My Earlier Life as a Vampire

Blauer Spaziergang - Blue Walk 38,5 x 48,5 cm pastel by Karin Goeppert

MY EARLIER LIFE AS A VAMPIRE

The first girl whose throat

I had designs on was one

of our baby sitters. Her plump

pale neck was studded with pretty moles.

So whenever she blushed or flushed

I felt like an oil man scratching the

sand at the edge of an oasis, simply dying

to sink my drill into that rich lode. Yes, there were

teeth marks, but I swear, your honor, I

drew not one drop of her sweet blood.

Being older now, deeply mired in middle-age, I’m over

all that, and yet…I’d go for Anne Hathaway

in a pulse beat when she plays amorous Jane Austen  

long alabaster throat exposed in gowns plunging perilously

or as Meryl Streep’s factotum (deeply V-necked sweaters)

or fetchingly short-haired Liv Tyler (all lips, eyes, but mainly neck)

in a Robert Altman flick set in the South. Ethics? I’m a connoisseur

not a philosopher—well, not really—philosophy has its attractions—

or some philosophers, anyway—the vandals, the belligerents—

and I probably won’t get a stake in the heart

so much as a classic spike heel, or its contemporary cousin

the muddy cleat of her soccer shoe. But not even that

will happen. I’ve retired. I’ll have to be satisfied with scrambled

eggs flame-thrown with tabasco, reading Nietzsche till dawn burns through my curtains.