Tag Archives: zombies

Zombie Sestina

Gotta thank Neil Gaiman for tweeting about this—as he said, there’s not enough formal zombie poetry. I couldn’t agree more! A poet named Roz Kaveney posted 14 sonnets on her LiveJournal page, which she collectively calls “A Shamble of Zombies”—here’s the link, they start at February 3. Check ’em out!

SEE? They are magnificent! Roz Kaveney is the world’s premier zombie sonneteer! I could not hope to match that—would not dream of trying. But I would like to contribute to the world’s burgeoning store of zombie literature, so I offer this zombie sestina instead:

In this gray dawn after the apocalypse,
We fight and scratch to do naught but survive
As shambling horrors seek to rip our flesh
And moan at the smell of succulent brains
(Still thinking inside our skulls for a time—
Until they are fed, or we are undead).

If my children were to rise undead
It would be my personal apocalypse;
I would resign the remainder of my time
And no longer would I scramble to survive
In a world where my kids want to eat my brains
And suck on the hot juices of my flesh.

I could bear the consumption of my flesh
If I knew I would not return undead
And thoughtlessly eat the thoughts in people’s brains.
The death of thought is the true apocalypse,
For we hardly think now; instead we survive
On instinct and huddle against the time

When we must end, only to start a damned time
Of shambling and groaning for tender flesh.
Can art or music or poetry survive
This howling chorus of the undead?
The Louvre burned in the apocalypse
And Britney ate Lady Gaga’s brains.

Now there is naught of the sublime in brains
For those who remain in this cold, gray time:
If Neil Gaiman survived the apocalypse
He is not writing, but protecting his flesh
From snow-covered legions of the undead
And noshing on jars of old marmite to survive.

Fear of undeath is why we struggle to survive;
Fear is all that lives now in our brains,
Fear and despair and monotone song of undead
Who shamble and rot and wait for the time
When they can sink their brown teeth into our flesh
And complete the zombie apocalypse.

Though my sons and I yet survive, the undead
Apocalypse has already claimed our brains
And our flesh will shamble too in time.

Excited for The Walking Dead

I’m excited to watch other people deal with them, anyway…on TV. AMC’s new series, based on the graphic novels, looks absolutely spectacular. It’s going to be far more character-driven and tragic, methinks, than you’d see in a horror film, and it won’t be anything like the campy fun of Zombieland. You won’t see anybody sayin’, “You got a purty mouth!” before clocking a zombie with a banjo.

If a zombie apocalypse were actually possible, I figure it would look much more like this bleak vision: lots of drama, lots of tension, and a despairing hope for a new world. This Halloween, I’m staying home and enjoying TV…because outside of football games, I haven’t watched anything since Battlestar Galactica ended. Maybe I’ll actually get scared on Halloween for a change!

Make monsters monstrous

Though it’s doubtlessly been pointed out elsewhere, vampires suck.

They don’t delicately consider the feelings of needy teens and Louisiana barmaids. They eat teens and barmaids and everything else. Sorry, kids.

Vampires are dead monsters who return to the grave every day, and by night they snack on the first juicy carotid artery they see. That’s the way they were originally drawn up, that’s the mythology, and I’m sticking to it. Sensitive vampires didn’t exist until the last couple of decades, and suddenly it seems that they’ve just been misunderstood for all these centuries and what they’ve really wanted all this time is a meaningful relationship with an extraordinary female. What is going on? Why are all the scary monsters getting turned into cuddly buddies? Can’t we stand to be scared by anything anymore?

It’s all the thrice-cursed romance writers’ fault. They’re cynically exploiting women who know, who just know, that they’re special and different somehow, and someday the knight/prince/vampire lord of darkness will recognize their inner worth and take them away for happily ever after and feed them boxes of chocolate while they get pedicures.

Zombies, fortunately, aren’t being treated (yet) as viable love interests. What we get instead are movies that make them seem funny and vastly entertaining to destroy. It’s a different way of attacking the same problem: monsters are monstrous.

Leave my monsters alone. People should be screaming when vampires show up, not sighing.