portait of a vampire
Arthur Chappell
Part One -Commission.
Artist, I am unable to see me
So you must paint what you see.
Do not let fear cloud your perspective
If you are to work, I must let you live.
Do you see before you a monster or a man
I can't tell but you as an artist surely can.
I have to see myself through your expert eyes
So don't exaggerate my features. Do not tell lies.
Some Surrealists grossly elongated my fangs
So tonight either my true portrait or your carcass hangs
On a meat hook at my ancestral gallery.
Paint as true a picture as you can of me.
None of those bat like beasts of Neo-gothic Romanticism
I want something in Post-Modernistic Expressionist Realism
Something approximating photographic quality
So I know that what I look at is truly a picture of me.
I made one of your kind into a vampire like me
But when his soul died so too did his creativity
I admired his work too, he was extremely good
They had invited him to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
But when we saw that he could not possibly paint me
I cast him into the sunlight to end his pain and misery.
I was tempted to follow him out into daylight
But I stayed in the end with shadows and night.
Many artists have attempted to find my true depiction
But I dismiss their efforts as nothing but fiction.
I need to know if I have changed or stayed the way i was before
I was naive enough to invite my Master in through the door
Receiving his bite to take death and also resurrection
While losing the ability to cast or see my own reflection
Which did not bother me a great deal at all at first
I was learning how to hunt and take blood to quench my thirst
But centuries later I forget what I looked like when I was alive
So if you can bring back the memories for me I'll let you survive
2/. Completion
Nosferatu, I will try to paint you the way I see you
I am strangely curious to see the end result too
So I'll paint you to the best of my skill and ability
But seeing you as you would be seen is an impossibility
That is an apparent truth in any art or craft in fact
The many artists you commissioned and then attacked
Did their creative best to complete said commission
I will paint you I promise, but first with your permission
Let me show you some work submiitted by students today from my art class
Unlike yourself the model portrayed is visible in a looking glass
Notice how differently each student of mine has portrayed her
But each picture is true art, not one of them betrays her
Some focus on her sublime sexual, sensual appearance
Others have taken a more personal perspective and stance
This chap for instance in his rabid fanatical Christianity
Sees the model as a lady of little virtue and no morality
For being so willing to pose like that before so many men in the nude
While this most promising newcomer doesn't think of her as remotely rude
Presenting her instead as a lady of almost Goddess like virtue
And if you could paint her your work would be different too
No two artists portray her as the same woman
For there is no way any two artists ever can
Nor could we see you, in the way you expect of us
I see you drowning like some mythical Narcissus
Trying to reach out for an idealised unnatainable dream
` While some would see you a monster who makes people run and scream
Do I portray a demon from Hell who inspires nothing but dread
Or as a man who was once living, but who is now dead?
Like my predecessors my work is doomed to displease you
No artist can capture the true essense of any Nosferatu
You need someone with cold hearted objectivity
While artists always work from a point of subjectivity.
Some of my students would be inspired by the promise
Of living forever because of your Vampire's kiss
Painting you from their own passionate desires,
To become creatures of darkness, like you, vampires.
I can see why some might fond you romantic or even erotic
Others would have difficulty looking closely at eyes so hypnotic
And charismatic as you would appear in their mind's eyes
Each painting of you bears truth for no true artist lies.
If you were Jesus would I draw you like God personified
Or as a man enduring the agonies of being tortured and crucified?
Here is Bosch's Christ nailed up in brutal realistic depiction
Of the events on Golgotha when Jesus was murdered by crucifixion
This art book's got lots of pictures of the Cross in it too
Take a good look at them poor deluded and doomed Nosferatu
Here's another extremely graphic crucifixion scene
Each artist has a different idea what Jesus's death should mean
Look at some more of them as the images turn you to dust
That I will use as an essential ingredient in the painting you must trust
Me to use in my portrait of your final demise
A heap of dust is all you are now in anyone's eyes
Your existence defies the laws of science and causality
But in art alone you will now find true immortality
I'm adding your dust to the paint to put you into the portrait
Then, as I'm tired after such hard work I'm going straight
To bed but I'll get a frame for you sometime tomorrow or Tuesday
And hang your portrait beside my own , signing it Dorian Grey.
Arthur Chappell www.arthurchappell.clara.net/contents.htm
arthurc...@clara.net