9/30 "Open Letter from Count Dracula to the Modern Vampire" by Gus Wood

My children,

You have stopped listening it,
the symphony of howls,
the children of the night.

They need a leader,
some shuffling menagerie of smoke
and campfire reasons to stay awake,
they need a black caped Moses.
I had such high hopes for you all.
All the power you've been given.
I gave you all the room you needed to grow fangs,
and use them.

But you, you little-kids forever,
did not see the world I gave you.
You ignored the pulsing open veins
full of sticky red promise,
my poor misguided child don't you realize wheel
of this world wields
only two constant un-shifting truths:
We exist,
and we are thirsty.
Stretch your lips, children.
Roar back to the animals who long for you,
let them know they have a leader again.

Do not dull the edges of your name with your pretty-eyed mistakes.
Humans are no prize.
It pains me to watch you suck excuses out of animals, you're growing children sipping applesauce down,
do not play with your food.
The lion never falls in love with the tourist foolish enough to come near.
I can no longer sit and watch you purr in a cage.

I lived on the lips of innkeepers, priests, villagers, floating on clouds of their fear for centuries.

You are undoing everything I have built, yanking us back to stuffed animal cereal box jokes,
no one is scared of us.
Do not let them turn you into something they can keep in the light.

These humans are whittling away your fangs with every kiss,
do not let them laugh at you.

I loved this world so much that I gave them a perfect monster to huddle in the dark against.
That monster, now old as the dust, calls out for a successor. Some new set of teeth to hold the world by the throat.

Listen to their lullaby, my children of the night.
The people in the city beneath are sleeping, helpless.
There is a symphony of rhythm in their throats.
Fill your starving bellies,
Do not disappoint me.