The Latest Halloween

[kolemath]

kolemath,

The "dark Santas in reverse" is explain in the following lines. The reverse is that they come to take not to give. The noun-verb for the stanza is "they drag". You are right about too many commas, a well placed colon would help. you're right, i missed the sub/verb buried under all the preceding phrases; i'm not sure you need a colon. on dark santas in reverse, it's not quite a double negative, (but something like it) in which two, uh negatives?, create a single, uh affirmative? santas darkly in reverse is closer to the semantics you're going for

S2 L2 should be implied that (the children are) "flying like a pack of witches", but you are correct about the punctuation. I shall do corrections before the next Halloween. to imply the subject of stanza one to stanza two is what i've read you call poor grammar in some of your other posts. just thought it worth point out that you're writing something you critique in others

S3 L1 "fall" is the verb, although it probably needs different punctuation to make that clear. 
i'm not sure punctuation will make 'fall' a verb, especially as it's preceded by an adjective. oh wait, i read 'mighty' as an adjective, not a noun; i suppose fall is a verb. present perfect verb would clear things up: 'have fallen'

S3 L2 Refers to S3 L1, L1 being symbolic speech. In other words the speakers is saying he has seen other sugar crashes after other Halloweens and this one is not worse than those.
sugar crash is good; i understood S3L2, but it's still weak

If one removed the "with" this is how it would read:

"just the signal that we're through,
this latest Halloween!

"with" lets the reader know it is this particular Halloween, not just Halloween in general.
i disagree. 'with' doesn't carry the semantic value you're assigning to it. 'with' implies a kind of relationship, sure, but not a specific time period. your revision reads much better in terms of rhythm and conciseness. as i said though, drop the comma. i suppose there's an argument that 'through' is functioning more like a subject complement than a preposition, but that's a matter for grammar books. for poetry, 'through with this latest' is quite clunky

Thanks for the comments,
likewise

dale