This one's a little better. It's more flexible, and actually shows a wee smidge of creativity with the multiple-use words.

A sestina for my friends, the Spooky Kids

It’s been fun, watching you dress up in black,
singing vampire songs on the walk
down Beacon and Charles and up to the Red Line; night
takes on new energy. Your
mania is contagious. I never even felt weird
strutting around with freaks in costumes.

Fishnet swagger – that certain goth arrogance – costumes
your insecurities from those who’d gladly black
eyes lined with makeup. The badge “weird
kid” was with you on every perilous walk
down high-school halls, though now your
peers have better things to do than ruin a night

at the club, dancing like children of the night.
Besides: anyone with an eye for costumes
can find dark joy in the cloaks and boots your
fellow fiends so gladly don, fingernails black
with undead confidence. When they walk
in like a murder of crows, nobody thinks them weird

at all. There is little here to which “weird”
can be made apply, no matter how late the night
goes; the folk here come from every walk,
and frown on few. In truth, the costumes
draw few eyes. Everybody’s pretty much wearing black.
What, then, can distinguish your

outfit from another’s, save how much flesh you’re
willing to bare? The characters here are too weird
and wonderful to let go unstudied – black
capes and silver ankh necklaces never held my eye the full night.
I’m not all that interested in costumes,
though I’d love to tape what’s said on the walk

to and from the club’s red door. The way they walk,
these self-made solipsists, postmodern pariahs, your
brain reels. What secret fears their aloofness costumes,
the dark gods know. Yet, scholar of the weird
as I am, I am willing to blow $15 a night
to find out what makes their blood run black.

I’ll miss that cold walk with you, my weird,
splendid kin, your easy comfort with the night.
And I’ll miss the costumes, your fingertips dipped in black.