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dVerse Poets Pub – Poetics

Today Bjorn is prompting us at dVerse Poets Pub for Tuesday Poetics. He is asking us to write something “Halloweeny”, so here is my contribution. I have always been fascinated with late Victorian life and especially the people who used to hang about the extremely fashionable Café Royale in Soho. It’s denizens have always had an “alternate” story for me. This poem in no way implies anything about Wilde or Whistler. It is after all, just a poem. And the Café Royale is still in existence serving their incomparable cafe mochas. Posted for dVerse Poets Pub and Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-tuesday-platform_31.html

public domain photo James Whistler

The Salon at the Café Royale
Because of his story about Dorian Gray
everyone thought Oscar Wilde was a vampire.
Everyone thought he based it on himself.
Well, he didn’t –
He based in on a young man of whom he was enamored.
However he was a vampire.
His friend Whistler was a werewolf.
I know. I often stood in my window
when I was a child and watched the
two of them leaving the house next door.
I saw how they gleamed in the moonlight.
I watched how they leapt over the garden wall
with the effortless grace of deer.
I watched when they returned and
I saw them splattered with blood
and heard Oscar’s high laughter
and Whistler’s lower chuckles.
I saw them. Yes I saw them.
I was not dreaming when I saw
the vampire and the werewolf
leap down from the wall
and settle weightlessly as dead leaves
upon the lawn.