By Furqan Jabbar
Bram Stoker sat at his desk one day,
His pen poised to write and play,
He let his imagination roam,
To a world far from home.
To Transylvania he went, a land of legend,
A place where the shadows never end,
Where ancient castles rise to the sky,
And creatures lurk beneath the moon’s bright eye.
He thought of vampires from myths of old,
Creatures of whom dark stories were told,
He conjured up a prince of the night,
A monster to give his readers a fright.
He gave him a name that strikes fear,
For decades, to those that would come to hear.
It may however surprise one to learn,
Stoker’s creature was a real man, terrifyingly stern,
A strong ruler and a leader of men,
But also, one who tortured every now and then.
It was he who inspired the infamous vampire of lore,
His real-life misdeeds will shake you to the core,
He was called “Impaler” for a reason,
He punished those he felt did treason,
With a cruel and harsh fate,
A punishment hard to contemplate.
This was his savage way,
An example to those astray,
To send a message to all who see,
The price of disobedience, you’ll be.
More terrifying than Stoker’s Dracula, I fear,
His reign was marked by bloodshed it would appear,
Let us not forget all the gore,
Leaving a legacy, we cannot ignore.
To be fair, he was a hero to his nation,
A ruler who fought to preserve their reputation.
But let us not forget who he really was,
This is important just because,
He impaled his enemies on sharpened stakes,
Leaving them to suffer and writhe and quake,
Their screams of pain echoed through the land,
As he gleefully ruled with an iron hand.
In reality, he was a sadistic maniac,
A ruler whose cruelty had no limit, no pact,
Due to this, he has a name that will live on,
Etched in history, his horrors never gone,
He was more terrifying than any vampire,
A monster that no one should admire.
“Vlad Tepes” Portrait via Wikimedia Commons
