AN: Another short bit of worldbuilding in this chapter, I don't have much experience writing poetry, much less beat poetry, so the quality is hit and miss, but I thought this idea was interesting so I wanted to try anyway.
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From The Writings of William Clifford Brown, AKA "Big" Brown.
October 31st, 1963
Editors Note: This unfinished and unpublished poem has been found among the effects of deceased singer and poet William Clifford Brown, and has been released with the permission of his estate. Personal notes and the subject matter dates this poem as having been written either on, or shortly after Halloween, 1963, the so-called "Nightmare In Greenwich Village" incident. While several of his contemporaries who had also been present at the time, such as Bob Dylan and Larry Rivers, based some of their later work on the experience, Brown did not, and was reported as being unwilling to talk much about it at all. This fragment has been published unedited in it's entirerty.
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Every Man on the Street thinks He Knows His Fears, Fear of the Man, Fear of His Neighbor, Fear of Guns and Drugs and Men in White Hoods, There Is No Ignoring Them, They Will Always Be There.
Now Halloween Fears, They're Not the Kind That's Supposed to Be Real, Just Things That Go Bump In the Night, Just Kids Stuff, The Kind We Tell Ourselves Can't Be, Just An Escape From the Problems of The Day, Just something New to Feel!
But Fear Came on Black Wings anyway, From High Above the Village, And Somehow, All Those Things We Tried to Forget, to Push Away, they were Free! I see Men Crying like Children for their Mamas, Women screaming and Clawing at Things that Aren't there, that Can't be there, And there Was Nowhere to Run, nowhere to Flee!
There was No Hiding from the Fear, Terrors I'd Left Behind as a Child Were Back Again. A White Face with a Grinning mouth filled with Fangs Stared from a Shadow, a Burned Man with a Rope Around his Neck Hung from An Upstairs Window, A vicious Dog who scared me at Five, the Cop who made Pops life Hell when He was Alive, Spiders and Spirits and Monsters that had Once Been Real, Crawling out of the Darkness on Hallows Eve.
The Boogeyman Walked among Us that Night, Black Wings of Fear All around Him, Laughing through a Face of Cloth and Straw, Preaching a Sermon for his Great and Terrible God.
But Then, Behold! A Clash of Thunder and a Ray of Light, became our Salvation on Halloween Night! The Boogeyman Fled, and the Shadows went With Him, the Ghosts of Our Minds Fading in the Light. And we Woke from Our Nightmare, like it had All been a Bad Dream...