A Poem from the Crypt

dedicated to the slow death of the Comics Code Authority, established in 1954 as a response to the violent and macabre content of horror comics including Tales from the Crypt

Western comics died back when
the clock read nineteen-fifty-four.
The people called on stately men
to save our children, change the law,
and burn these technicolour coats.

(In years before the audience
had read with eager eyes and hands
of murder, stalking, severance
of dainty blonds on Cali sands
and patriarchs in Central Park.)

The necromancer's catacombs
were raided like a known dope-den,
and suddenly those frail tomes
became victims of Nazi yen.
The crypt keeper was burnt alive.

And so, the form would lie dormant,
like so much art left underground.
The clutch of pearls as enforcement
would let a middling age abound
with Bible stories and "funnies".

The neutered supermen would rise
like Nietzche crossed with Miss Manners.
Apple-cheeked and bobby-soxed, spies
in children's homes, fascist banners
hung above the corner penny racks.

Juvenile delinquency
would peak in nineteen-fifty-three,
but vanish like a treated sore
in light of nineteen-fifty-four.
(Don't mention Fugate, Starkweather,
or God forbid that Manson fella.)

I read the Dandy and Beano,
not knowing that from which I had
been wrenched like babe from bony arms.
But codes cannot keep crypts locked up,
and now the keeper comes to sup.

Up from the ashes of the code
artists have dug a bright geode
of sickly green, shining crystals.
And thus, the crypt's choking thistles
have been weeded.