BY DANIEL ZEBERT
We saw the dread
walking Rue Future
draped in synthetic fabrics
capable of deliberately cultivating
robotic cold-blooded hope,
systematically programming optimism,
using our dreams to
enslave us.
Wide open mouths
like baby birds in a thunderstorm,
not enough sense to
turn our faces from falling rain
and
keep from drowning
in
our own beds.
Ignoring the smell
rising from beneath
the floorboards.
Politely steering
conversation to a
cul-de-sac of
life’s trivialities;
avoiding the low
stink of rotting molars
crawling up the staircase.
Not believing
an ugly wound exposed
is better than
unseen malignance left
festering in darkness,
metastasizing,
filling our bones with
shattered glass,
tumors bursting through
dermal hibernation
too painful or grotesque
not to acknowledge
there is no tomorrow;
there is only now.
When it’s here,
it’s gone
Crawling the Downward Trajectory
Remember them as
they were,
for they can’t
remember themselves
even as they are now
or as they wished themselves
to be perceived;
no idealized image projected to
save face against critical eyes of
social scrutiny.
Living dead don’t
walk among us,
at least not for long,
but exist politely
just outside our periphery.
Our city limits surrounded by
feedlots filled over capacity with
cattle corralled in fugue,
injected or filled with pills and tubes,
drifting in and out of
haze infused chemical consciousness,
crawling the downward trajectory—death’s inevitability,
a mirage disappearing and reappearing
further away on an infinite horizon;
a slow motion slaughterhouse chute
without the instant pneumatic conclusion
giving peaceful release.
Hushed tones of everyday conversation
acknowledge the existence
of dead hidden among us,
now animal facsimile less-thans
missing some crucial
human component.
Their seclusion
helps cover our shame
that they are now inventory—
defective property to be
shipped off to some
defunct reprocessing center
until their operating systems completely fail,
no current update available,
masks our relief that
it’s always someone other
than ourselves
who is taken away
in our place.
We have buttons inside
that push themselves;
once enacted, protocols
no manual override
can circumnavigate.
When this final initiation sequence
has been activated
we will be exiled.
We Carry On
We’re all pharaohs of
this pyramid of bones.
Smeared child
finger-paint oxidation robes
dripping ankle deep,
trudging through manifest destiny circuitry—
pressed together metal and glass
mined from the same dark material
tiny hands used to spin cocoons over
our subcutaneous bulging masses.
Baptized in apathy
we carry on
towards the gaping maw,
linked arm and arm—a
spectre’s chain
clanging funeral bell death knell
echos from beyond.
Anointed with blood
we carry on
into the whirling auger—a
fleet of ghost ships leaving
peeled whale carcass strips
red salt mist in our wake.
Like a disemboweled rat
dragging past-tense amnesiac
transgression graffiti entrails—
front legs scratching frantic
plastic curls from
unswept linoleum before
gorging on castoff fat scraps and
forgotten pelletized horsemeat
left in a stainless steel dog bowl,
we carry on
under solemn oaths,
allegiances and obligatory expectations—
unspoken acknowledgement of
sacrifice required for comfort
binds us as one in
a compliant network of
abhorrent mycelial submission.
Accepting this,
I can only hope
the silent arc of truth is
strong enough to withstand
the impossible gravitational pull of
our flat New World.
