Vampires in Love

Our love glitters inside us:
veins strung with lights

like secret Yule trees
while we rage for blood:

the hunger of Vampire bats,
living in the delicious heart

of Halloween still with the
Christmas spirit of giving,

offering our necks, mouths, and
bodies to each other as presents
and tricks or treats, dressed
up in the kinky costumes of  

our passions that frighten
little children who come

to our door asking for the gifts
of candy behind love’s scary masks.

Clowns Showing Teeth

All the malls have certainly changed,
full of rubbish, screaming children,
and sinister clowns, baring their teeth 
between pale red lips, watching me, mockingly,
intently, like pinkly-bewigged gangs at twilight
loitering with murderous intent.

Obviously clowns are not what they
used to be: death mask make-up
slathered on like sour pie cream,
no craft, no art, not much color,
all sweating something foul
like spoiled, greasy butter.

The circus is over,
the masks are off, 
but the face of Bozo still grins
into his dressing room mirror
while coldly loading his revolver.

The Faltering Circus

Aged feet shuffling
in front of each other
without (their children
hope) falling: wobbly
as if on a tightrope,
poised on knotty
varicose veins,
hovering above
the breathlessly
erect crowd
where every
spectator in 
this faltering 
circus is finally
a ghostly performer.

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Thomas White has a triple identity: speculative fiction writer, poet, and essayist. His poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in online and print literary journals and magazines in Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He is also a Wiley-Blackwell Journal author who has contributed essays to various nonliterary journals on topics ranging from atheism, the meaning of Evil, Elon Musk, Plato, The Matrix, and reality as a computer simulation. The Encyclopedia Britannica selected one of his previously published essays on Hannah Arendt, Adolph Eichmann, and the “Banality of Evil” for inclusion on its website, Britannica.com.

In addition, he has presented three of his essays to the West Chester University Poetry Conference (West Chester, Pennsylvania), as well as read his poetry on Australian radio. His poetry collection Ghostly Pornographers, published by Weasel Press/Sinister Stoat Press, is available on Kindle and through the publisher’s website.

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