PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[for F. L. L., false dawn, summer and autumn,
1977' and Boston's song, "More Than A Feeling," our
unanticipated theme in those days]

Starlight and moonlight were wholly obscured
by thick clouds, stalled in the sky so that night
seemed very much appropriate for a
vampire's attack.  And therefore, she waited
for him, knowing well he would come to her;
that he neither could nor wanted to resist
the craving that compelled him after dusk.
In anticipation of his visit,
she drew a lace, white thong over her "most
private";  and one of his old, formal white shirts
(overized, on her, and the cuffs of its
long white sleeves almost reaching her fingertips),
its "button down" front she left unbuttoned
deliberately.  To complete the effect,
new white stockings softly sheathed her legs and feet,
almost totally translucent, except
the doubled, opaque weave at her heels and toes.
To accommodate his entrance, she had
left open the full length windows on the
balcony outside her bedroom.  He would
come along the path from the ancient,
ancestral graveyard, then up the slope to
her schloss.  She wondered---did he expect her
to recoil in fear with the knowledge of his
motive?  Before she could contemplate this
question---and as if summoned by her very
thought---he stood on the balcony, peering
in; his face pallid as she thought it would
be, a terrible resolve haunting his eyes.
"Come in, "she said softly, in the seductive
tone he surely ought to remember, and
a glance toward her slippers left, abandoned,
in the far corner should certainly have
been  a familiar gesture, always a
prelude to expected intimacy.
With a deft swiftness he had not seemed to
possess in the days of their life together,
he crossed the room.  And, as her arms received
and enfolded him in her hungry embrace,
the stake and mallet dropped from his suddenly
limp hands, and he tilted his head to expose
and offer his throat---his pulse pounding wildly---
to her satisfaction, her intent to
drain him entirely through the night's long hours.
By dawn, only a shriveled carcass remained,
like a devoured insect in a spider's web.
Just before the eastern pinking in the
sky, she picked up the stake he had dropped and
plunged the sharpened point into his exhausted,
and now silently still, heart so that he
should not rise from the grave to join her, to
cling to her as he had so much in life.

Starward