As I mentioned earlier, when I was young
both my parents worked and I was very much on my own.
And one of the more constructive things I did during that period
was to collect horror movies.
And I did it with a vengeance.
It was a great time to be collecting horror movies too
because there was this great repertory theater, really,
of people who are making these movies like John
Carradine, and Lon Chaney Jr, and Bela Lugosi, and Boris
Karloff, and Basil Rathbone and Gale Sondergaard great,
heroes like that.
And I've always been fascinated by horror movies
and has never been quite the same since then.
But I was reading in the New York Times earlier this year,
earlier last year and there was an article
about a man who's going to Romania to do
a book on the Dracula legend.
And he had a grant to do this.
And he wasn't having much luck really, he
wasn't finding very much material
but he was going to write this book anyway
because he had this grant.
And I don't usually use a quote above my poem
because I think they become crutches
but there was this one quote from the times.
I think it's one of the great newspaper quotes of all time
and let me read it to you.
It's from the New York Times February the 5th 1970.
Quote, "Most country people around Transylvania
looked blank when asked if they've ever
heard of the vampire Dracula."
[LAUGHTER]
So I was inspired by this, believe me.
With my background I couldn't resist it.
So I made this poem about it and I call
it "Zimmer Fearing Anemia."
[LAUGHTER]
"Nobody sucks blood in Transylvania anymore.
The fusty castles have lost their shadows
being broken open to the sunlight.
Stakes are used exclusively as landmarks,
and pale ladies are presumed safe now
in their four poster beds.
The peasants believe that Bela Lugosi is a brand of goulash.
They laugh at the ancient legends
but they don't feel as bad as I do.
And they haven't seen or heard what I have.
How the elf owl peered through the dry ice fog
and screamed when the kill was made.
How gypsy bears moaned beneath the mic booms and the moon
glared like the eye of a wolf that the clouds that spun
like flax within the filtered lenses.
Nobody believes that blood is sucked in Transylvania anymore.
But there are days when I feel so bad, when my head seems
like a prune, and my body is folding, folding,
that I find myself fingering my neck
to be sure that two little holes aren't there.