Dracula vs. Predator

I understand the wide-eyed

need to sort and arrange them

in order from weakest to last

one standing, but have you

ever thought about their needs,

a tender neck transformed into

a bar of gold by the full moon’s

reflective seduction, a thrilling

hunt along Lombard Street’s

rolling hills, have you ever even

considered that such primacy

is nobody’s idea of a prize save

for you, that maybe it would be

the greatest treasure of all to lose,

yes, be freed from the living death

of pop culture and puppet strings?

medical school lesson 8

Paracusia

 

My dearest Mina, I fear I have been visited

in the night once again by the ghost of Warren

Zevon, or maybe it was Robert Schumann,

I don’t remember. He stood draped in a white

sheet like specters are known to in the West,

and asked me how many auditory hallucinations

I might mold to his amorphous, flowing form.

The static gravel whispered secrets about my late

grandfather, the sheer density of the air threatening

to collapse my eardrums was its own love song.

Tell me this, beautiful skeptic: if it were a dream,

if it were insanity, would it end so consistently

each time, standing arms outstretched, lashed

to the vibrating air as it moves in opposite directions

and nowhere, stretching me Christ-like along

the humming breeze? And why then, would

you say, must it always happen at night, when

my fears are watching, waiting, muttering revenge?