Valerie Clarke
What other needs
What other needs than blood do vampires have?
Is it to sense a heartbeat under theirs,
to infiltrate a place of human love?
So many years alive, yet not alive,
hour by hour their dark addiction grows.
What other needs than blood do vampires have?
Shuffling and pale when they at first arrive
at opened panes, they search throughout the house
to infiltrate a place of human love,
to touch soft hair, warm hands, the throat that gives
a further day of life. Apart from these,
what other needs than blood do vampires have?
So many, they might say, that which we crave
is never freely given. The rich blood sours
and fails to take the place of human love.
Our bodies cold, so cold, for we must live,
night's immigrants, no arms to shelter us.
What other needs than love do vampires have?
To infiltrate a place of human love.
Is it to sense a heartbeat under theirs,
to infiltrate a place of human love?
So many years alive, yet not alive,
hour by hour their dark addiction grows.
What other needs than blood do vampires have?
Shuffling and pale when they at first arrive
at opened panes, they search throughout the house
to infiltrate a place of human love,
to touch soft hair, warm hands, the throat that gives
a further day of life. Apart from these,
what other needs than blood do vampires have?
So many, they might say, that which we crave
is never freely given. The rich blood sours
and fails to take the place of human love.
Our bodies cold, so cold, for we must live,
night's immigrants, no arms to shelter us.
What other needs than love do vampires have?
To infiltrate a place of human love.
Valerie Clarke is published in magazines and 'On the Buses'. Her first collection, Dance of Love and Death, was published by the National Poetry Foundation in 2001.
Page(s) 13
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The