Damp My Desire? Poem by Linda Hepner

Are you my vampire? That is what he said.
I’ll just describe it. I was on my bed
Soaking the sun and reading ‘Life and Fate’
Vasili Grossman wrote app. ’38,
Pondering the passing of the U
SSR, how the century flew,
In half of which we met and wooed and wed
When blinkeye later there were no more red
Flags or skies or eyes but only bank
Balances to crush us like a tank,
When, as I said, I pondered on the blood
Shed by the Bolshs and Mensheviks in mud
Of little villages along the Volga
Where tractored Igor lost his kerchiefed Olga
Who ran off with her Ivan, workers’ chief,
Whose speeches stirred her heart and brought to grief
The local branch of Solidarity
Doomed by the tractor driver’s clarity
About the future of dear Mother Russia
Seeing it was no better off than Prussia
And begging Comrade Olga to defect
Before their Cherry Orchards were all wrecked -
But she refused as Ivan won her heart
Until he in Siberia was parked
In retribution for his change of mind -
Bolshevik, Menshevik, Whites and Reds behind
The plots to overthrow first one regime
And then the other, flowing like a stream
Of blood until along came Uncle Joe
Whose name is one that every child would know
Because his beaming smile from every wall
Promised abundance if you didn’t call
His bluff, and death if you but listened to
The Voice of America or if a Jew
Especially a doctor you didn’t think
The banging on the door at night might shrink
Your family no less than Hitler’s laws
Depleting millions with his bloody paws….
Where was I, oh that’s right, upon my bed
Bathed in the setting sun and nicely fed
With challa, Borsht, potatoes, sour cream
Red apples, paprika on carp or bream,
Fuzzily fading in my sunset dream
When in he bursts, a kettle full of steam
With the most extraordinary question
Are you my vampire? Well, that ruined digestion
Being accused of sucking on his neck,
As if I were some Transylvanian Czech
And had depleted him of vital
Essences for which there is a title
I’m too much of a prude to mention here,
But say it’s like the froth upon a beer,
I’ll never figure out, how long my life,
What made him say that to his only wife!

A riddle by LRH
3.16.06