Am posting this for Kasey Mohammad. I wish I could go out there and take your Zombie class. I don't really think you'll like this poem very much, but it's the thought that counts, as they say...

BIOGRAPHY OF A REVENANT



Behind a veil of rain, the buds

of his favorite indigo tulips, forced open 

like dark stars.



Removes his shirt to try to

feel the torrent's gift spurting

from skies once called

unomniscient.



This he had said:

        Bring me the rain that breaks the flowers.



Branches droop, not in absolution

but recollection, a knot of spectres churns

overhead, unperturbed.



Strange, unquelled by phenomena,

the stuff underneath the skin

that still steams and bleeds.



This unsaid:

       	The wounds are so deep.



Quickened, stung to singing,

scratches on his back

where one couldn't 

claw through:

          	I can't hide me

	                inside of you.



A hand held over the eyes

eclipses

only the brilliance of the blast,

the shockwave fills around him

like the drone of days.



Bring me the flowers that break the rain.



     I don't care that the shed petals

     are like snow on the now-living grass,

     that shoots erupt from branches

     called dead: the coils of the brain cannot

     follow suit, limbs vanished & remembered

     cannot be coaxed to bloom.



Already felled, he goes on walking

as if toward something,

arms outstretched as if

in defiance; finally drops

to his knees, as if

in prayer, lips forming, though, 

only curses and names.