Homo Vampiris

It’s a shadow. I can watch from it. It’s not the cool before dawn, or the twilight sun death. Oh those are the moments. Immortality gets really fucking boring, a skulking half-life of tepid neons and muted monochrome. Colours, bled from the world. No preternatural night sight. No grand romances, gothic castles and no harem. Which in the end leaves you just the same geek leafing through newspapers and not eating popcorn at all night cinema outlets. Pretending to give a fuck about the French film that’s all extended close ups and random scenes of violence. But a twilight, ah that’s worth the risk.

Sometimes though, just sometimes, on a day when the winter sun burns weakest and you know your ground, your shade. You can dice with a second death. And aren’t those the grand moments? That’s living, vicarious yeah, but what else have I got?

Stake out a shadow, and take some care. There are patches of ever-dark, places that never see the sun. Some simple maths, weather charts. Watch the day folk walk day lives. Cornettos and strappy tops where the breasts strain against light cotton. A risk, certainly, a shadow shifts as the sun does, and nobody wants to be the sun-dried Nosferato twig who didn’t consider his shadows properly before venturing out.

But you take your chances. For a look at life that isn’t sucking at raw steak and associating with what can charitably be called nightlife. Even those, you cannot get too close to. Cool kid up in the club? Think again, unless you want an unexpected UV facelift. Do not pass Go. Street life? Feed on it or be arrested with it. Arrest is fine, until they put you out on the street next morning. In sunlight. The great lie of ab-death isn’t the healing myth, although there is some comfort in slightly accelerated recuperation. The notion of spontaneous miracle-healing was always a clear bullshit. But the idea that vampriric undeath makes you cool is the greatest falsehood. Fixed forever as the same fuck up you were when you had any right to label yourself human.

So cool you’re watching kids skinning up from the shade of a small chapel dedicated to Nuns who lingered to long with the victims of the Black Death. So cool you have no thumb on your left hand because you assumed ‘immortal’ meant ‘able to grow back body parts’.

So I watch. Shadow. There is no release from this tiny shaded segment of course. I’m playing with fire. With sun.

Before me a parade unfolds on the street past the graveyard wall, a dragon wends a way forth and ecstatic drummer girls smell of sweet sweat as they pass. As the sun reaches its nadir the floats cease.

Another failure. One more year to my existence. One day I’ll find the courage to step out of the half-light