a list of my favorite fictional vampires (death xi.)

if a vampire could go to therapy he might say:
i want to burn.
the seven years winter was my punishment
and the summer, hot asphalt, my relief.
i was born obsessive--subclinical, but obsessive--
and i like to watch the disease sizzle
and the clean bloody gap it leaves.
in this fantasy i am a red shadow
on the bright flat parking lot
my absence, the clean scent of rubbing alcohol

my teeth fall out at night. in dreams
my fangs carry worms in their pulp.
let the sun to flay me
freeing my white spine and my white ribs
like ceramics, the statues my mother made during her divorce,
the sharp angles and clawed hands, a round stomach of agony
i cannot see my sideways turn
but my pound of flesh is cleaned,
placed in a sterile incinerator to be burnt

i hunt this monster, myself
i weaken it when i do not drink
it is so easy to close my mouth 
and to break my own teeth.
i want to burn.
end this life, a half, or maybe only a quarter
the men around me swollen with their own 
blood, and pumped with muscle, while i bloat
with worms and putrefaction.

the long sick night was my punishment
and this morning, hand to the dawn, my relief
i want to become so pure it hurts
end the sickness of feeding, the yellow-red infection
curdling inside my food
in this fantasy i am bound and fucked by angels
in this fantasy i am hard and thin with pain
in this fantasy i arch my back into the pain
my sex, the clean scent of rubbing alcohol

as a child i dug a blemish from my mother's skin
because i wanted to see the clean, bloody gap
now i walk into the sun to die a hero's death
i think my life has had a beautiful trajectory to it