Halloween Witch (Taken from a list I am on)

Halloween Witch
Each year they parade her about, the traditional Halloween Witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, a toothless mouth
beneath her deformed nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a
claw protracting from a bent and twisted torso that lurches about on
wobbly legs. Most think this abject image to be the creation of a
prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature. I disagree, I
believe this to be how Witches were really seen.

Consider that most Witches were women, were abducted in the night,
and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under the secrecy of darkness
to be presented by light of day as a confessed Witch. Few if any saw
a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room
filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she
confessed to anything suggested to her and to give names or what ever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed
Witch. As the Witch was paraded through town en route to be burned,
hanged, drowned, stoned or disposed of in various other forms of
Christian love all created to free and save her soul from her
depraved body, the jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of
torture.

 The face bruised and broken by countless blows bore a hue of
sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone replaced by a
grimace of broken teeth and torn gums that leers beneath a battered
disfigured nose. The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn
scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses.
Broken twisted hands clutched the wagon for support, fractured
fingers with nails torn away locked like groping claws to steady her
broken body. All semblance of humanity gone this was truly a demon, a
bride of Satan, a Witch.

I revere this Halloween Crone and hold her sacred above all. I honor
her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of man. Each
year I shed tears of respect when the mundane exhibit their symbol of
Christian love.

Petals & Thorns
poetry by angel © 1993 - 1999