Weary, leery, peepers bleary; far from cheery here; it’s eerie.
And when the faint rays of sun are drained, we hasten to chain the front door.
We are fearful in checked napping that there will be a neck tapping,
And the fiend will be neck lapping, lapping up our vein-fed gore.
At such visitors we shudder, lapping up our vein-red gore.
Ogres rip us, then explore.

No one sues to be a member of this crew gone on a bender,
Drunk on blood our bodies render and pump in corpuscle corps.
Eagerly we wish the morrow, when the sun begins to harrow
Night and put it in its burrow, burrow where it’s seen no more.
Then up there: the radiant blazin’ orb that warms us to our core—
They refrain from necks to score.

At first glimmer, gladness burstin’ forth because they won’t be thirstin’,
Rippin’, lippin’, sippin’, drippin’ of the liquid that outpours.
It’s no veins they will be eating during day because retreating
Are they to their squalid meeting, with their coffins on the floor—
Else they’re dust upon that floor.

I wish days could be much longer and the daylight be much stronger,
But these horrid undead hunger when the moon’s the hue of hoar.
It is in vain to be sapping them; with stakes we must be zapping
Their hearts, with these stakes then tapping into their repellent core.
But I’m scared and I’m worried too. “Won’t YOU do it?” I implore.
Heartiness ain’t my te, for-.

Yes, the darkness I am fearing; with the hardy I’m not peering
For the reaming schemes for staking out teeming mavens of gore.
On the hammer need be strokin’ someone amped on speed or coke ’n’
Extra vigorously pokin’, expeditious at the chore,
And whose shoulder won’t grow sore.

But to whom can I be turning, who has a tomb-stopping yearning;
Excels so well at knelling bells for swelled-up hell’s paramours?
We need a hero who can’t miss, one who can extinguish that “kiss,”
During which his pants he shan’t piss, pounding once, twice, thrice. Encore!
Till that heart is stilled and torment ours becomes from days of yore.
Now, we’re not winning the war.

There came a collective mutter, followed by a studly stutter:
“I will s-stop vein-drain cravin’. Up f-f-ain’t courage please shore!”
It was a man who’s quite lazy. We thought, he must be quite crazy.
Could it be that in a daze we heard this boast shy of a roar?
Perhaps perched beneath his phallus was a pair unknown before—
An “au pair” come to the fore?

He declared while slyly smiling: like a piston pounding piling
Would his arm be as he harmed the wretches leching for our gore.
“I w-will quell hellish cravin’, as in a f-flick by Craven.
M-my courage won’t be cavin’; in f-fact it will s-soar!”
Under terror we’d been slavin’; we had feared night heretofore. . .
Throats a-cravin’, necks to score.

Despite speech that was ungainly, he nonetheless spoke quite plainly.
No one here would be demeaning as some might have done before.
Those who had refrained from fleeing and their door locks had been keying
In their blue jeans had been peeing, producing prodigious pours,
“How,” we asked him, “will this task grim be accomplished? What’s the score?!”
How to tame the quest for gore?

Our stake maven answered boldly, but a trace in his tone told me,
Something in his voice said, don’t rejoice at what could be in store.
It prompted in me a shudder, like a cow’s o’er-engorged udder.
Could he vanquish the suck-blooders lurking just beyond the door?
My conundrum was not humdrum as I pondered either-or:
Good his word on necks to bore?

Every one of us was votin’ for him the fiends to be smotin’
But was he on the level or merely doling to us lore?
His skin looked like alabaster, maybe paler, even plaster
That’s created by a master sculptor engulfed in his chore.
Yet his eyes were as vermillion as lipstick some ladies wore—
Its brilliance would never bore.

Was our maven maybe lying as he stood, all of us eyeing
Like a man who lusted—was he trusted?—for a some sort of score?
His demeanor got me thinking as his fluttered lids were blinking
And suggesting the whites’ pinking. Conjunctivitis so sore?
What had caused the hue to skew to rosy red from normal hoar?
He croaked as if throat were sore.

So I sat, enmeshed in guessing about words he was expressing;
I sensed foulness as his loudness went sore-throat emote to roar.
My sentiments I was mining in attempts to be divining
Why I should then be opining he was wrong as a s’more
That was lacking chocolate lining and sublime marshmallow core. . .
Only grahams and nothing more.

My synapses like a senor, all the while becoming tenser
As I wondered why we never had spied this fellow before.
He looked like the Old World gentry; we should have posted a sentry
To vet all those who sought entry to safe room beyond the door.
Gaffe, oh gaffe permitted entry of this gent into our corps?
Throaty ravin’: “Send ’em war!”

“Bullshit,” thought I. “We’re bedeviled,” I concluded as eyes leveled
At a mirror: it was clearer than it had been just before.
We forsooth had been enchanted, but the truth had been decanted
“Look at the mirror!” I ranted. No reflection was in store.
From his ghostly throat emoted a carotid-craving roar:
“Quota cravin’, necks to score!”

“Oh shit!!” said I, “It’s bedeviled were we while we wrongly reveled.
“He’s a heathen who does not love us, a faux member of our corps.
But no time now for upbraidin’, because our hopes will be fadin’
And his fangs will be a-bladin’—there’ll be no time for rapport.
Insufficient stocks are laid in of the stakes with which we’d bore,
Croak the cravin’ quest for gore.”

The lips from canines were parting; the sharp tines started necks smarting.
Veins were rammed and pans turned blancher than the clouds above the shore.
It’s night and he had awoken; with slashing fangs he was pokin’
In Carotids that were broken open, foaming fresh-farmed gored.
’twas to late to stake his heart and make him dust upon the floor—
Throats a-lavin’, cleansed of gore.

It’s a cravin’ that’s befitting all of those who do neck slitting.
With our pallid mugs, we look like mimes, whose makeup few adore.
And our eyes like his are teeming with the scarlet color, meaning
That we’ll soon be out there reaming necks, questing for more and more.
Now our souls are overshadowed by a hope of veins to bore.
Palled we, drinking/licking/sipping/dripping/ripping evermore.