Zombies All Around
       

They fall forward through heavy brush
like dominos in lake mud, mouths agape,
though no one sees their breath
as riddle we neither catch nor lose
when the boys around the fire egg them on.

The girls are neither annoyed nor bored.
Slightly amused, they take zombies to mean the boys
are occupied enough to leave these summer nights
a pale blue, breeze-kissed party dress
dancing on a hanger by the door.

Folk songs draw them in, even if
they lack the chords to play. Before music
comes animal hunger like no metaphor
worth its weight in blood. Youth
is a melody sung once and overdubbed.

At the edge of camp the boys toss scripts in air,
for the ground or flame. The youngest boy
twirls, his arms skyward, while
the oldest pretends he is above
asking why stiff ghouls haunt their site.

How many times do you shoot one
before he dies inside the young
man's mind? The source of all zombies
is sadness, the young man's passion
to join the undead, slack-skinned monsters

ridiculous as cancer and old-age,
absurd in how they plod and groan
and fail to inspire that rendezvous
where boys and girls elude the fictions
that always find them in these forms.

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Copyright © 2015 George Guida All rights reserved
from Pugilistic
WordTech Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission