Deborah Guzzi- A Poem

Corpus Delicti

 

Close your ears, close your eyes and pray to me
for, as close as this, you may never get to God.
What immortals have you hoped to see? What espirit
de corp have you longed for? Who will guide your earthly plod?
Kiss me for I have kissed the lips of Lestat,
nipped and pricked, punctured and sucked to husks,
occasionally with regret, but more often lust's ascot
what once was I, reveling in your taste, your musk.
As Louis, I beguile with tawdry tales surreal
visages of plantation nights, horror of the color green,
Letiche roaming creatures who our trails conceal,
the true demons whose glamour goes unseen.
Yes, I prayed for death, wrapped in the pain of lost kin
but, by God I never wished, I never wished for Him.
2
But, by God, I never wished, I never wished for Him.
Eternity alone is such a hollow thing, unripe,
never, ever, feeling full, a marrow-less bone, scrim-
shaw's sorry surface, a sperm-less whale to pipe.
Such as this was He, when him came to me that mid-
night, pleading, bleeding, ever feeding morbid life.
A cameo on cowry shell, with skin which bid
the touch of cheek on cheek to assuage my grief
to fill the brother-less gap the lack of wife.
This is how he lured me to the kill, the blood spilled
how fire and innocence flamed when he arrived.
Do not hate me for the fate his kiss instilled 
Surely, a family is the normal thing to long for
alive or dead to long for an espirit de corp.
3
Alive or dead to long for an espirit de corp
crestfallen at the lack of hearth and home, pride
we hidden monsters kill what we adore, and more ...
leaving us in marble crypts with no warmth inside.
Then He saw her, the child beside the corpse of mother
half dead, the pox upon her face, amidst the tears
certainly to save her was His goal, what other?
But now I think her savior - a most foul affair.
Claudia, the child eternal, bidding, unformed blight,
monster among monsters, her wee wicked formed unbudded
curdled, curling ever inward, a trickster charming night
stalker, dragging porcelain dollies by her side.
Daughter mine? Temptress, maker-killer, unformed bride
have you killed your father, dumped him in a swampy hide?
4
Have you killed your father, dumped Him in a swampy hide?
Years you've planned and plotted, Lestat to defy and I
absorbed in misspent fantasy with you; my fate allied.
Damned one, poisoner, death angel, do you deny
the desecration of the His unmoving vessel,
fed to the fishes, the bottom feeders, oh but He made do ...
absorbed recaste, laid in wait each hungry cell.
We fled the patricide, you and I sought others of
our kind. What gruesome, ill bred misfits the world held
and so hardening the unbeating heart ... beloved
to mankind we returned as if compelled. 
To the core of life and lore to Paree, to the bloody stage
the Theatre des Vampires is home. Mockery's the rage.
5
The Theatre des Vampires is home. Mockery's the rage.
Do you see them now? Four hundred years and Armand
has not changed. See them lure the human meat upstage
with laughter. Reality's the rage and oh the blood coined.
"How gauche!" our petite Claudia sighs, the excess in
gore and waste. But, the coven has my Armand's grace.
For Claudia, Madeleine the doll maker dies, reborn
to mother the horrific woman 'neath this childish face.
A family formed again when Lestat steps in alive and
the coven lets the sun take Claudia and Madeleine.
I entombed, walled in, buried alive, if not for my Armand.
Their ashes, oh my dears, in death entwined.
I burned the lot of them within their caskets, burnt alive;
the curtain fell yet there was still Armand and I.
6
The curtain fell yet there was still Armand and I.
I could nor forget, would not forget, the fate of Claudia
of which he was no small part, it was a small lust easily untied.
Home was all I wanted, the damp, the swamp, the bougainvillea
sickened of my Old World haunts, all I wanted was home.
Never, never would I make another, a comfort I decline.
Let the modern age wonder where it is I roam;
penance unearned and ungiven in the shadows I hide.
I can not live, I can not breathe, death's my only company
my wife, my child, my brother, so many others. The living dead
is what we're called, Vampire, do you pity me?
Lestat "Do you see me? Your sight I dread!"
West coast, golden gates Baghdad by the bay
in the bars I linger where men are men, aren't they?
7
In the bars, I linger, where men are men, aren't they?
I find you here, or you find me? I bare my soul to
you of lessons learned, of men, of plays, ah cabarets.
"What do you do, what do you say, you writer you ...
two footed harridan of clay? You long for the eternal kiss
as if the bliss of life was so very little to pay.
Fool that you are ... not in life or death would you be grist
a waste you are, a mortal led so far astray.
No passion's left, no fond memories ... but her golden hair.
Perhaps, I'll take a taste of you, foolish fop, and sigh;
no immortal will I make. On the floor, I will leave you there
refuse beside the pages, the sordid tales as my reply.
As my lips close on your throat, heaven's absentee,
close your ears, close your eyes and pray to me.

 

*Based on Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

** First appeared on Poetry Soup 2/9/14

 

 

Deborah Guzzi writes articles for Massage and Aroma Therapy Magazines. Her poetry has been accepted for publication: in the Literary Journal of Western CT. University, Inclement Magazine, Pyrokinections, Jellyfish Whispers, Grey Wolf’s Summer Legends Anthology, The Germ, Wilderness Literary Review, Sweet Dreams & Night Terrors, Bitterzoet Magazine, haiku journal, Contemporary haibun, Haibun Today, Bella on line, The Autumn Sound, Travel by Books, The Penwood Review, Poetry Quarterly, Eskimo Pie, Ribbons, Tanka Society of America Journal, Three Line Poetry, Five Poetry, The Inwood Indiana Review, Existere Journal of Arts and Literature, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Cha Asian Literary Journal. She has published two illustrated volumes of poetry, The Healing Heart and Heaven and Hell in a Nutshell.