A Vampire at an Art Exhibition

A vampire is present:
present as presence which cannot prescence prescence,
but can be present to present presence,
rather in the manner a stage cannot view its audience.

The performance has already been set
& our vampire flits in the wings,
masquerading to curtain calls & falls,
to echoes of applause.

The play is called Vampire at an Art Exhibition,
performed by audience participation,
home ground to a vampire:
only we know it is blood it seeks.

The stage has aleady been hung:
here a curtain draped as a sky,
there draped as a floor et sal:
everything has been hung
& all the hung audience
have to perform
is to enter & exit from the wings.
All a vampire has to do is the other.
Blood for the one who dances in
the hall of red death vampire concertto.

You gaze into an image of Narcissus
immersed in a radiance greater than its own.
You paint the moon on water,
an eye swallowed in a mirror.
You follow the eye of the wall
following you, you turn on it,
a faceless face, as it turned on you.

The stage is set, it is blood you seek
to shadows which as echoes seek to embrace
you with flesh even as the play is written,
Vampire at an Art Exhibition,
Including Audience Participation
& Kismet, Hardy!?

La Chaise is not La Ronde,
a vampire bites into a work of art
but once on the impassable bay.
Eternal return of the shade, blood,
kiss me hard.

I am the vamp, its clinging lamp,
I am the pyre, phoenix & dust.
I am tides & blood & moon
& I will come again my love
like a red red rose,
when all the seas gang dry
& the rock melts into the sand
though it take ten thousand year*

*My Love is Like A Red Red Rose. R. Burns.

Copyright Robin Ouzman Hislop 2003
All rights reserved.

A Vampire at an Art Exhibition