ManicDDaily

The Zombies That Come After Me

The zombies that come after me
shoot my errors from their eyes;
they aim them with their tautest bows,
my head their bestest prize.

I stoop below each window sill
flatten to the floor,
but these errors once unloosed
aren’t blocked by any door.

The zombies ride upon their shafts
feeling up the fletching–
those feathers lofted by my faults
that carry darts so wretched.

The zombies laugh to see me hurt–
how I, wounded, ache and squirm,
for those errors once they hit their mark,
will not stop their harm. 

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Here’s another poem for Izzy Gruye’s out of standard prompt on With Real Toads about zombies coming back.  (And here’s another rather silly, i.e. more humorous, one below.)  The pics (mine) are from Recoleta – a cemetery in Buenos Aires.   

Taking Issue With Those Down on the Dead

Some think the dead are self-centered.  Try,
they point out, getting one to return your call.
You give them a nudge, they turn a blind eye.
Gone to ground, and yet they cast a pall

on your merriment without even
bothering to rain on your parade.
But then come those hours with no reprieve, when
every self-reflection serves as spade

digging at you, a dull, sharp-edged, mirror
in which you see yourself as grey and clodded.
Then, I tell the doubters, when life abhors
you, the loving dead will sometimes come unplotted–

“Courage,” they say, in the French way–strange because
they never affected the Gallic
in their lives, but now they’re all accent grave,
(and because you see that there’s no malice

in their moues, you forgive them this artifice–)
for the truth is they are truly on your side,
and they prise from your open-mouthed surprise
much that you can’t swallow–the hurt, the pride,

your defects both general and particulate.
Yes, their misting about your neck brings fear,
but even that gripped alarm’s a benefit–
as you whisper back–not now, not here.

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Agh-just looked back at this and my computer had automatically changed clodded to clouded and then to clotted!  

Thanks, thanks for reading–if you get a chance–please check out my book, Nice, and other books.