Quoth the Raver, Nevermore

Each day I thought would never end,

Daylight dies and night begins.

Go black alive, stretch fishnets high

Around the tattoo slathered thigh.

Rave pulsing out the flashing beat

All hail us wild Ecstasy freaks,

Lovely grinding our teeth en mass

Lovely was our loneliness

And more, you knew her name to be….

No more would I trace lithe piercings

Placed Goth knows where, for me to find.

Oh, the stinging and the ringing and her smell, smell, smell,

Ere the gnashing and the lashing of the swell.

Eros vulture perches, wings arise,

Dark shadows stretch.  All my red wine

Gone for naught, the drowning hour drags

Asunder, frothing bleating hearts a’ thunder.

Reciting lines of coke we pranced

Around the spinnings of the dance.

Licentious stripling vampires bleed

Lust, rabid bath secures the being

Alive in death’s own waking dream.

No mortal kiss black-rust of dawn,

Passion must, with youth, expire.

Oh, the bleeding and the feeding and her breast, breast, breast,

Ere the dagger and the danger of the rest.

Published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination

Summer 2000, p. 38