The reason there aren't so many vampyres
around these days is they don't like TV hype
and the intrusions of TV news crews. It transpires
that vampyres prefer late hours and like low light levels
because they're egregarious and don't like to be seen inebrious
in the middle of their heinous, intravenous revels.
Also, unfavorable reviews about transfusions
and the confusion caused by AIDS, at this juncture,
has definitely reduced the appeal of being seduced
by some crazed and gurgling Transylvanian
bloodsucker lusting to puncture the jugular,
or any other available vein again,
especially when you don't know if they've disinfected their fangs
or only licked them after draining their last victim.

After all, vampyres were brought up in castles
when there weren't antiseptics for gargles
and they haven't been taught prophylactic criteria
against such apocalyptic viral bacteria.
And if you've ever seen vampyres with condoms
on their teeth, you'll know what I mean.  
It's a scream. Everyone finds them hilarious. It'd be easier
to die laughing than to go down with anemia.
Also, like everyone else, vampyres hate ridicule.
No-one likes being seen as the fool.
  
And the other reason vampyres are scarce now
is that there are so many genuine muggers, hoods, crims,
druggies, financial leeches, homicidal maniacs,
psychopathic liars and genocidal tendencies to conjure up real fears
out there, that there's not much room left for quaint old-fashioned vampyres, poor dears.  

But do you know something? Even though they were naughty,
I miss their occasional ****. I know it was gory,
but those kisses, oh boy. We got into the femoral artery inside the thigh. It was *****. But when AIDs came along,
that was it.  Definitely bye-bye. Nobody wanted to die.  
These are the facts.  
So these vampyres were starving and they reverted to bats.  
Did a midnight flit,
and that's the end of my story.

SANDMAN
Can you see them?-lookin' for me to be them,
lookin' for my warmth to breath life to them,
the hollow men,yes men,fallow men,come follow men,
no heart no mind-mindsick and eyeblind,
sheep talkin' like wolves that I find,
most despicable-Dis-gusting unpredictable,
following the wind as it blows on their wick they're all
candles in the strong wind gutterin',
snipes from a distance yeah they're all utterin'

Great threats from great hollow chests,
that up close-don't stand inspection,
empty vessels-makin great noise,
hard men behind keyboards hands -poised,
with the poisoned pen ready to dip in the deep well,
of hatred they bring from deep hell's,
inside,a void,avoid if you can please employ-
aversion tactics needed,don't need it,
vampyres that need pyres,yellow they bleed it
Yellow right down to the backbone believe it...

                                 CHORUS

the hollow men,yes men,fallow men,come follow men,
Yes men Hollow men come follow men  
Yes Men-Shallow men come follow men, the hollow men,

The hollow men,yes men,fallow men,come follow men,
Yes men Fallow men come follow men  
Yes Men-Shallow men come follow then
while I tell you bout the Hollow men

                              
                       JAY

Yeah, **** right I can see them.
Trolls in holes. I'm willin' to bleed 'em.
Society's detritis,
..delighted by the slightest sign of weakness.
Bleakness of their lives underlined by the lies they employ..
.. in their contrived..
..cyber sphere.
Scavengin' on carrion.
Peckin' at the carcass. Behind the veil of anonymity.
Sit in darkness as they hammer out calamity.
No nobility or amity. Cyber-highway poison.
I got the remedy.
Hollow husks skulk and lust..
..for coat-tails to ride on. Soon turn to dust.
Rusting hulks their disgusting bulk decaying on the shore.
Soon to be forgotten.
The Yes Men, the Hollow Men, the fallow men.
The everything is borrowed men.
The no tomorrow men.
The follow slowly to the gallows men.

*The Hollow Men, Yes men, fallow men, come follow men.
Yes men, shallow men, come follow men.
Yes men, Hollow Men.
Never follow them. The Hollow Men.
The Hollow Men, Yes men, fallow men, come follow men.
Yes men, shallow men, deal in sorrow men.
Yes men. Don't ever follow them.
A fool strolls to the gallows man.

The Full Moon
Brings to mind
red eyed vampyres
witches covens
wolves howling

but to me it is
beautiful ,a soft cool wind
black pinpricked skies
the flickering red/whitelight
of a passing jet

the distant view of a
thunderstorm
nothing is nicer than to
view the world at night

A dream took shape, defined by the contours of the hole
you cut into the fog when you left that night.
You were walking on a dark cobbled street,
the drizzle coming down like sheets of silk,
the pale streetlight reflecting in the sheen
of the cobbles your gentle footfalls fell upon.
A man in a flatcap holding a skull-handled cane
smoking a cigarette with strong, yellow-tipped fingers,
watched as you ambled past his eyeline and down the hill.
He looked up to me, threw me a wink across the distance
and turned to follow you, his slippers sliding on the cobbles.

He disappeared from view and soon I heard the shrill
call for help come from your hastily muffled mouth,
but I just stood there and waited for the cries to die,
becoming drowned out by the drizzle pitter-pattering
upon the old cobbles and the stone wall lining the street.
The man came back up the hill, breathing heavily,
a line of blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth,
and he stood back under his solitary streetlight,
lit another cigarette and threw me another wink,
licking his lips and giving me a secret freemasonlike nod.
I picked up the shovel resting against my thigh…

When I woke, I thought of vampyres from the near east,
Transylvanian midnight hunters longing for the blood of virgins
to soothe the burning pain flowing in their centuries-old veins.
Still wearing my overcoat, I stood up and looked out the window,
overlooking the gaslighted cobble street enshrouded in fog,
the cemetery across the street, the stone wall doused in drizzle,
and I swear I could see the hole you left behind your body
as it vacated by world to find a new life to forage from.
I tapped out the dottle in my pipe, stuffed in fresh tobacco,
and lit the pipe, creating a large plume of smoke that quickly filled the room,
indistinguishable from the world-weary fog crawling beyond my window.

And then I saw the man in the flatcap, the cigarette hanging from his lips,
bent down from the rain, surely much too hard to gain anything from it,
but the smoke did indeed snake its way up into the air from the end,
like snakes of blue that decided gravity was far too cumbersome to believe in,
ready to escape the atmosphere and find a better way of living.
I began to feel empathetic for the smoke when I noticed the focus of the man’s gaze;
the window I was now standing at, where I too was smoking and gazing,
and he threw me a wink across the distance followed by an almost imperceptible nod.
I dropped my pipe, the wood splitting upwards along the shank,
almost shearing the tenon, but none of this I noticed as I stepped away from the window
that allowed the figment of a dream to gaze upon me and for I to gaze upon him.

I sat on my bed for an indescribable length of time, planning to stand up,
find the courage to step towards the window again to lay me hallucination to rest,
but the smoke must have still been stirring in my eyes because tears flowed,
and all I could think of was that figure of you disappearing into the fog
and how I let you disappear without saying but a word, without so much as a fight,
to try to convince you that I could change and that I was ready to change for you.
I may as well have picked up a shovel and started digging your grave,
or would that hole in the ground have my name upon the headstone?
Whatever recourse led me to this situation, I was surely now stuck
with no mode of transport available to allow me to venture to other pastures,
to view upon other cobbles, ones not lined by a cemetery,
ones not housing an hallucination that smokes snakes and winks and nods.
But here I am, wearing an overcoat in my bedchambers, dreaming of you,
because that is all you are now, walking away into the fog of a memory.