Vampire
by R. L. Kurtz
R. L. Kurtz

R. L. Kurtz is a published poet, essayist, and teacher who has traveled abroad extensively, teaching in such places as Riyadh, Barcelona, Bahrain, and Taipei. His poem "Star Sapphire" has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in the journal Splash of Red. R. L. Kurtz is currently the director of an English Language school in Taiwan where he resides with his wife and two children. He has degrees in both English and Philosophy and received his Masters in literature in '98.

It's not as they show in films,
all pouting lips and razor grins.
No heroines dripping to their knees and offering
ripe necklines for another bite of blue-skinned love.
We really don't bite, just nip at the soul steadily
over centuries with sharpened morphemes
cold as tile, ivory white verbs
tucked behind discretionary lips that conjure
visions of punctured fruits hemorrhaging
into a night's bloom.
And there is no alteration,
no scorned martyrs cringing into redundant bats.
That's all escapism that is.
We hang tight in the dank caves of our reveries,
spit on coffins and laugh at all things arboreal.
Give me brick and victim,
let her laud my ennui, crawl to my unconcern.
Then will I burn her with a stanza!
Love that word, like an Italian pose.
That's us—posers under the pale glow
of Calabrian streetlamps,
spreading our semantic legacy like a virus.

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