Here comes some sing-song psychopomp, Shepherding all those stone-cold souls. He sings stirring songs all day long, Dragging the Dead over dark shoals.
I heard the dead children,
their voices lilting on the wind.
The war-torn twice born
came crawling in under the wire,
bloody and shell-shocked,
but among the living,
but the rest floated away:
their words
becoming both milder
& more raucous,
never fully drowned out by
bombs or crossfire chaos.
a city of the dead
tunneled under the living,
awaiting the flip,
a shift in who's who
-the living & the dead,
-the dead & the living
-the alive and the existent
-the living dead &
those dying alive
all jumbled together
in a sea of inhumanity,
tumbling past each other,
scrambling for humanity -
for the breath of life,
for life in a breath
the musty scent of decay
in the living city
was the first sign...
those in the necropolis
smelled flowery scents --
clean and bright --
and found those fragrant
perfumes
as revolting as the
living found the rot stench
in the brief time it took
to become acclimated to the stink,
all found themselves in the churn,
struggling for more
of something they
didn't understand
Tiger Riding for Beginners 