POETRY 2001

The Vampire

There is a vampire inside me.

Inside me this cave of dark frustration.
There a vampire thirsts.
She is a small child.
Bone thin, with eyes that burn
and fierce sharp teeth.
She is ragged and filthy.
Her fingernails are broken and full of grime.

I feel her move inside my chest
when I begin to fall in love.
I feel her sharp claws in my back
as the glow ignites.

Her desperate waves of hunger
tied with helpless rage,
echo through the opening of my heart
and the insatiable blaze of my clitoris.

Sex and love are the blood she craves.
This delicious food that carries me to bliss,
nourishes and lights my soul,
fills my heart with joy and hope-
yet cannot slake her thirst.

She does not understand.
She is but a child.
a tiny, empty vessel of need.
All she knows is sadness and hatred.
She feeds voraciously but recieves no sustenance.

I hold her, for I am the cave around her.
But that is not enough, for she IS me.
I shall have to enter that place of dread and slime.
Somehow I must free her, free me.

I must face the filth and horror.
Overcome revulsion and terror.
I must lift her up and hold her close.

Only I can melt away her pain.
Only I can love her enough
to forgive her and to understand
the torture that drove her to
such hatred and self-abnegation.

I must hold her in compassion.
My vampire self,
feed her from my own veins.
It is the blood of my love and understanding
that she must have.

Therein is the nurterance we crave.
The integration of ourselves.
And so I carry her from the cave,
she snuggles close in my arms.

She sighs, a babies sigh of relief and satisfaction.
Held in the safe, strong love of her mothers arms.
Walking into the light outside,
I feel the weight lift and transform.

Her small sweet body melts away
Soaking into my heart like warm rain.

I stand alone.
Knowing fullness.
A strange, sweet sensation
of being in one place,
in one piece,
in one time.

Here,
I have the capacity
for wholeness.

It is a feeling of such utter serenity
the power of it rocks me.
I cavort like a joyous child in a mudpuddle
with
shiny,
new, black
boots.

Dec. 9th 2001