Scorn

What did you think?

That succubi never get hormonal, never want to pull the blankets over their heads, never burn the toast?

The Succubus has taken the liberty

Of setting fire to

An old warehouse where yuppies live in lofts...

She watches

As they desperately try to save bottles of their favorite wines

Before the heat makes them explode.

In the morning,

The joy of this gives way,

And she feels melancholy and adrift.

She is the daughter of an incubus and a Russian countess;

She played in the snow with the sables

And slept with the wolves like a feral angel.

She enters other people's dreams

Because her own leave her in pieces, like a paper snowflake--

She never knows, upon waking,

What day it is, or whether she is made of dust or diamonds.

The Succubus has been trying to forget Chloe.

The Succubus has been trying to remember

What it was about that calm-eyed girl

That slew her and left her weak.

Always, she has slipped into love like an unplanned crime,

And always,

She has loved the one who whispers in her ear, "We will never be caught,

And even if we are,

I couldn't care."

It is shaking the ocean-floor stillness of such women

That makes her heart keep beating...

It is knowing they will leave

That makes her burn out the yuppies in their lofts...

She whispers to their blackened skulls

"Poor baby,"

And rocks them like dolls,

All the while scorning them

As she scorns herself

For forgetting that perdition begins always with a kind word

And a dream of a new friend

Looking up and smiling

At sight of her.

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