Performance Piece--Winter 1992

Much thanks to "Wilbur Evans."

The Tubercular

If you were to fornicate with the afterglow

of your own wound

Keats on the Spanish steps

made the dogs howl with the smell

which is where great art Zombifies,

on the steps,

hacking up great spurts of lung

fair reader

this is one half step away from pure

meaning.

What is we had Keats’ brain in a jar

marked marmalade?

What is reanimating? watching cartoons

again and again

until the afterlife

I guess.

II. Infections Performed Before Witness

Because the origins of reanimation are unknown

doctors sacrifice volunteers on a platform

wearing gowns of purple with gold threads

before great columns of pyrotechnics on TV.

Today we have a Data Entry Technician from

Topeka interested in astrology.

She maintains

extraterrestrial given her faiths, Virgo in twining

the self orchestrated to the other new-by becoming

the gnawing distended self of Zombie, oof.

The moon above says “grow”. The Data entry

left behind weeps openly, floods of code, coded

streams of uneaten fast food lunches.

Bedraggled

looking back, the priest with serpent knife

says death is the possibility of sex, the roof

gasps. The porous transition of shape.

ABD biatches

Sweet Merciful Crap

I can't believe it took until JUST NOW for it to occur to me to post this here.

In The Sea-Change Nothing Is Safe

Zombie Oblique

You need a metal screen across your windshield

If you want to drive at night. Zombie eyes

Don’t reflect the headlights like a deer.

You might wish you could stop and vacuum

Out the car once in a while. Some gore, dried.

Some goop globed from one chewing

On the reinforced bars around the passenger

Side door. There are no more cigarettes now

To feed an ashtray with. Bars of light across

The fog, zebra night and stutter feet out

Of the green backlit soundstage our lives

Have rotten into. Some gauge out of

A storm cellar where transformations hid

Themselves to wade out the parade of storms.

Living animals crashing through the bushes

To die beneath the wheels. Run one over.

How about two? The screen’s a springing

Shock of protection, gives an off key twang

When another zombie dives head-to.

Finger Food

Relax, there is no history now

To rise up from and overcome.

But there are some photos left

On the kitchen table like desert

Plates. Some mistaken preserve

And reward of us on a bridge

With sunset, church and mustache.

Remember these pictures waiting

To come back from the dead?

The piazza from the café, Rosetta

Memorial of family lineage in

Genealogical phrasebooks rotting

In a medieval tomb. Parchment

Like skin, none of them family.

There’s the blurred thumb or half

Face and cheek too close up to be

Made out, but I can tell is you

From sleeping that close to your

Breath. Then the mistaken

Colander of being, separating

The life juice from our fleshy

Spiral shapes, the softening juices.

And there, by the photos, are your

Fingers. Sharply bitten off, one

At a time as you held your hand up

To protect your neck. Sure, I

Remember. What I don’t, that’s

What the pictures are for, just the

Beginning of a hand, reaching out.

No, I Am the Batman

& you are my mathematician monkey assistant.

Here is your helmet.

Every day and in every way,

I am getting better and better!

We've Got A Bigger Problem Now

The Zombie that Ate Paris

The Zombies will not stop emerging from my movie posters.

A giant head emerges from the map

Pate, brow, eyes, as from a lake which shouldn’t be

Over seeing as in a giant movie poster the Eifel tower

And what other exempla of Paris-ness like

The Moulin wind mill. Beneath these eyes

Which peel in desperation, the lower follicles

Brandish gunshots. Nevertheless this zombie will not stop coming

Out of the cheap plastic poster frame in the hall.

I fumble out the remote to see if that works

But the synth beat soundtrack swells to crashing

Until finally this hallway of bare light is claustrophobic

With my new undead conductor, bald and bow tied,

Honored to accept this award for cinematic ingestion.

Imminent Dread

Not, finally, the teeth.

Instead Mrs. McGuckian in her torn house coat

And loose arms revealing an elderly breast

Which tears on the broken window as she comes

Finally inside. We have been waiting

In the audience of smiles for evil to shed

The banality of its uniform, to bow

Politely as the Maitre d of the gas chamber.

For evil is as a polite as bumpkin in a classy restaurant

Smilingly observing the quality of each new dish

Of horrors, some snails, some brains, some ascensions

He, and I mean you, could never otherwise submit to.

Thus the smell of bodies on old clothes

Is more frightening than the actual taste of it, squishing

Over the lips into a stomach-less void of hunger

Instinct pearled around our necks

Like a noose of delicate acquiescence.

Zombie Susquehanna

We do not speak like pharmacists anymore.

Instead we groan in the dark streets like lovers

Eager to finish sowing the fields.

Some black and white photo of silhouettes in profile,

Pictures from vacations, head turned as though

To a voice calling from behind: over here.

We give up the city parks for pleasure

And look to walking meat sticks like flowers

To the sun. Here, the correct word for freezing

Is hunger. Not the mailbox, the imagined message

Through the air, that relinquishment of voice

To time and fingers slicing up the envelope

To return it to the hometown, little home

Drowning in the squeeze of its own juices,

Smearing across the table. We say what we feel.

Union Meeting of the Dead

This day is worse than the first

A scratching hand is still at the door

And this is more than beyond will.

For the Fork Salad and a Brain Trust local One-O-Seven

They said it couldn’t be done

Benefits for so many needy and of course deserving

Souls,

Departed. Or, just the same,

A food line, the chapter organizers here and there are

Pushing over some bits, fighting to ascend the podium while,

Unmolested, the keg of beer in the corner returns unhurriedly

To room temperature.

One legless member, hook ear and half an eye, plans,

In his after life, which is through a graying

Slobber of preserved being, some

Self revoked to membership through a mirror through a mirror.

And while they still glimmer to vote on limiting dues,

A gobbet of the Exchequer

Gores down Member Fifty Seven’s

Neck and into a pocket-protected front pocket.

There is a motion called to detonate a snake bomb,

And who will inherit the bite to the mouth on the mouth

Who the chunks, see

The members in dredge colored skin,

Skin of rivers and rivers polluted by grabbing smoke stacks

Hungry for sky.