NOV PAD 2010 - day 9 (two for tuesday)

Not until death. Run as if life is something escapable.
No one gets out alive. Be a torch, burning. Be
the ashes, not the darkness. Be the light...
Be the only thing that shimmers
like a river bed full of washed over rocks. Don't stop.
Not until death.




Breathe. While the lights streak pass
like a carousel ride, a carnival of neon. There won't always be more time.
There will always be days you're burning at both ends. Days you are the wax
not the wick. Deeply, breathe
and step lightly, the stones are loose here.

National Poetry Month - Day 10

It's nothing personal,
there's an envy that comes with death
for the living. This is just about survival;
base instincts and simple appetites.

If it wasn't your brain, it'd be someone else;
wrong place
wrong time
wrong side of the apocalypse...

One second to look away
or look off slightly to the left imagining life before
that your neighbor's skin isn't peeling from the bone
that there isn't dried blood smeared across an ex-lover's lips
that your mother's eyes haven't gone blank, flat and lifeless.

When they pull you back
with a strength they never possessed in life
how hard will you struggle? How much will you want to survive?

Question as their mouths descend on your struggling:
Is it better to run forever alone
or dying and walk in hunger together?