dad is in the garage.
days into spark-light and piles of polyethylene
etched.
soon, he says.
as grandaddy laughs,
rattling the icebox for more beer.

dad’s homemade android:
  the thing.
like a doll polished
& grinning, it
dances for us in the kitchen.

the dog barks, chained in the backyard.

the thing,
do-si-dos for a laugh, catches a glimpse
of the trees beyond the yard,
overheats,
circuits popping into a limp heap of pieces.
  dead.
left to mold-over in the garage.

the days.
the rain.
the cats tiptoeing along the edge of fences
across the street.
the dog barking, chained, &
snapped.
  dead
beneath a truck.

dad is in hysterics.
dad is in the garage,
weeks in and his soaked red knuckles.
mom is drinking with grandaddy.
they rattle the icebox.
  the dog.

the dog dances for us in the kitchen,
reboots and sits.
it digs a pit all night and buries three cats there.
it sleeps on the mound.
it never barks.
it waits there in the backyard, still
& staring into the trees.
  the trees.

I* remember the feeling of waking up for nothing
                   The empty, gray taste everything had
        How I'd stare off
Out windows
Or across streets

                              I remember walking to the river
           And the grass not bending beneath my feet
              The current wouldn't change nor stop for me
   And I imagined it would always be this.
               Having everything I had always wanted right in front of me and it not matter

            I remember being stuck in the rain and not getting wet

         Watching
             Quietly accepting what was, and simultaneously not acknowledging what it meant.
    
        It was comfortable, but now *I want control.

drip drop goes the red sea from the gorge of empathy flowing free and abstract to the origin masonry where the crystals build and the red wine spills where the homeless are rich and the sheltered diminish where the heat cools and welcomes snow and the cold brings sweating and a feverish vampire glow where we learn zombies are not the dead but the living faking a smile and serenity is a feeling found somewhere in the mild drip drop flows the river do we dare to cross

the man
who lives above
stomps, bangs his doors again
I wish he would realize he died
last week

when they're
eating my brain;
I hope they choke on my
fears, self-loathing, and mostly my
regret

---

A zombie and a troll
Squared off one fateful night
All the ghouls and goblins watched
Expecting quite a fight!

But much to their surprise
The troll was quick dispatched!
He was dumb, and so outdone
He had met his match!

He WAS good at deception
But now the zombie reigns!
Altho he's in a fit of pique

The dead troll had no BRAINS!



SøułSurvivør aka
Write of Passage aka
Invisible inc
Catherine Jarvis

I hate zombies
they are the infantile enemy
the foe against which there is
    no guilt
the essential
        human
questions of right of wrong
  of morality
never apply to the cerebellum-craving
undead.  It's us or them
   hunt or be hunted
   **** or be killed
they are enemies that fail to
      challenge
   our notions of what it is
   to be us
give me a werewolf any day
or rather - any moon
the tortured lycanthrope
   forces the protagonist to
choose to **** because
    unlike zombies
there's always
   a chance
   however small
   that a werewolf
can find
redemption