The terminal, scintillating amber-golden rays of the western setting sun and their long, heavy, sullen shadows elongated across the soft undulating fields below the imposing, snow-capped southern Carpathian mountains, as our coach meandered along the punctated, uneven path. And in the northeasterly sky, rising with a steady but intoxicated indifference, the scarleted shine of the full blood moon signaled the impending ascendance of twilight and a comforting decrescendo from the exuberance of the day’s revelries.
     The day’s festivities had been consumed with the most spectacular and ostentatious indulgences within the citadel at Poenari Castle, where the Voivode of Wallachia, Vlad Tepes himself orchestrated the various features of the bacchanalia. The nature of the celebration was two-fold. The primary focus of adulation was in regards to the upcoming sabbat of Samhain, and the commencement of a three week period of celebratory events to honor the thinning of the veil between the worlds of the living, and that of the dead. The secondary aspect of the merrymaking was much more personally gratifying - a celebration of the recent bestowal of myself and the lady Cynthia Ann with the entitlement of Count and Countess, upon the acquisition of a southward facing hillside parcel of land near Praid, in Hargita County, Transylvania. On this occasion, Tepes demonstrated a particularly affable disposition, having recently expelled the Ottomans from Wallachia, and he was enthusiastically supportive of our acquisition, and of adopting this mysterious and bewitching land as our own. And we were certainly eager to ingratiate ourselves to him, with great hopes of avoiding the same fate as the thousands of enemy soldiers, whose bodies, at the base of the mountain, were impaled onto wooden stakes, in horrifying, grotesque and ungodly configurations, and left to rot and putrify under the harsh elements of the Carpathians.
     As we traversed the sublime countryside, the monotone clopping rhythm of the horses pulling from the front lent a hypnotising dissonance to our endeavor, where inside the coach, I sat in contented silence, pondering the myriad events which had recently transpired. My physical body was exhausted from the uproariousness of the day, but my mind was still racing with excitement, reeling from the myriad conversations and exclamatory interactions at the soiree, and of contemplating the exhilarating possibilities which were presenting themselves to the Countess and I in our newfound life and land. With this thrilling cacophony of thoughts and visions reverberating through my mind, I was again, as always, compelled into the more lustful preoccupation upon the beautiful creature I beheld before me.
     The Countess Cynthia Ann was by far more taken by the day’s jubilation and was thoroughly consumed by a deep-set tiredness. She rested peacefully, with her body half reclined to her left side in the rear seat of the coach, her head cradled within the folds of the crimson pillowed, velveted lining of the carriage walls. I gazed upon her with a carnal passion, an electric, magnetic and covetous desire, and the profound satisfaction that because she was mine, all of my various sensual appetites and ****** desires would be, one by one, fulfilled at length.
Her eyes remained softly closed as I indulged my ravenous vision to engorge myself with all the sensuousness that lay before me.
     The net stockings that gripped her legs, which were visible from above the top of the tall, black leather boots that reached almost unto her knees, stretched higher on her thighs, to where they were  encircled by a red lace band which itself disappeared under the rufflements of her gown, which was markedly shorter in the front than to behind. I stared with a desirous and hungry gaze, lusting over the contours of her legs, and filled with the titillating perception that each small, diamond shaped hole in her stockings was itself a window unto the soft, porcelain skin which laid beneath. Had it not been for sheer exhaustion, this sight alone would have been enough to pull me straight into eagerly satiating my rapacious urges.
     Lifting my gaze slightly, I regarded with great admiration and desire, the corset she wore above her hips. Each and every fine, silver embroidered tracery outlined the underlying whalebone structure within, and produced such an elegant and magnificent pedestal upon which her ******* were the crown. For many dozens of breaths, I watched with an animalistic desire to play ravenous physicality onto her forms, how her chest rose and fell with quiet rhythmicity of slumber, and how the totality of her feminine attributes filled me with an insatiable carnal passion for her intimacy.
     Similarly, my eyes journeyed along the lengths of the black lace and sheer gloves that she wore. The fingerless ends of her long and delicate gloves converged over her hands, which had both found a place of rest upon her left thigh. I followed the wider silver laces that zig-zagged up through each and every delicate, light-colored grommet, over and above her elbows and ending in a slightly thicker band of floral garter which supported them before reaching the shoulders.
Here, my eyes followed the lines of the two straps that crossed just below her collar bones as they found their attachment into a black velvet choker that encircled her neck. Naturally, I was then drawn to derive a burning adoration as I marveled at the long, straight strands of chestnut brown hair that flowed like a waterfall from the apex of her head into a curtain of soft filaments that draped delicately across her shoulders. Resting there, slightly above the top of her forehead, was a black wire tiara, dotted with amethyst, garnet and a thin silver line of embellishment along the frame. And, as if promulgated by the corona itself, filling the interior of the coach was the subtle but distinctive scent of thyme and artemisia that wafted from her hair and filled my soul with such a soothing, warm comfort, that even consumption of the finest absinthium spirits could not provide such profound solace. Her canine familiar, our robust and golden cocker spaniel, laid longways on the tufted seat to her right, and with a heavy drowsiness, rested his head upon her hip, as they both were gently jostled by the unremitting protuberances of the trail.
     In this glorious moment, I was thoroughly contented and satisfied to have been given the blessed opportunity to gaze longingly upon the Countess, my loving and beautiful bride, while my mind again drifted into the fancies and possibilities which lay before us, where of most urgency and gratification, was to embark upon developing the small protectorate which we had established, here in Transylvania. And as my eyes fell shut with a heavy sluggishness, I could nearly feel the cool, moist grit of the Transylvanian soil between my fingers, and the sweet, earthen smell of petrichor lulled me deeper into the entrancing spell of our newfound home.

I have long been acquainted, with the propaganda of the dead,
A crow alights a chiseled stone,
On a leaning ledge,
I wish to leave it alone,
I let my husky lead me to the forest edge.
As if it knew I would evade,
I stumble over a marker grave,
I sigh, for on it was an electrode,
One that I recently tried to replace,
On a steam boiler,
At my older friend's decrepit place,
Who died upstairs,
As I worked in the basement below,
" My father died in this bed,
And that is how I will go."

                        *
The day before, a black cat ran out from this neglected yard,
" Thats not good,"
While we drove in his old Buick beat-up car,
I thought only heathen lore,
Then I saw his lonely bedroom light on,
As he returned my calls no more,
And outside my home,
" Lost Cat, Named Lucky"
And a handsome reward.
                     *
Like Datura growing in this graveyard grass,
That only opens when the visiting hours have past,
My childhood was like the evening primrose,
Of this neglected ground,
That blossomed only under the moon,
With no other soul around.
And many more occurences than these,
More than Datura's delirious seeds,
My friends lonely bedroom light–
From the street,
Like white petals at night–
Wasting his electricity.
                          *
Lucky has moved into a nearby charred out house,
Like a shadow he enters in,
From a shadow he comes out,
I knew that family growing up,
When will the builder clear that lot?
Days ago a happy facade, now is not.
Datura unfurls her blossoms,
To a blackened home, on a blackened plot.
                            *
Oh Datura, a shadow now calls out to be free,
In a voice sisterly,
Is it true you give sight like no one else,
A midnight stroll, during the light of day,
Fog rises, gestures to me, then dispels,
The moon flower is in full array,
The nightclouds of your seeds,
I am benighted,
The sun has set and now I see,
I hear the attic door opening,
Out runs a young girl–
Hugging me.
Lucky stalks down the charred steps,
A bedroom light fades,
The wan moon is coming to an end,
The morn shall light upon your face,
Your flowers will unfurl again,
No longer to starry night, no longer in shadow space.

A walk nowither in winter's wasted wood,
Finding a deep quarried chasm,
From whence I stood,
A raven suddenly alights from a stunted tree,
Over breathless edge, eye level with me,
Like a pyschopomp with much ensiled underneath,
***** the raven over a quarry that has long since ceased,
And as if those wings flapped off the dust,
Of the ensiled toy size trucks,
I began to look around, in the wasted wood surround,
Everything matched the chasm, in its strangled hue,
Even a derelict station wagon, and through its cracked rear view,
A television set, cooking wares--
Far from any path but perhaps are overgrown,
All reflected the sides of the chasm, even in their ghastly chrome,
Even the Knickerbockers in their amber glass of old.
This site had no Rhodenite,  that much sought Stone of Love,
No Roxbury Pudding nor Chocolate Garnet were among,
Only the Granite Moonlit Rose,
And all her blushing has succumbed.
So I took the lightless amber,
And threw it into the blank dumb deep,
" Who are you, what you cannot speak?"
I impugned and laughed off the quarry,
And continued on to leave,
And when I would have thought the glass hit bottom,
I felt tracked and not alone,
In the corner of my view,
With amber eyes now sunlit gold,
A fox, furred in granite, of the silver blue Breathless Rose.

Do I ever cross his mind?
When she is sleeping by his side?
Does he ever recall the night our eyes met?
When he was standing outside in the winter’s cold
Did he ever think of me as his lover?
When I was wrapped beside him in velvet sheets?
Does he ever recall about the time
When I was on my knee on a marble surface?
 
Nostalgia plays its tricks with me
I was left to carry our will to the summit
We were always meant to be with each other
Even if it was all just in my fantasies

My heart betrayed me the moment our eyes met
He was standing on the altar with her
And my eyes started to melt

I noticed a strange look on his face
He looked worried when he looked at me
yet he kissed her and left me there