(10) Stepford Wife: In Ira Levin's classic horror novel The Stepford Wives, all the women are stay-at-home moms with gorgeous bodies and no minds. Thinking is not tolerated in this apotheosis of conformist bourgeois living.
(16) A Frankenstein's monster, etc.: At the conclusion of Mary Shelley's horror classic Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster announces that he will do the world a favor and put an end to his miserable existence by cremating himself so that he will do no more evil. He climbs down off the ship and walks away across the polar ice, vanishing from view.
(20) Procrustes: A bandit in Greek mythology who murdered guests in his house by putting them on a bed; those who were too short to fit the bed perfectly, Procrustes stretched as much as he had to to make them fit, and those who were too tall had as much of their bodies cut off as necessary for Procrustes to make them fit the bed. Theseus finally killed him by putting him on his own bed; the myth doesn't say whether Procrustes was stretched or shortened. Procrustes has long been a metaphor for tyranny and enforced order.
(21-22) bound face to face...to corpses: Mezentius, a character in Vergil's Aeneid, an evil ancient central Italian tribal king exiled by his own people for numerous cruelties, including executing people by tying them face-to-face, limb to limb with corpses until contact with the corpse poisoned them to death. Mezentius was killed in battle against Aeneas, his band of exiled Trojans, and their allies. "How long can you handle garbage without beginning to stink yourself?" Evan Hunter once asked in The Blackboard Jungle.
(23) "So use it," etc. Shakespeare, Coriolanus (Act 4, Scene 5: Coriolanus).
(26) Inverted pentagrams: Representing Satanism being practiced or at least bragged of, simply as an act of bravado. Or maybe not.
(27) women sprawl lifeless in brooks, etc.: Refers to the October 1, 1985 murder of Michelle "Missy" Avila, a 17-year-old southern California girl killed by her two best friends, apparently devoted girls who were jealous of her beauty and popularity and accused her of sleeping with her boyfriend and other girls' boyfriends.
(29) men lie prone or hanging in the air, etc. Refers to sex slayings of young men and teenage boys: by Dean Corll, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks in Houston in the early 1970s, by John Wayne Gacy in Chicago a few years later, and by Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
(30) Captain Howdy: The name by which the demon-possessed 12-year-old girl Regan McNeil called Pazuzu, the Mesopotamian wind-demon who possessed her in William Peter Blatty's classic novel The Exorcist and the movie on which it was based. Strong, hot winds, such as are found in southern California, the Mediterranean region and the Middle East, are known to affect the mental health and often have sinister cultural or mythological associations; so, sometimes, do strong, cold winds. A now-extinct Australian Aboriginal tribe of Tasmania had a wind-demon called Wraggeowrapper which was the strong, cold nighttime wind personified. You may, when confronted with winds of change, build a windmill rather than a windbreak (to borrow a phrase from Mao Zedong via Stephen King). But if the winds are strong enough, there still will be damage. Some might say that homophobia killed those guys, acting through Corll, Gacy, Dahmer and the others.
(31) unknowing last meals, etc.: Refers to the October 16, 1991 massacre at the now-closed Luby's Cafeteria restaurant in Killeen, Texas, in which a crazed man named George Hennard drove his pickup through the front window, then climbed out into the crowded restaurant shooting at everyone he could before killing himself. One woman whose parents were killed by Hennard became a Texas state legislator who seems to be a big fan of the idea of a citizenry with as much opportunity to arm itself as possible.
(32) Kristalldäg: German for Day of Broken Glass. (As in Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass.)
(33-35) And sudden shock waves...executed upon them: These three lines refer to Columbine. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold tested their bombs beforehand (and at crunch time, every single bomb malfunctioned). Line 34 may also be taken to refer to 9-11, when helpless people jumped from the upper floors of the World Trade Center's twin towers, choosing to go to Death that way than wait and be burned or asphyxiated to death in the burning buildings. It is said that Harris and Klebold planned to steal an airplane at the Denver airport and crash it into New York City.
(36) And cold death flies from the forest like Harpies: Refers to the March 24, 1998 shooting incident at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, perpetrated by 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden, in which six girls ages 11 and 12 and a pregnant teacher died. Mitchell and Andrew set up an ambush in a wooded area adjacent to the playground; Andrew pulled a fire alarm, and when their classmates and teachers filed out into the playground as per procedure, the two boys started shooting from out of the woods.
(37) And hot death, etc. Refers to 9-11.
(38) As boys stand stripped, etc. It has been reported that, in the wake of Columbine, students were forced to take off black trenchcoats and other gear associated with Harris, Klebold and gothdom in rainy and/or cold weather.
(39-41) And flags flap tattered from flagpoles...sudden deadly storms: More references to 9-11. Among the hapless airline passengers massacred that day were a two-year-old Massachusetts girl whose parents were taking her to Disneyland but whose plane was piloted into the World Trade Center, and a three-year-old Maryland girl whose parents were taking her and her eight-year-old sister to Australia but whose plane only made it as far as the outside wall of the Pentagon. There was nothing left of either tot to bury (although some vestigial remains of the eight-year-old were found), nor were any remains of a four-year-old boy who was on one of the planes that were crashed into the World Trade Center found.
(43-46) The Ancient Ones: Some see dark occult forces at work in the transformation gripping the world.
(52) In Greek mythology, Niobe was paralyzed with weeping after most of her children were killed by Apollo and Artemis as punishment for an act of hubris in which she made an incautious remark putting herself above Apollo and Artemis' mother Leto. She was turned into a waterfall. I associate her here with the Bakka, a character in Fremen mythology in Frank Herbert's Dune cycle of novels. The Bakka is The Weeper who mourns the sins of all humanity.