A Vampire Poem...

[savageseraph]

Because it's Halloween, here is a vampire poem, also from long, long ago. It was published in the now defunct Midnight Zoo.

This one was inspired by a trip to the Louvre. In the Egyptian section, they had sprays of dried flowers that looked rather like small, bone-yellow baby's breath. According to the exhibit information sign, the blossoms were called immorteles, the everlasting flower. So I jotted that down in my notebook, and one day, it became a poem.

When I first wrote the poem, I saw the speaker as a male vampire speaking to a dead female lover, but typing it fresh tonight from an old hard copy, I rather had the sense that it was a female vampire speaking to a dead male lover.



The Garland of Immorteles

Buried deep beneath roses--
white as whispers--no touch of red
stains the marble of your tomb,
no mark dark as passion or blood.
Night strokes your quiet bones
forever sleeping, forever lost,
broken beyond hope of rising.

They say it was love that
drove them to damn you,
love that carried hammer and
stake, rosaries and blessed
water, love that made them
look away as you wept
death-tears of bitter blood.

I bring you, beloved, no roses,
nothing red, nothing dangerous,
nothing death can fondle and finger.
These poor brittle blossoms,
grown in the shade of a willow,
in the dirt and damp of my grave,
let these be my last gift to you.

For you, my lost one, I leave
no spray of death-tainted roses,
only a bone-yellow crown of
everlasting immorteles, that will
blossom as long as my sorrow,
As long as my love.