The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I Am Bewitched
00:04 Jun 29 2009
Times Read: 1,194






How you tear at my chest

With nothing more than your eyes

With nothing less than your eyes

And the words within them

Meant just for me

Words I cannot hear

Words I tremble and fear



"Mme Defarge wore no rose in her head..."



How you rasp at my dreams

Unlikely angel with a pleading form

Unlikely angel with a pleasing form

Take me soon to the hungry place

Where Heaven waits

To tear and rend and edify

To love and kill and deify



"You have been the last dream of my soul."

Deus, in adiutorium meum intende.
01:06 Jun 17 2009
Times Read: 1,280






My speckled love

Wears her gypsy jupe

In a shade of irony...

In a flounce of devilry.

She stains my lips

The value of want

And I nod

That she may burn my eyes

To line her own in a tincture of ash

If only I may live forever

This moment,

Worshiping here...

In the maddening curve

Of her thigh.

Only Line and Color, Please
23:36 Jun 16 2009
Times Read: 1,297






He was a humid man

In the month of June,

Always threatening rain

When I wore heels.



Cogs and gears swore

Beneath the warmth

Of a chrysanthemum

Lying in technicolor.



He dripped foggy words,

His perspirant need

Wicking through to me

With soggy regret.



My oilcloth thoughts wandered

From the inclement man

To a plasticized world

With a neo-mondrian god.













"The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture." - Piet Mondrian





"Curves are so emotional." - Piet Mondrian

PRIVATE ENTRY
02:37 Jun 13 2009
Times Read: 1,318


• • • • PRIVATE JOURNAL ENTRY • • • •

Last of the Eighth
22:13 Jun 11 2009
Times Read: 1,350




The grasshoppers are sparse this summer,

The black ones with bold red armor.

By now, they should be spilling over the bicycle trail,

Forming battalions of leaping tanks

To face down the odd racer and recumbent,

Daring them to break ranks.



But this summer, they shrink away from my flapping sandals,

Lone footsoldiers looking battle weary

As though they are wondering why they have bothered themselves from the grasses this summer,

Why they have troubled to patrol the parched old south this summer,

As though they didn't get the memo to just stay home this year

To just stay home this once when nobody is even looking.



The stalwart scout does not hop when I flip and flop over to take a closer look.

He turns his back to me like a child ashamed.

The brilliant brush strokes along his back are faded,

Crusted by dirt as dry as the parking lot where he pretends not to notice me

Poor fallen empire to have such soldiers, decimated ranks, wilted plumes on every helmet,

And war sandals that have seen one battle more than the body can bear.

Now and Then
08:28 Jun 11 2009
Times Read: 1,378






The air is so thick that I wonder if my many fans will succeed in slicing through it like the blades on my grandmother's dubious old cuisinart would puree the holy trinity of New Orleans: onion, celery, and bell pepper. Out of necessity, she'd periodically downshift to "mince" while swearing under her breath in her peculiar Cajun-English patois, "goddam de maudis."



I try that out now, her words. It seems to me that even they have a spicy feel to the lips, much like her cooking always did. But god, it's so hot in here. I rethink my decision to screw Cleco out of a little money this summer by turning off the 2 central air conditioners. Last year's summer bill hit four hundred dollars and with the kids wanting summer camps, something has to give.



My mom remembers there being just an attic fan when she was a young girl. She liked the sound of it. I know what she means. I'm listening to the steady hum of the fans in my room, ceiling fan, two oscillating fans on stands, and the classic old box fan. They are arranged with a precision the Druids would have admired: lifted, leaned and tilted just so in order to grab the outside air and deliver it right to my sticky skin. It dawns on me that I can smell my own sweat.



When I was twelve, my cousin and I tested our bravery while we huddled in the front room. The adults were in the back of the house where high balls and pokeno games were serious business and the gossip was all in french to spare our young ears. We were not allowed to go outside because it was already dark. We had already received the warning about the Loup Garou prowling through the bayous and along the levee looking for children after dark. I fancied myself a bit old for that story now that I was twelve, but the nights in Pointe ala Hache were very dark and the space behind the levee was boundless and filled with wet, hungry, and menacing lapping sounds.



There was no use in bringing this up in the safe front room, though. We had guests, a brother and sister who were ten and nine. In Big Kid World, that demanded that we deliver and impress the little kids with our coolness and daring. The Plan consisted of running as fast as our feet could carry us out the door (carefully easing the heavy storm door closed), across the street, up the levee, and back again without being detected by the adults or being loup-garounapped and eaten.



The rest of the story ends with my grandmother's old oscillating fan that had no guard, a child's cheek, arterial blood, and a sobering stillness not unlike the eye of Katrina when it passed over New Orleans. Even the air smelled like the whippings we were going to get, big kids or not.



My fans oscillate and try to penetrate through the wet blanket air where I sit as still as possible, lulled by the time machine hum of the fans that keep me tenuously tethered to both the past and present. When I close my eyes, I wonder if, when I open them again, my warm drywall will waver into oak paneling and my grandmother will hand me a flat glass of homemade root beer with three ice cubes popped from her plastic tray and floating in the cold, sweet treat. If so, I'm going to crawl into my grandfather's lap in front of the console tv with tinfoil on the rabbit ear antenna.



I'm gonna drink my root beer and smell the faint scent of aramis cologne on his undershirt. I'll let the fan hum me to sleep as the house fills with the smell of the holy trinity cooking in oil and a good roux browning on the stove. I won't even mind if my cousin shoots rubberbands at me. I'll get him later...

PRIVATE ENTRY
23:34 Jun 08 2009
Times Read: 1,389


• • • • PRIVATE JOURNAL ENTRY • • • •

A Handful of Rust
06:47 Jun 08 2009
Times Read: 1,425






Beyond my window they creak,

Masquerading as empty swings

Roused from their rusty naps

By the puckish wind.



And the hydrangeas bloom loudly

Where I buried a handful of nails last summer.

They root in the rusty earth

That tastes like blood.



I hear you in the sounds of little things

Exhaling beneath the fallen leaves,

Sheltering from the thunder

Of a world too big.



That old mama cat found a hole in the porch,

Kittens again this Fall for sure.

Remember the rusty pail of water

You never failed to fill?



I came to see you last Thursday.

You pressed your face deep into the wall

Creaking small, rusty sounds I strained to hear,

Protests that you were fine.



I’ll be along soon to swing with you there in the dark,

Just beyond my window, your small sighing sounds

So like kittens lost in the night,

Where even hydrangeas dream in the shade of your eyes.