Notes on a Vampire
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There once lived a creature in the woodland—some say a man—who lured children away from their adventures, and drowned them in a well. Hidden amidst the trees, it would watch as the villagers gathered for the mournful task of retrieving the lifeless little bodies from the cold darkness that claimed them, out into a sunlight cruel in its insistence on exposing every detail of the horror. It followed the trail of their grief to the cemetery, taking great pleasure in their rituals, in their attempts to cope with what couldn’t be coped with, the unjust passing of their innocent. For it was not the death of children that it sought, but the waking death of those who grieved them: its soul fed on the sorrows of the living.
::
Undead
You surface once again
But I have known you
You call your works the Children of the Spring
Children drowned
At the bottom of a well
Walk on
Spare me the vacuous inquiry of your stare
The treachery of your touch
The mimicry concealing rigor mortis
Of your signature approach
Spare me the tentacles of your deception
Spare me the righteousness of your reproach
The slithering dance of your tongue
Weaving a dazzling patchwork out of lies
Spare me the tedious record of your anguish
None for the better
The bait and switch
The concealed clockwork diligently ticking
Beneath the outward good of your intention
Spare me the horror
The murder of what’s good in those around you
You are a death heavier than any other
An end before the end
Cartography
The only cross I can lift up against you
The charting of a path which won’t cross yours
Is held up high
I know the blood of pain you cannot do with
Your talent is but one
To live from agony
Now let
The agony you live from
Be your own
Spare me the silent aggravation
Of witnessing your plunge
Back I say, back!
::
No longer hiding in forests, swamplands, or caves, today these creatures live in our midst, roaming the land in search for the child in us. In them lives on a predatory hunger, an urge that saw its dawn in a time long before ours. The one incantation holding sway against their lurid powers is distance.
Stay away from them, children, stay away…
~A.V.