Poem copyright Ian Irvine, 2018, all rights reserved.
Photo of Whitby Abbey, copyright ian irvine, 2018, all rights reserved.


Fake Goths eventually learn that Dracula is real

Real in the capitalist sense of real

A blood sucking entity

Everywhere and nowhere

You have to see the bigger picture

To see, to really see, a vampire

He's perched above the cliff face tonight

Stretching his velveteen wings.

A yawning langour. As the sun sets,

He surveys the mist-heavy coast, the harbour

The many-coloured and chinking boats

In the lamp-lit estuary.

The Abbey ruins are silent - the day's tourists

Have retreated to warm inns,

Television dreams and internet communities.

He flutters luxuriously, launchers himself

Skyward like a vulture, then hovers just above the

The Abbey's highest sacred arch.

Fake Goths playing trinket instruments,

In bleak dance-halls, are about to learn

That Count Dracula is real,

Real in the capitalist sense of real -

A life-sucking entity

Everywhere and nowhere.


[Part of the 'Explain Yourself to Goya' sequence].