Smoke arises from the chimney stack
in billows
from an untended burn.
It smolders and flashes, then flames.
More provocation
and maybe some oak, dense among woods,
for fuel;
it brings back the smoke
to choke away the cleansing flame
and obscure the fire,
producing words like bitterness and char.
The underbrush, dingy and hewn
beneath a stack
of loose forest-
what we gathered in late afternoon
while the sun hung orange under red smears of
a deepening blue.
Sparks drifted and cackled
into something conjured-
wafted from burning sticks,
and we watched them woo
with embers, now
in a conflagration
alive and luring the night air.
It was a synonymous path.
.
Somewhere between
Blaze and the Indian Cave
and Bukowski,
I discovered the undead.
The multitude of stumbling carcasses
that slowly overrun the world.
They move as a herd toward the nearest
warm-blooded creature with a brain.
– They like those, don’t they?
They stay in houses, alleys, shopping malls,
libraries, hospitals
and churches,
but not in caves.
Caves are for rustlers and Indian treasure.
Boys and their horses.
Adventure.
Zombies are obsessive.
They like brains.
They stagger and lurch as they walk.
Not like horses, that gait, gallop
and jump.
Fences and shit like that.
Horses wade through deep water
or jump hoops of fire
Zombies don’t like water or fire,
and can’t jump either;
Not up from the ground
or out of 8 story windows.
Well, maybe for brains they would.
Taps and Ratamacues 