Sugar Imps

Once all the candy was gone, the room fell silent.
Only the faint hum of the industrial furnace motor.
Twelve Sugar Imps sat staid, countenances smug.
Bone white skin, bulging green eyes, three feet tall.
Imps on Halloween stalked trick-or-treaters house
to house, behind hedges, aside the burning bush,
grabbed bag after bag amid wail of tot and angry
parent flail, pursuit, community en masse madly
mobbing, trailing Imps scurrying like wind devils
across lawn, drive, avenues and easements, then
reconnoitering as Imps are want to do at the old
school, jimmying the side door gaining full access.
Ditching the parent mob, such is the speed of Imp,
now using second grade classroom to gorge Fifth
Avenue, Baby Ruth, Milky Way, Snickers, Butter
Finger, Imp drool dripping like viscous amber on
desk, high-pitched Imp-squeals like loose fan belts
as razor-sharp incisors and knobby molars gnawed
bar after bar, enthusiastic in appetite eating eagerly,
din escalating in an Imp-gorge orgy, succulent sweet
the caramel, the chocolate, consequence of the cane,
manic wee entities these Imps, raucousness at large,
ingesting purloined loot from many innocents in tears.
Imps sated--heads back, eyes closed, mouths open.


24 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
11-6-14