A funny little zombie poem to whet your appetite

I'm a little ashamed that I haven't posted anything new in months. Nothing informative, nothing clever, nothing insightful. Nothing. Then suddenly this zombie poem idea comes along and I figure that I should post it just to see what happens. (Certainly, the dead will not rise as a result of my desire for attention on the Internet--at least not this time.) In the past few months I've become enamored with AMC's The Walking Dead for numerous reasons, like so many millions of other zombie-lovers and TV-lovers in general. It's a harrowing, approachable, highly addictive post-apocalyptic narrative of surprising depth and restrained programmatic saturation (which is to say, each season is limited to a relatively small number of episodes); horror fans are guaranteed to crave the impressive realism of the gore and makeup effects as well as the suspense and the timeless appeal of a familiar modern American landscape--in this case, downtown Atlanta and surrounding rural environs--transformed by total zombie plague, while those who appreciate dramatic television writing will find themselves easily attracted to the substance of the program's characters: easy to identify with, relatively non-cliched, and refreshingly genuine.


Recently I thought that it would be amusing (at least to me) to write the synopsis--essentially in the form of a theatrical trailer's creepo Vincent Price-style narration or the description on the back of a video sleeve--for a highly ridiculous fictional zombie film called Lighthouse of the Living Dead. Why a lighthouse?! I don't know. I like lighthouses. I love the ocean. I'm intrigued by the idea of a seaside town besieged by hungry walking corpses. There's a lot of atmosphere in just about any seaside environment, you know. Especially when the weather's gone foul. Anyway, the synopsis became a bit unwieldy; I wanted to pack too much detail into it, and my tendency toward rhythm and sound-play--brimming with alliteration and internal rhyme as so many of my poems are--began to foster a beast that was something more than a long-form movie tag line. So, folks, here you have it: the lovingly polished (and utterly melodramatic) description, in prose poem form--divided into quatrains because I don't know why (other than they looked good at the time)--of a movie that almost certainly will never exist. And if it ever does, I want to work Justin Bieber in there somewhere in a breakout role that will blow the world's feeble celebrity-drunk mind. No, Justin Bieber will not appear naked in the film. The only thing that will appear naked--many times over--is the juicy abomination of human victims' eviscerated digestive tracts strewn in steaming piles across brine-coated tide pool rocks beneath the early morning sun. Cheers! 

Lighthouse of the Living Dead

Beneath the cruel indifferent darkness of night,

guided only by the moon's deceptive glow

and the distant pulsing beam atop their trusty

seaside landmark, they risked deadly cliffs

and biting winds in a desperate flight to survive—

to witness the sun’s triumphant rise into a new

tomorrow, a better world.  A chance to start again.

They prayed the relentless fetid zombie masses,

horrific shambling shells of former family

and companions Hell-bent on their quest for flesh,

would never find them there.  The lucky few

who reached that ancient brick bastion of might

against the gales and tides believed they’d be safe.

But the light betrays them.  The goddamned

lighthouse beacon.  Round and round and round

it turns, cutting miles through the night.

Round and round and round.  And round.

(And round.)   Panic rises when the townsmen find

there's no way to turn the bastard off—

stairs to the lamp room chained and locked,

keeper hanged from the rafters in despair

by rigging rope and a suicide note lying crumpled

on the floor by his corncob pipe.  Outside,

amidst the swiftly shifting sea oats just beyond

the wave-wet rocks, there’s alarming movement

all around them barely visible in the blackness,

evil groans and shrieks carried on the wind

growing closer by the moment.

Now they are pretty fucked.