Vampire of Asheville

visions of the streets

I no longer dream of the gold and silver sky.

The dream instead as left over lives I didn’t get a chance to experience except in repeat.

Like old shows on tv at my grandma's house. 

In life days pass with no more than a few cups of coffee and cigarettes stumped out after opening my eyes. 

Complacency is a companion that serves me still. 

A convent pet that sits in the corners echoing thoughts back at me.

I remember running scared down alley's looking up all the while being yelled at about where to go. 

Ducking to hide I swallowed my breath, their voice behind "don’t stop running again". 

The streets belted with wind as thin mist runs sideways down sidewalk’s that hold shining stones glistening.

I would find a bird of prey every time.

Always just some chick alone under the towering building just left of the obelisk. 

A voice from the rooftops imploring me not to leave and find them food. 

I never do. 

Neither does the maintenance man. 

The one with mirrored photo red eyes. 

Instead I go to the patio with the broken bird fountain perched just above the bricked graffitied dumpsters. 

Age pocked with green moss and gray streaks it never seems to decay. 

From its plateau a view over the private club fence where they feed on naked man. 

Sometimes the rail breaks and I crash through the trees spilling out to the parking lot as she looks for a lighter and the door slams shut behind her. 

Always the oboe play’s @ the corner crosswalk. 

Music I haven’t heard nor I think anyone after fourteen hundred. 

Winding up back where the window falls out on its anniversary after our chat and the refusal of the chrome plated zippo as a gift I no longer needed. 

Where the fire raged from a time forgotten.

It’s deep smell of copper like the top of a church with a hint of sadness they make their home. 

The street across behind the abduction is a hidden door. 

up its steps the library from times before this land was governed. 

I sat alone within myself. 

Dragged through it like the streaked of upside down smudge that’s a face and hand prints on the ten foot square glass of the top floor DSS building. 

No more would I be uplifted. 

The hand made signs by the shop’s on market street read.

The fall.

I had landed solid and finite this time. 

The light had gone out like the hour when the sun fades and darkness enfolds the land. 

A wondering shell that keeps living after the love is gone. 

My soul wasn’t present. 

Like a pair of old shoes it wore out until nothing there was left. 

As if a lovers note that simply said: Now It’s From The Heart Forever Instead 

If I had said it was okay, would you have started to believe in me again? 

It’s been so long that we forgot how it look’s, how it feels to be home. 

Is this home? 

Wherever have I been? 

Outside in the air or somewhere within your mind. 

Still the same, just a memory I suppose. 

To close a treason. 

Perhaps it should have started forgotten. 

As it stands now, there is some place between living and dreaming. 

The déjà vu a vanguard of reflections awash with dizzy familiarity of knowing we’ve been here before.

Reviews

[Andra Dare]

The imagery, environment, and reflectiveness in the poem are fantastic. Well done.

[Jon R.T.]

thank you mostly irl experience with a bit of poetry.