To Frankenstein's Monster, With Love

Child of my mind,
I have pursued you,
worked my brain to fever for you,
and you, yellow cadaver, lie there.
How can I help but cringe?

The corpses I have exhumed for you
from the graves of dead poets
with wrinkled skin and sallow eyes,
the dry words that fashion your limbs,
the wet marrow of your bones –
when clay Adam sprawled motionless
did the living spark diminish his Creator?

Once the syllables are formed,
their pattern set,
it is irrevocable.
The fires galvanize you.
Electricity twitches your form.
You lurch forward to the page.

Oh, my love,
you are not human.
Less than nothing,
a voice I claimed as mine,
but you are not me,
and there is no immortality
in the lines you speak.

You are nothing,
but you are mine!
And I will love you
lurching and breathing
through your phrases
until the mobs come with torches
to burn your pages away.


copyright (c) Daniel J. Bishop 1998 and 2011