Blood Verse: The Vampire as Poet
BLOOD VERSE:
THE VAMPIRE AS POET
by
Derek Clendening
Other Kindle Titles by Derek Clendening
Novels
The Between Years (Ghosts)
The Breeding (Zombies)
Collections
Clock Strikes Two and Other Stories
Short Stories and Long Fiction
Two Little Dead Girls
The Lonesome Child on Wysocki Street
The Business
Young Adult
The Vampire Way (Vampire Way Series Book #1)
Blood Promise (Vampire Way Series Book #2)
© 2007, 2012 Derek Clendening
Dedication
“Written with much love for my good pal Owen Clendening–the kid brother I never had and the awesome nephew I do have.”
I won’t take up too much of your time here. This collection was first conceived in 2005 and published by Sams Dot Publishing in 2007. I sold the last of my copies at a book signing event in 2011 and I was stunned at how eager those readers were to have the collection. The thought that there was still an audience for this collection hadn’t occurred to me. I have wonderful memories of the writing and publishing process for this work. In fact, I still keep in touch with the editor who worked with me on it. I thought it would be a lot of fun to re-release this work to the general public, who I hope will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed working on it.
Derek Clendening
In Broad Daylight
I feel courageous
gripping an ink-filled sword
recording the boldest move
in my centuries.
I bask sunlight’s orange glow
and chronicle daylight’s splendor in verse.
My muse paints a picture
and I imagine what
daylight might be like.
Walking the streets
I stalk by night
the row of trees
cloaked in darkness
now dazzle with light.
This world is like
a parallel universe.
Verse will never be powerful enough to describe it.
My lips may never convey the experience to my race.
As the sun’s rays roast my milky flesh,
I scribble my verse
a word at a time
watching lively children
run and play.
These joyous beings
who sleep safely
while I roam
the night.
I call them to me...
The world lives while I sleep
and offers more color than black, white and red.
I approach a child
playing alone so happily
and offer my hand.
He denies my existence,
like no one is there,
like I don’t belong
in this world.
I’m an apparition to him,
a friend that cannot be seen.
The light grows intense,
and I become weak.
My time in the daylight has exceeded
what any undead is allowed.
Inspiration, my consolation,
countless tales I have collected.
The experience will stoke my muse for centuries;
the reality of daylight a forever companion
to my imagination.
The Face in the Water
My half-naked body rolls in the wet grass.
My world is fuzzy and blurred.
Tonight’s events haunt me like a
waking dream.
Steaming hot, dark, sexual. I plead not to wake.
My eyelids part, my neck throbs. My
throat ablaze, waking from a carnal paradise.
I rise to my feet, my head swimming and
arches made of melting rubber,
I stumble to the river.
Memories rush back;
a raging climax.
I remember fingers caressing
my neck,
my breasts.
I remember him now.
The man,
the monster,
the charming face.
His full warm lips seduced me.
He approached me from behind;
I savored his firm body pressed against me,
his lips and tongue wetted me where I now ache.
His teeth willed bolts of pleasure from head to toe,
rising and bubbling, I braced for explosion.
He clung tighter to me, loving me and
triggered an orgasmic throb.
Pulling between my legs with a staccato pulse.
until the lights went out.
With my lover’s image blasted in my mind,
I crawl over cold, wet rocks, slither to the river
and splash water on my face, my neck.
The water relieves the pain, but thankfully
cannot wash away my lover’s mark.
I stop to stare at my face in the water.
Distorted by light ripples,
I see someone different
than the girl I once knew.
My face has changed, and also my eyes, my teeth.
My desires change from powerful lust
to voracious hunger
as night turns to day.
The face in the water fades
as my change finishes and the morning sun
blisters my shoulders.
I embrace the change my lover made in me,
knowing what they are,
night and day from the creature I once was.
The Gift
With a pen between my razor fangs,
I sit before my Victorian home
above the river,
scribbling countless words,
the thousands of verses my heart has composed.
The river washes over a league of souls,
all the victims who feed me.
The words I write as a grace to
the blood they shed
as a sacrificial communion.
My rhymes are pleasure
to soothe mortal pain.
My meter is beauty
balancing immortal ugliness.
These words can right the wrong
I create each time
I leave this house.
I write to absolve the pain
I cause the innocent
by my hunt each night.
The lines I scribble each night,
are gifts to humankind,
for the awfulness I indulge
to survive.
My pen stops,
stagnant,
but is prepared to write again
after I drain
the mortal I see
approaching on the sidewalk.
Immortal Genesis
Far from the garden,
I spy two unashamed sinners,
three of us made from the same hands,
abusing a paradise I never knew.
I, Adam of the undead,
have existed mortal
since the call for light was spoken.
My story was excluded from Genesis
as the shame of He who made me.
Like his first two mortals,
I was crafted in his image,
set to breathe,
to live,
but he dared not duplicate from my rib.
Granted life but desired dead,
made to continue an unnatural life,
in a World more cruel
than any undead’s heart.
I fell victim to my first temptation;
it was a greater red than any apple.
The ultimate act of desperation–
the life of a savage I was forced to live.
In vampiric evolution, I, too will
be fruitful and multiply.
I’ve learned Adam’s words, mastered his phrases,
to bless my life with a narrative.
My suffering knows a language.
The poet serves a purpose greater
than simply naming things.
My pen is more powerful than my body and
verse is how I will tell my story.
These lines are only a chapter
to chronicle the first of the undead race.
First Lesson
The victim’s heart is slowing
but you needn’t wait for the final beat.
Drink his blood–don’t be shy!
Take your first sip of the precious fluid.
When the victim gasped, I lunged for the neck
where my teacher started.
Not the neck–I’ve started there;
the flesh is too thick for you to rip.
Try the artery at his wrist,
an easy vein for baby fangs.
The flesh feels thin while I nestle
my teeth against his heavy wrist.
Just sink your teeth in there–
yes, that’s the right idea.
Savor your first taste.
I hope it’s all you expected.
The taste is breath-taking,
and I long to describe it.
Take the neck another day.
Your next lesson will
teach you to attack,
kill on your own
For now, rest. Drink
before the blood gets cold.
The blood makes me wiser, creative,
but I have no pen to express my new feelings.
I see you’re full.
Your young stomach is so small.
Before tomorrow’s lesson, you will hunger again
and you will want it all.
I take the victim’s final drops,
smearing them with my fingers
and write my new feelings
in his blood.
Dry and Deserted
Lustful
moist, humid lips
melting onto mine.
Chiseled Adonis
firm against my breast.
Sweating,
savoring each salty drop.
Sharp,
piercing teeth,
sinking slowly;
an orgasmic pulse
beating to an erratic tempo.
Warmth,
his singing embrace
a Summer’s day with dark eclipse
radiating black-petaled flowers
a new soul enriched
with a lust for darkness.
Fuel,
together, sharing the life’s wine,
a warm, crimson nectar;
but one is stolen,
with each deep thrill.
Cold,
brisk and dry,
the remnants of my
heart incinerated, and
ashes scatter in a chilled wind.
He takes what is pertinent,
then moves on to the next.
Empty,
a soul hollow,
a canyon,
resonating his echoing name.
The Stolen Verses of a Gifted Earthling
Sleep now, my dear Charity,
your words are safe with me.
Your tender prose mirrors your beauty.
Written in ink and
sealed with your precious blood.
Your blood was all I wanted
when I seduced you
late last night
at the bar.
Your blood, rich and red,
a delicacy to the immortal
of Planet Zalicon.
Your fecund verse
will quicken our arid souls;
your rhyme and meter
will teach us emotion,
how to hurt
how to love.
The words I’ve found
in your stacks of books
and on your countless scraps
of paper
can never match
the dazzling lines
your heart sang to me.
Tall and solid,
grisly, dark lover!
Take me every place
you have to go.
Whisk me to the end
of the Earth.
Lead me to the stars,
to the moon,
and love me more in space
if you must.
What I would give
to have them again
while your throat was
still intact.
I write these words
to try for myself,
mimicking your style.
I hope to get it right. . .
If only to make you
breathe again
so you can guide
my hand across the page.
It is not only the verses,
but the words themselves,
and how they stimulate my mind.
Though your body remains
an empty shell on Earth
you live on in me,
through your words and blood.
I am a carrier of your message
to embody your meaning
as I soar past the sky
to another galaxy.
So painfully selected,
your verse I take with me.
These words will serve beauty
on our planet
and so renew
our immortal kind.
Blood and Ink
On the table before me
lay two powerful tools
of equal strength and shape:
one, my beloved pen, the ink-filled
treasure that serves me no longer;
second, a stake, a splintering dagger
that triggers my fear at its sight,
though I fear that my despair
will force me to use it tonight.
My pen is my enemy,
its ink dried out, no longer
transcribing my words.
A fruitful muse abandoned me,
like a traitorous friend.
An eternity devoid of words
lies ahead. . .
with no hope or inspiration to guide me.
I see myself like others of my kind,
afflicted by a second curse
of artists and immortals.
I raise the stake above my chest,
its point aimed at a heart
that no longer beats.
I prepare to drive it home;
an eternity without words
is not one I want to live.
Black–No Cream, No Sugar
Shaded in my desolate corner,
pecking at my formidable drink,
I watch the line before the counter grow
while I compose my lines,
developing neatly, row by row.
Hoards of people pass my
watching eyes every hour.
So many would-be victims,
all fresh pads for inspiration.
Though this population screams generic,
clumped into groups, differed
only by their tenure and their peaks,
many of them are loud,
too many lacking thought.
A great deal void of character–
except for the girl,
with the coiling red hair,
ordering a double-double.
My razor teeth bite down
onto my lips
as I raise the steaming cup
to my mouth.
My raging urge is soothed
by another fluid–
my pen to write out
&nbs
p; my storming drive.
I pick up my pen
and try to find the words
to describe what I long
to have for dinner.
Meet me in the alley
fiery-haired vixen,
to whisper and waltz,
basking in our nothingness.
Feel my teeth bore deep inside you.
Broil from my heat
as I cherish your warmth.
My pen longs to meet you
in all your secret places.
My boiling ink
labors hard against eruption
as our bodies cling together
and our light, fluttering hearts
beat as one.
I wad up
the page before me
as my hands quake with