Views from the Rail

Okay this is for PygmyHero who said he’d like to see some writing. Again it’s a poem about a zombie. Which is, I know, kind of weird. The epigraph (quote at the beginning of story or poem) is from famous low budget zombie director George Romero. In any case, hope you like it:

*The Moon Gapes at Me, a Fresh Kill. *

I have always liked the monster within the Idea
-George A. Romero

I used to worry about the moon, when it got strange
& big like a thought bubble, half formed.

Then I knew a bit about gravity,

perspective: the earth doomed to pull eternally, the ever-present
thump, the gnawing

knives on the chord. Now I fear only
bands of roving hunters, traffic, anything

breathing, make fires to cover my tracks, sweep
dead coals from the roadside. What if this smoke
twists through the burnt out ruins,

over road signs overgrown with wild

flowers? A terrible beacon, the stench to boot:
to paraphrase my father, we’re all waiting to find

when we’ll rot. But I walk unaccompanied,
flesh falling from my legs. These flanks, every inch
my body gives back to this earth. Oh things

my mind should not know:
When you’re dead it feels normal
remembering the sawdust floor of a tree house,

no calls from the houses, windows
turned off, the unusual streetlamps
winking through the leaves. Does that hand I remember

caress what hangs, sliced in the sky?

I hunt only by the new moon, wait, on my back, in grass
grown too tall above the road, & when I find my prey,

stand over him without wonder,
he grasps for me like a child for the moon.