Introducing
Darrell Petska

 

 

When the Zombie Apocalypse Arrives

 

And they are eating everything,

house and home,

reducing the world to a mere skeleton of itself,

and we the people are going

or gone for good from our former selves—

 

weeds will overtake city and field

and critters inhabit our houses and businesses

and walk along our byways

 

trampling the pantheon of gods

and the denizens of the underworld

 

then in time some bug or bird or fish

will grow too big for its pants and prance or preen

across some venue worthy of notice to posterity

 

and begin to speak in tongues,

requiring creation of gods to make sense of it all

and newspapers and sporting events or their equivalents

 

and Tuesday will once again be Tuesday

or its equivalent,

and versions of poets or philosophers

will attempt to sound learned

 

as the next apocalypse begins gnawing at their appendages

and Earth drifts ever closer to the sun

and new gods wait in the wings.

 

 

 

 

 

Applications of Hawking

 

Our most senior professor we dutifully

congratulated for single-handedly

setting Twitter and Facebook ablaze

with huzzahs—

his clever rimas dissolutas,

he was "honored" to announce,

had appeared in "the" journal "to great éclat"

(privately we rhymed him la-di-da

and cited Hawking's planetary mopes):

surely dozens might skim the tropes

marching our old prof's lines immortally on—

at least till he's gone,

but if Hawking was right,

and 100 years or so from tonight

we receive the ultimate finger flip,

that big daddy rejection slip,

advertising our worths

in the face of Mother Earth's

potential demise is gratuitous.

And we felt a little less jealous.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cryonics

 

               “Dead man, be quiet. A fool of a merchant, who'd sell good earth

               And Grass again to make modern flesh.” – from Jeffers, No Resurrection

 

Zombie-like wander the resurrected,

minus a part or two frozen beyond recovery,

and complain of conditions:

 

Could someone turn down the heat?

Where'd the trees go?

What's with gondolas navigating Times Square?

 

Longing for deepful sleep,

they disparage the young for their youth,

prate about the dearth of faith and beauty

 

and shirk all blame for what life has become:

Fools, selling their rest for current flesh

when their only bargain was then.

 

 

 

 

 

Eentsy Weentsy

 

My legs hear all—madam wants me dead!

Expunged from my lush philodendron perch.

"Fred! Quick! Get rid of it!" Ol' softy, Fred.

 

Because the world's such a mess,

surely Mrs. God has said to her Mr.

more than once—

 

"You know that splendid blue-green paradise

I had you make? It's crawling with vermin.

Sweep it clean!"

 

Yet clamor on, people do,

the seedy seven billion,

though why I haven't a clue.

 

And busy spiders like yours truly,

thanklessly ridding plants of mites,

aren't allowed to be?

 

I say, on earth as in heaven!

Where’d we all be had Mrs. God,

finding her Mr.’s errand undone,

 

eaten him?

 

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