Beginnings

Beginnings


Memory’s child, forced to hopeless obliviation long before
a chance for clarity, sense of agency,
for a self to determine.
Undermined.
Violation, violent broken boundaries;
a monster fearsome,
because grotesque beyond comfort.
A twisted face to pin on evil tales, to
spit out sobbing poisons, paint  in shades
concealing
lies that harden into revelations,
legends, the stuff of nightmares
and deflected shame.
A child wants the safety of hearth and tribe,
of happy fairytales, everybody well fed and
tucked to bed, caressed in love that hugs away
the slavering beast.
A child wants, a busy mother wants,
a charming serpent, cowering servant, honest merchant
wants. Voice of sympathy, soothing harmony,
innocent pleasure.

Sing for your supper; patrons toss coins to amuse,
rapacious, their cultured appetites.
A darkened Church (candles saved for opulent ritual
-- none may steal this God’s fire), blood bond, sacrifice.
Taste of copper and iron.
We are of the Earth, Her mighty Sun, of
tides and moonbeams and molten seas.
Not love --
chemistry, explosions, immortal fire.

I have wandered, blundered forth as a leaf in the wind,
as a pebble scoured by erratic waves, as
a child of Man loosened from mortality.
If there are stories I could tell my mind
to feel safety in dreaming, to feel
a possibility of home,
I have yet to find them.
Still, I listen for a voice to believe, for a song
that might feel like hope,
or finality.

Lore

Lore


Before he grew bored with me, abandoned me to the street, my sire often enjoyed
imparting useful lore.  He warned me, in grave detail, of sunlight, wooden stakes,
decapitation and fire.  He bragged, repeatedly and with dramatic demonstration,
of the wonders of strength, teleportation, imperviousness to weather, immortality.
He took me around, taught me to kill so delicately, surreptitiously,
cleaning up my crime meticulously – always considerate of a society that
did not want or need to know that other worlds than what they agree to
go on with theirs, on these common streets and wilderness.
I have no reason to doubt my education.  I continue it, learning
from experience in how to get on.
In a world where so many brazenly demand attention,
I am aware to refrain from encouraging observation.
I have nothing not to hide.

Disposal

Disposal


I know the world of whores, tired and dreary, though far from my dreadful habitation.
Prowling men, hunters of prey for a different hunger, a fantasy of the loins
that consumes some like a kind of desperation, or so they seem.
They mistake me for prey.
Something in my stature, façade of innocence, aloneness, attracts.
There are warm, dark, furtive rooms in the offing, cash, an easy mark in privacy.
We are safely locked inside his hideaway.
So simple to jump and take hold, my legs around his waist, my arms holding him close,
to give a little love bite of anticipation.  Small, sharp, needlelike, I penetrate.
He falls into a swoon, into unknowing sleep.
Perhaps we are both satisfied, for now.
But before sunrise I must attend to disposal.
Burning would evidence too much stench, as would leaving the remains to rot.
He has a strong, sharp knife for defense on a leg-sheathe.
Obviously, he had believed no need to be readily armed against me, fooled by
my slight form, unaware of supernatural strength.
That strength, his knife, operating in his bathroom tub to contain bloodless gore.
I wrap the hunks in random paper, rags torn from his clothing.
Before I can rest, relax in this subterfuge won temporary sanctuary, I dispose of the trash.
I find an appropriate travel bag among his belongings.
I find his key and cash.
Fed and flush, I go out to the emptiness of darkest before dawn to distribute free meals.
I scatter fresh flesh bounty in places I have found favored by nature’s scavengers while
hidden to the human eye.
Back to claim my prize, inside before sunlight, I feel a kind of freedom.  The kind that
haunted creatures feel alone with our ghosts.
I don’t sleep; but I curl beneath the bedclothes and indulge my dreams.

Name

Name


So almost prophetic that my (once) legal initials, spelled
appropriately to their sound, make a common name
that also boldly proclaims:
“The lie”.
But, who is lying?
Does keeping silent to hide an undesirable truth
equate to a lie?
A lie to whom?
No one listens.  They assume.
If their assumptions are untrue,
most likely they will viciously attack a messenger
who disagrees with their practiced views.
Who is lying to whom?
We are comrades in untruths.
Why spoil a beautiful equation
with uncomfortable proofs?

Trade

Trade


A young man approaches.  He is different from the others, more alive, more alert, aware.
He offers that he has seen me, been watching, desires a closer acquaintance.
He has taken an interest, become taken with an inspiration, an intuition
that we may share intimacies, may have a joining of paths to negotiate.

We walk along the river, out of public eye in the darkness.
He proposes a business partnership, pimp and prostitute with a twist.
He will provide a discreet address, a living space and place of trade
where he can bring customers who will not be missed.
We will share in what valuables these clients provide.
I will have privacy, daylight seclusion, certainty of living blood.
He will be the face that public sees for financial arrangements.

One last, most essential term of contract, he insists.
“Not now, not for a very long time, but when the time comes,
you will turn me.  You will promise me immortality; and
I will be your loyal friend for life.”

We do not sign a legal bond in ink nor blood.  We vow,
each aware of how easily the other could betray and
destroy us.

Peter

Peter


Fox-like face, hard brown eyes with a sparkle like gemstones, this young man barely past adolescence, designated Peter, he tells me.
A rock eroded and chipped in various encounters.  Born of stones crashing together through stormy nights.
He flings out random stories, volumes, as if my presence is promise of attentive audience.
I am at least a captive audience while daylight is my prison guard.
In truth, his entertainment is not unwelcome.
A cold and haughty wind blows outside.  I hear it’s rumble against our richly draped windows.
Peter’s voice is harsh, not cold.  Too raspy to carry strong emotion.  Minimalist images pour from his lips.
Long past capacity for shock, I am not bored but surprised by the thoughts that stream along with his stories
in my mind.  Human tragi-comedies.  Why so cruel?  Why so dismal?  Why is violence so desirable?
Is life so driven by death that homicide is the ultimate sacrament?
Or is that merely one expression of a rite of suffering, of gratuitous pain shared out?
That dark glint of well-banked suffering suffuses his gemstone eyes as he brags, as he blusters.
“They knew who I was.  They knew to be afraid.”
He has forgotten his audience.  He is playing to the crowd of his memories.
In this darkened theater, I listen to boy and wind against the backdrop of all those other days.

Stone

Stone


Smart to know what matters is
how you look to those around you.
The way to get by is to appear to be strong.
Belligerence is just part of the make-up
‘Til you don’t wake up from what’s gone wrong.


He accepted the command to obey, even as it was destroying him.
He believed he owed an oath of fealty to those who enjoyed
to those whom employed him.
Mother said:
“Your father? He is dead.”
Those men in her bed
were only a means to an end.
No one to defend him.
He must mend his ruly ways.
He must pretend to be
unruly and unfazed
absolutely unafraid.
What rage so gestates over years?
Weakened age outpaces death
among his fears.
If fate would just be a dear
she might relinquish him from either.
Laugh devilishly.
Fate is not kind.  She is a jokester.
Some folks well deserve their joke.
Some just come along
for the ride.

Hunger

Hunger


Not like this, raw compulsion,
this pit of growling lust.
Feral, the smell, copper and iron,
medicinal charge to heal the wounds
of eternal damnation.
Red stains. No rule or discipline can cage
unending need for living blood.

So gleefully he warmed, promised flowing,
an existential thrill well beyond what paltry
passion could indulge.
Far too late to protest or argue,
here where existence is throes of sick
insistence.  Far beyond reach of a
coherent self to control or resist.
Hunger
unformed
unadorned
Instinct.
A passion play, my Lords and Ladies
vicariously feast, aglow in rapture of greed,
the raucous laughter of power.
A salacious toy for hideous sport.

What matters, all that is real, is night
blood and sacrifice to gods of cruel command.
Unbound by penance or shame.
Hot energy flows.
My only ability is to feed.

Mirror

Mirror


I go to her window.

I have seen her on the street,
much later than is proper for a child.
She is lonely.
She plays at imaginary friends
with prowling cats who enjoy a momentary acquaintance,
with solemn structures
of stone and brick sporting colorful postings that promise excitement.
Often she hums bright little tunes;
her body gracefully accentuates.
She is beauty of a fading kind.
Soon she will understand
the world she yearns to find beyond these squalid barriers
cannot be found.
I want to save her that.

I want such a beautiful companion.
She is lonely.
I have become loneliness itself.
This is a different kind of yearning need.

It’s not sex.
I have no such desire.
That possibility was cut out of me so long ago,
never to be known.

It is a need to give, to be part of, to have a reason to respond,
a reason to feel other than bad.
So how can I take her?
How can I offer my suffering, my damnation
as a gift of friendship?

She will grow into a common whore, bitter and sweet,
creature of the street and the night.

Perhaps we’ll find each other there in time,
for the briefest time,
a moment.

Churches

Churches


These myths about crosses, holy water, Christian artifacts, are in some sense amusing.
Such short-sighted arrogance these Christians expose.
Our kind greatly predate The Christ.
I have been told that some still walk who worshipped at the feet of our dark Lord’s bride.
Persephone, when she toured this world would take succor from such acolytes
in Her secret night rites.
Children of e God of Death and Transformation, we are born in intimate blood ritual.
We are damned with immortality to experience Hades on Earth.

Addiction

Addiction


I have learned to be self-sufficient.
Nothing is reliable, not even fate.
The world changes, and changes again.
Don’t expect.  Take what comes.
All the pleasures?
All the unexpected gifts?
The hard part is getting through the time, the days,
but also the nights.
I read, and think about different kinds of lives,
how it might be if, if, if ...
Very well, if you know that it’s a story, played out for fun.
What great fun, fantasies hidden from day life,
alone because I am too different to blend.
What entertainment could thrill enough,
capture this old, toughened heart?
Fun I neither seek nor enjoy.
I look for some way to make it all go away,
to escape, to imagine.
In that image, to dance on a pin of light,
soft green light.
Music is the air.  Building in and out of crescendo,
taking flight like a falcon, carrying imagined me.
I am free in the only real sense of freedom.
I have no boundaries.
I am what the mystics call Bliss.
This is so rare, so much a blessing,
it most certainly cannot be relied upon,
can not be expected.
Mostly, I stink, am bruised and sore.
Mostly the air is filled with disease
that can’t kill me, but does not mean me well.
Mostly my thoughts are dark, self-loathing,
but not nearly as much as I loathe this world,
even as it changes.
The changes rarely seem to be for the better
of anyone, not for long.
The long view is mostly full of rot, mildew,
the stench of age and illness.
The will to go on becomes more of a habit,
an addiction.
The only cure for addiction is something better
to believe in.

Discretion

Discretion


He knows to be discreet.
It is his main stock in trade, and probably why he has not yet been killed.
I am not considered a risk, considering my own stake in secrecy.
Peter brags he is finding a good share of our clients by offering
a pest removal (no questions asked) service.
His finds are not only men who will not be missed,
but men whose absence is desired enough to pay well.
I am concerned that our home may become associated with foul play.
He assures me.
He knows to be discreet.
No one will be privy to our location who will be in any position to tell.
Considering how I have lived, how I continue to live,
I have no room to make moral judgments.
The law of life is that we become predator or prey to other life.
Hunger is what forces us to reach out into the world.
Peter hungers for money, for the security he believes it represents,
and for the thrill of the hunt.
I feel no thrill in hunting, in killing.
My hunger is for the basic energy that I require
to hunt, to kill,  feed, to feel the blood reinvigorate.
It is simple, this life, thought not easy.
If life were meant to be easy, we would not need.

Travel

Travel


There’s always the chink in the armor, the catch in the plan.
From his garbled mid-flight explanation, some business associate
with legal complications settled an old score and got leverage
by suggesting a better target, who turned out to be Peter.
Sophisticated surveillance has brought jeopardy to our home.
We must flee.
Peter has appropriated a car.  He lifts me into the trunk
along with a valise full of cash and a garment bag
full of personal belongings – his, not mine.
I travel as I am.
But why am I traveling now, in this mobile container?
I am carried, not by my own power, into a new life.
Though this anonymous road is not the river of the dead,
I am ferried into novelty, unknown territory, a kind of transformation.
And why should Peter carry me?
I am his ace in the hole to immortality.
Perhaps he also feels that we are in this adventure together,
a team of convenience but also camaraderie.
Or maybe, like the cash and belongings, I am something
of value he has acquired.
Of course I can leave at my volition.
I can leave his intentions when I’ve somewhere to go.

Identity

Identity


I am capable of giving what is denied to me –
easy death and sexual pleasure.
Perhaps I am no predator or monster, but an existential altruist.
I give release without mutuality.
Of course, I take my price.
Today I have been released into an underground parking garage.
I wander beyond the ill-gotten car, on concrete empty of footfalls.
Peter has left me here in darkened safety while he finds lodging
and scopes out the town where we have harbored.
I had fed recently and well before our mad escape.
I have no need of company.
I do not wonder what I will find outside at nightfall.
I will find what awaits me.
Listening to be sure there are none close
to wonder about my presence here,
I consider my identity.
If I am always me to me, do actions matter?
Do differences in place, in those around,
in what I tell myself I am, matter?
I feel the call of darkness, of twilight’s fade,
even here, underground.

Time

Time


A park where homeless people sleep, even in this damp cold.
Late hour bars, groggy patrons stumbling home, often alone.
Some carry guns for protection; but who would think
a need to shoot me? What would they gain if they did?
Other creatures of the night, junkies, pros, prowlers,
kids no one wants.
Deep night is my poacher’s forest.
I am in some senses exhilaratingly free,
in so many senses bound,
to instinct, to torment, to destiny.
I do what I do. I am what I am.
Where? When?
Sometimes I pretend it matters.
There really are endless possibilities.
I like the dank, rainy nights.
Blurred lights, the insistent sound of wetness
like street blues.
I like to find my way to open water, to look,
entranced, into blackness, mesmerized by
the rippling, the rhythm, the waves,
caressed by the wind.
Many mortal lives are sadder than mine.
All the drivel goes on and on, but then
moments appear.
They appear, hold me so closely that their
perfume becomes my soul.
And then the moment goes, forever,
like every other, each beautiful and unique.
Mostly I don’t think about the vast grey
everyday, or what might occur, or what is occurring.
Time washes over while I imagine little capsules
of perfect beauty, or self-loathe
into a frenzy of empty rage.
In all this time, I suppose I might have
made myself better, taken a long-term interest
that paid off or at least made me cultured
and debonair.
Where does all that time go?
When I look to remember, my mental resistance
insists it knows best.
Memories arise in bite-size reveries that
quietly dissipate as tangential thought takes hold.
To look at it all, to even contemplate that ride,
is repellent.
I have important skulking and hiding to attend to.

Trial

Trial


It was said, everyone knew, some whispered in my presence,
that I was born a bastard of rape.
My mother, a pious maiden, in penance gave me
into servitude to the Brotherhood.
Thus she was allowed to return to her Sisterhood’s
life of humble ministration.
I never knew her, or have no memory
of such an early time in my life.
I knew nothing of the treasured childhood that comes with family.
I was a low thing, circumscribed by duty.
I was educated, taught to read, write, do sums,
memorize long passages of scripture, sing in the Holy Choir,
take my part in ceremonies, taught for useful service.
I was taught to please my masters as my only worth.
Any modification to please their plans was my sacred duty to undergo.
Any master. Any metamorphosis. Any mutilation. Accept.
When he bit me, as the fast-acting soporific emitted from his fangs
entered my artery, I hoped this was my end.
It wasn’t.  He did not drain me, but woke me to force his blood
into my sagging mouth to remake me in his image:
immortal, powerful, supernatural, outside of the laws of man.
I learn to create my own sacred place, free of duty, free of the yoke of belief.
I am my own silent sanctuary beyond the touch, the reach of their world.
What good am I, have I, what good does it do me to have a conscious me
apart from my puppet role, plaything of powerful forces and men?
Perhaps after all the trials of my journey, it is enough to have a
consciousness that knows me so well and feels a kind of comforting love.
Perhaps the kind of love a mother feels for a child she never wanted,
who is yet of her, a companion to her trials.

Conversation

Conversation


I am making a habit of hiding through the day on the floor
of Peter’s car, covered by coats of my victims carefully
shorn of identifications.
Peter has not returned while I am here, or left evidence
of his presence while I am away.
Fending for myself has never been an issue.
I do wonder if he will reappear, under what circumstances.
Relationships with mortals don’t last long.
Usually their mortality is not what parts us.
I am not easy to know.
I don’t make light. I don’t make fun.
I watch, listen, rarely comment.
I am not social.
I was not raised to social grace.
I was taught to serve.
Serving only myself I employ no social skills
other than unobtrusive observation.
I respond, clearly, succinctly, when that opportunity
is offered.
Peter welcomed my silence as invitation to fill
our conversational space.
I welcome solitary silence as a refuge.
Knowing what to say, how to cleverly manipulate
with word associations, skills not encouraged in
lowly servants expected to be discreet and not heard.
A stealthy night hunter uses less humanizing weapons
to hold prey than conversation.
Physically, I am too relentlessly cold to be of comfort.
There is more than enough darkness, tragic trajectory,
hellish anecdote, in the human world.
I spin insulated stories for ample companionship,
hidden from the days.
There are days I suppose a desire to walk out
into a burst of hellfire agony, of flaming glory.
A force I would not have believed could so
strongly control from within me denies such action.
I am content to hide.
That is my will, free to accept fate.

Child

Child


Back in my mortal days, when they did they would say
I was a sweet-looking child, so very many years ago.
I don’t appear in mirrors now;
I wouldn’t know if that sweetness persists.
If you saw me, a scrawny child of indeterminate gender,
unkempt, ill-clothed, filthy like a refugee,
would you wish me gone, wish me well, feel terror?
You see such children on the streets.  I do.
Refugees from domestic wars are a secret no one keeps.
When I take one, I feel a kind of blessing, a kindred irony.
I don’t turn them.
Damnation is not for me a means of making friends.
I feel them, smell them, make an altar of my senses.
A sacred feast of sacrificial lamb’s blood
ought to require deep honor, respect.
I do befriend them, to give them that last memory
of innocent love.
We walk together to some secret place, a shared adventure.
If it is their place, they enjoy the ritual of inviting me in
to their sanctum.
I listen to woes and dreams that I honestly bond with.
I give what I am able, take what little treasure they possess.
There are too many people this world regrets.
Too many extras that won’t be missed, whose destruction
was never in doubt.
My kind can only cull a few.
People, though, you are clever.
You find ways, devise games
to destroy and self-destruct at all gradations of cruelty.
Is the monster in the demon or the man set free
of mortal restraint?
Or, does mortality constrain?
How large a body count can one mortal lifespan support?
Can we include those who are not directly killed,
but slow poisoned by soul-burning hatred?

Order

Order


It’s all about moving through.
The days in hiding, the nights out in the world, skulking, hunting, moving.
There can be no real relationships, no legitimate job.
There is no blending in to play the game,
not for a homeless child who will never grow older.
The local system, institutions, they’d be forced to see what I am.
And what I am does not exist.
What could they do with me?
My existence is a serious secret.
I am always learning to hide as conditions change,
as progress increases surveillance.
Nobody’s business is less reliably our own.
So far, there are always people low enough,
places of disarray and desperation where those of real power
have no interest.
The power of the street – the fist, the knife, the gun, the gang
-- not my problem.
Light of day or public discovery I must avoid.
Moving through the backstreets, private realms of common space,
part of what wants never to be seen, noticed,
enslaved to official inquiry.
At least the cameras can’t betray me,
unless a living witness is open in eyes and mind enough
to realize that I was there and not recorded.
Their willful ignorance can’t always be counted on.
It’s not a paranoid delusion if it’s true that my identity
is forbidden.
It is good that no one wants to know me,
for what is here to know?
A phantom moving through shadow to shadow,
avoiding contact or explanation.
My job is death.
I have no business with people who deal in
ordinary, orderly exchange.
Fantasy is about creating a place for what
you can’t have where you are.
In fantasy I can be bound in prosaic harmony
of work and love.
In reality, well, you know,
I don’t exist.

Home

Home


While the whole world is out and about,
pursuing tips and victories,
I make sorry nest in my makeshift cave of the day.
While prowling in the night
I find abandoned basement lairs.
I can get in through a window, then cover it
with fabric at hand.
Usually old remnants come with the place.
Sometimes mildewed books – all too often
historical romance potboilers with overwrought plots,
impossible dialog, little to no accurate history,
yet colorful enough prose to hold a reader’s eye.
My night hunter’s eyes optimize in low light.
They take what they get, enjoy the colors.
I can teleport line of sight, or through a route
I know so well I can follow accurately in my mind.
I like a place I can reliably access before dawn.
A place generally unappealing, unthought about.
I need no working amenities, no wires or cables,
no links to outside.
I am content with walls, windows covered,
to abide quietly.
I use what contents lie about for amusement.
Even old telephone books, pages frail from
compromising weather, tell stories, prompt
imaginings of relationships between names,
smiles over unintended puns, games with
numerologies.
Minds look for patterns.
We want our world to make sense.
We want stories with happy endings,
or justified ironies.
We want cause and effect, clearly demarcated,
posted warnings we can ignore at our own risk.
But even when we risk with abandon, we expect
saving, at least by Jesus or Love.
We want.  But we so seldom get what we want
that we make up stories to explain our own
shortcomings rather than want something more
obtainable, or find joy in making do.
If I really wanted something better, in all
this time wouldn’t I have found it, or
given it a name?
I like quiet.
It lets me hear, notice, the little changes,
when the big winds aren’t obscuring.
I like my own company.
After all these years of such companionship,
shared private humor, calming tricks,
sustaining fantasies – even though we know
they aren’t true.