lingua obscura

The Cabin of Eternal Halloween

There's a town in New England
with orange leaves all year round
and a nice wood cabin saloon in the woods
where a mummy and a green-faced witch
a devil and a werewolf
sit with friends
and stuff chili-dogs into their mouths
wash it down with cider and Dr. Pepper
and kick the black cats out from underfoot
on the way to pop gold-wrapped chocolate coins
into the old-fashioned jukebox

Sometimes Dracula arrives to give a live performance
on the organ
he does a stirring rendition of "Soul Kitchen"
but most of the time he's out all night
a busy man, that Drac
he does commercials
and cameos on famous shows like Sesame Street
"If they want to pay me to be me, that's fine" says Drac
In fact he doesn't mind the fame
He uses the royalty checks to buy apples for the others to bob for
but buys only blood oranges for himself

They are a good-natured group, at least for the most part
the mummy's a mumbler,
and Werewolf's not the brightest
the witch is a real witch
and you know how witches are

Skeleton is well-intentioned but forgetful
He always fishes around for change
in order to pay for everyone's drinks
until Rumpelstiltskin reminds him:
"Skelly, you bastid, you ain't got no damn pockets!"
So Skeleton just holds his skull in his hands and weeps

And though this happens every day
the others laugh while the jukebox plays
all except for the Great Pumpkin
who sits, smashed, in a corner
with his stem attached to a whiskey sour
everybody knows better than to say
"What makes you so great, anyway?"
that question would be more mean than funny
because the Great Pumpkin feels bad --
he feels bad about ditching Linus
on national television every year

E.T. is there, too, at the bar
He is not that popular
he only knows three words
and he always spills Reese's Piece's all over the place
"E.T. Phone Home," he says in a belabored monotone
while staring at the foam of his lager

But the most poignant scene transpires at the computer station
where the cyborg from "The Terminator"
uses the aching slowness of the dial-up connection
to try and check his e-mail
He brings his metallic face close to the screen
but no matter how hard he looks
the e-mail never comes
he only gets mass mailings
from his ex-girlfriend in the Peace Corps
and notices from the System Administrator
that his mailbox has exceeded its size limit
which is bizarre seeing as how hardly anyone writes him
He hits "reply"
but it is of course an automated system
so the System Administrator never gets the message
that he is a jerk-face
Sitting next to the cyborg is quite uncomfortable
his expression, a kind of grimace/smile, never changes
he sports rust stains under his arms
you can tell he hasn't lubed in days
you have to remind yourself to keep a straight face in his presence
which can be hard to do
especially if he cuts a fart
or something like that

And so they gather, night after night
playing darts and pin this on that
killing time, the dead and unreal

Some nights Frankenstein's monster returns
from the junkyard with a guitar in arm
and sings "With Or Without You" by U2
while the others stifle laughs
at the monster's accent and absence of pitch
but after he strikes the last chord
they all clap while the monster smiles

Addendum
Because this piece is a bit dated, and since anniversary re-packagings of creative product often offer director commentary as a bonus, I thought I'd offer a monster-by-monster critical breakdown of "The Cabin of Eternal Halloween."

Dracula: Drac is presented as the high-profile breadwinner of the monster crew, probably because of his longevity and his appeal to both young television audiences and long-time fans of the horror genre. Dracula is at once lady killer, Eastern European aristocrat, and organ grinder of the acid-influenced garage rock variety.

Jim Morrison, William Butler Yeats, Arthur Rimbaud: Originally, this poem depicted the Halloween cabin as a literary cafe as well as monster hangout. It mentioned Jim Morrison hanging out and reading Louis Ferdinand-Celine and being all serious, but then getting really irritated by the antics of Yeats, who was down on all fours trying to exorcise his body from his spirit. This caused Jim Morrison to throw his book into a hay bale and storm off without paying for his drink. Rimbaud is just kind of this gloomy spiritual French darkness that hangs over all young writers/Edgar Allan Poseurs with a penchant for the phantasmagoric. Poe himself, often considered the Halloweeniest of American authors, was not mentioned here, presumably because he has bigger fish to fry in the afterlife, such as pining for his lost, dead loves and/or reversing the inaccurate biographical assessments made in bad faith by Rufus Wilmot Griswold.

Werewolf: Kind of the jock of this crowd. He can run fast and kill with ease, but can't solve a basic math problem to save his life.

Skeleton: The poem's sad-sack character -- sad sack of bones, that is. Skelly's always forgetting he has no money and no skin. This character reminds me of an incident I witnessed at a Barcelona cafe in which a drunken exchange student sat at the piano and began performing the grade school music class classic, "Have you seen the Ghost of John?/Long white bones with the skin all go-o-o-one/Oooh, Oooh/Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on?"

The Great Pumpkin: Most of you have probably seen the classic Charlie Brown Halloween special in which Linus waits for the Great Pumpkin all night without success. The Great Pumpkin's side of the story, however, is never told. If you were the Great Pumpkin, how would that make you feel?

E.T.: I'm too young to remember it, but I'm told my parents had to take me out of the theater when this film opened because I was terrified to the point of tears. I think it had to do with all the plastic they put around the house to quarantine it, but I'm not sure. Much is made in the movie of E.T.'s spoken wish to phone home, but the version of his character depicted here suggests that maybe E.T. has no idea what he's saying, that he's little more aware of his words' meaning than a trained parrot.

The Terminator cyborg: The summer I was 20, I went over to a friend's house to catch a drink. His roommate was watching "The Terminator," which I'd never seen before and found terrifying. Without my noticing, the roommate had left the couch to go sign on to the Internet in his bedroom. At first, I thought the cyborg himself was signing on to America Online, which made me question what kinds of E-mail a cyborg hoped to find in his inbox. What if he didn't have any E-mail? Would he be dangerous to be around, or would it just be funny? My friends made fun of me and told me to stop asking them questions, but by that point it was too late.

Frankenstein's Troubador: I modeled this character after Klaus, one of the Germans who lived in my building. "With or Without You" was Klaus' favorite U2 song, and he often played it in the cellar-bar of the student apartments where I lived that year.