A London Vampire

By chant

“I have a personal dislike to vampires, and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to reveal their secrets.”

— Lord Byron

“You do not know where you are going, nor why you are going; enter everywhere, reply to anything. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse.”

— Arthur Rimbaud

Story by Ian McLachlan consisting of 26 poems about a contemporary London vampire.

Filmed versions of the poems can be found at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhOXE2vY3mQooRPbGQ2WL35FoIcNMke0w

Twitter: @ianjmclachlan

  • 1007 reads
Cherry

1. L'heure verte

By chant on Fri, 05 Dec 2014

Green after showers, the sky beckons her out into late Autumn, a taxi ride & by accident it seems your paths cross. A Soho bar. You sit close as...
Poem
Certificate U
1 likes
Cherry

3. The Plot

By chant on Sun, 07 Dec 2014

Discreet blue flowers border his garden. In the bosky dark he spades. Effortlessly the clods fly & with white hands he pats the trench walls...
Poem
Certificate U
Gold cherry

4. Panic

By chant on Mon, 08 Dec 2014

Sunup - not your natural time; top deck RnB pushers blight the bus to King’s Cross. Liz from Accounts, noting your pallor, rattles vitamin pills...
Poem
Certificate U
2 likes
Cherry

5. The Bite

By chant on Tue, 09 Dec 2014

You are masquerading as a normal person in Finsbury Park. Nearby, deer-like, BMXers group, debate their mate’s stag do. A ginger-topped junkie jogs...
Poem
Certificate PG
Cherry

6. The Seduction

By chant on Wed, 10 Dec 2014

A thousand pages of photocopying & it is night. You are leaving the lit hive, stepping out onto the street. Time to feed. Taller, harder in the...
Poem
Certificate PG
Cherry

7. No-man’s-land

By chant on Thu, 11 Dec 2014

As dusk falls, the rose bush still, trilling voices on the air, a girl applying rouge in the flat opposite, he departs for the mall. He can roam its...
Poem
Certificate U
1 likes
Cherry

8. Night in

By chant on Fri, 12 Dec 2014

A cold caller at vamping clinics, their infrared alarms are blind to you. You plunder, vanish. It’s back-up for the nights in. Drunken packs baying...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

9. Social call

By chant on Sat, 13 Dec 2014

Ears ringing like he’s quit a gig, back from tea & scones with an old work colleague, her three small kids. This courteous hour of keeping...
Poem
Certificate U

10. N43

By chant on Sun, 14 Dec 2014

Riding the night bus back to your red-curtained studio, mud skies, streetlights like lit Gauloises, Got a smoke? a white boy asks, & idly on the...
Poem
Certificate U

11. Scholomance

By chant on Mon, 15 Dec 2014

Off the dark lake the mist rises & the Scholomance group meets. Two hundred invitees. Billionaires? Neoliberal grandees? Or, as the conspiracy...
Poem
Certificate U

12. Man-that-was

By chant on Tue, 16 Dec 2014

Proofing a project plan quite meaningless behind its business blag, the still office punctuated by drugged sighs, through the after-lunch sludge you...
Poem
Certificate U

13. Here

By chant on Wed, 17 Dec 2014

When from your crate you burst that had borne you by road, by rail, by water to Queenhithe, to the city’s spectacular disregard, a drudge’s life, by...
Poem
Certificate U

14. Poetic licence

By chant on Thu, 18 Dec 2014

At Barfly you tweet to your two-hundred-odd followers. A manga character with blue hair is lipping the mic. She has Genius scrawled in marker on her...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

15. The Vision

By chant on Fri, 19 Dec 2014

South Bank: soap bubble makers, Hare Krishna dancers, God save King Hash Tag! kids are yelling on the Millennium Bridge. A man dressed as a Viking...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

16. River

By chant on Sat, 20 Dec 2014

Scudding a river of headlamps, mirrored glass, the beaten iron air. Paying your fare, crossing the park on foot, two men overtake you, dirt-stamped,...
Poem
Certificate PG
Cherry

17. Advert

By chant on Sun, 21 Dec 2014

Prof. desiring career change seeks band to manage. Indie/ Rock/Goth preferred. Must own own instruments. You’ll be cool, hungry, sunlight averse...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

18. Rush

By chant on Mon, 22 Dec 2014

Some little punk comes up to you in Koko: When’s No Reflection’s next gig? he asks. The manager of an avant-garde Goth band, your burgundy suit’s...
Poem
Certificate PG
Cherry

19. Warrant

By chant on Tue, 23 Dec 2014

History’s your prime concern when the flak-jacketed thugs burst in. Have you deleted it? If your last Google visit gets out ... No, they’ve busted...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

21. Vanity project

By chant on Tue, 30 Dec 2014

Chill hands gripping an iron bar, you deadlift while a man with Gone Too Far tattooed on his deltoid stares at himself in the mirror. Live fast, die...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

22. Burn

By chant on Wed, 31 Dec 2014

You turned a brood of skivers & hair-washers into No Reflection ; now they want to self-manage. Like an undertaker you beat their door. Invited...
Poem
Certificate PG
Cherry

23. Taken

By chant on Fri, 02 Jan 2015

He rides in the back with the other unnamed noblemen because to them he’s the same. It’s like Bastille Day, but he’s in a police van, siren sawing,...
Poem
Certificate U

24. The Trial

By chant on Sat, 03 Jan 2015

Why should the world sit in judgement on you? Its social contract was a cage, kept men like song birds. You served liberty. As it is the nature of...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

25. John Doe

By chant on Sun, 04 Jan 2015

They feed you blood from a machine are kind, want to know about you. They feed you contaminated blood sometimes. Then you see heaven in the sulphur...
Poem
Certificate U
Cherry

26. Turning point

By chant on Mon, 05 Jan 2015

Loitering by the park gate, closing time, as if waiting for someone, black fields lapped by car headlights, he's waiting for you. Can't be more than...
Poem
Certificate U