Published on: 10/7/2011
Little Dragon

Oh, the carnage! I took my pleasure,
Spurted in armor to the sound of screams.
Oh, blood on my sword! The pain, the treasure
Seized. Captured Turks, their asses reamed
In crucifixions of sodomy--my name
Was sung with hatred, which was my glory.
All I feared was certain Hell. Oh the shame
Of being subject to God, the tired story;
To rot and stink while a Jewish peasant
Issues my orders. The future was clear.

I chose Undeath, half-life in eternal present,
Existence compounded of blood and fear.
Yes, I believed what the churches preach--
I'd walk the night as a two-legged leech
As God's orphan child. In darkness I drink
Foul red milk from reluctant mothers.
I'm in my coffin at dawn's pale brink;
Vermin and corpses are now my brothers;
Like a grave worm I burrow in stinking mud
To sleep off debauches of blood, oh blood:

Clots in my stomach, separate and thickening
With a viral tinge, subtle, sickening
Or wanly anemic, watered and shoddy.
Drugs to muzzle the heart's nervous thrust
Red vessels infested with antibodies
Junkie blood flavored with the needle's rust
Cholesterol, thick as old stew grease,
Like livers from force-fed, slaughtered geese.
Endocrine glands with alien juices,
Subjecting me to hormones' uses:
Sprouting pimples and tender breasts,
Pink nipples traveling across my chest;
And the diseases! Each dank contribution:
Bubonic plague, its gothic pollution;
Smallpox pustules, lilies from hell
Blood sharply barbed with cancer cells.

Attila's genes have turned to dust.
I'm a hagfish fastened to flat black guts.
I exist as sewer and abattoir
In a world as dismal as old film noir.
Perhaps the greatest indignity yet:
I've been turned into a soap opera pet.
In smutty prose I've achieved some glamour
From that female writer (damn her, damn her!).

I think of true death, clean as a cloud
But the God to Whom I have always bowed
Will shudder and send me straight to hell
Although I honored cathedral bells
Crossed myself whenever they rang
When I was distracted from cruelty's tang.
The brutal wine destruction yields,
Distillation of battlefields,
Transfusing a wound that never heals;
I was never more than spilled blood's pawn
And so I continue -- on and on.

Published on: 10/7/2011
The Ghoul

Other monsters are products of moonlight,
Polluted blood, a circle of teeth--
They colonize sex, emissions of night,
The tense scent of prey, a flowery wreath
Shedding perfume in cool marble heaven,
Perfectly suited for fantasy's use.
My meat is puffy with carrion's leaven--
This foul face is slick with corruption's juice;
Peasant of Hell, dull graveyard grubber--
The People's creature, repulsive to see
Us squatting over cadaverous blubber.
However, nature has a place for me
And my kin--we are flightless vultures.
We transform Death in our gruesome flesh,
Create our proletarian culture
Restoring warm life to this throbbing mesh.
We feast on the dead to bring them to birth
In the carbon dreams of the rolling earth.