day—

You swim through it all, & you hear the beat, the beat, you hear the intensities

of beat & rhythm going out all around you,

it is the surfeit of an overwhelm, of a swimming in too much, of all senses overload.

And the voices, the voices, the roar of voices, like the faces, faces, the faces,

a vortex swirling

in the sea,

a VORTEX—

But you hear no screams here—the screams are elsewhere.

November 2005