I had the happy accident of stumbling into a spontaneous conversation with a fellow writer type. We naturally spoke of writing, and I confessed that I do not write poetry. The following is an experiment, a writing exercise, if you will. Proceed with caution.
Soprano
Heaviest of weights rests upon these shoulders
Crafted not from steel
But Dread,
And logic of consequences
Hindsight, instead of fore
Method of loci
Peg and Link
Strategies for competition
Mental Olympian
they called me
Now the history of the world
Has changed me,
Stored in my Head,
I'd rather lock it all away
In the nearest closet.
Those don't exist anymore
Everything is on display.
We have no secrets,
We share it all,
New World calls for new laws.
Heaviest of weights rests upon these soldiers
I send out to keep us safe
Supplies are needed,
of course,
But also information:
Is he out there, still
Or has he turned...
Bass
We have made soldiers
From scraps and rubble
Motley crew of every caste
Can't be choosey
Our species is on the brink...
Go! Bring your best,
This one's for the Gold!
To come back empty-handed
Is to not come back at all
Your species is on the brink!
Without us they would starve
Or the Ghoul Cough would get 'em
Filthy black ash made wet by lungs
Spat back out into buckets and rags
Their species is on the brink.
Food, medicine, whatever we can find
We go silent and smooth
Eels sliding through burnt-out ruins
Scavengers in a grey wasteland
Our species is on the brink-
Wait, hand signals Stop
Movement under the wreckage of a car
Not a scraping shamble
Quick flash, maybe prey
Fall back, can't take any chances
The species is on the brink
Tenor
What isolation does to mind
And how quickly the shift occurs
From reality to half-blind
To music of shambles and blurs
The wreckage became a new home
Undercarriage became the sky
Night came, without the starry dome
Day broke, much later to the eye
Think of her, will she send them here?
What will they see if they find me?
Broken man, consumed by his fear
Or War Hero, Let's Set Him Free!
Let them find me, let them come in
Invade my castle, my island
Take me back, to t'other prison
At least we're Together, piled in
Alto
Shamble on
Brothers and sisters of the day and night!
Clothes tattered? Remove them!
Brain scattered? Feed it!
True clarity comes not from the heart
but from the brain meat
Made from insubstantial stuff
The fuel that powers this mind is will alone
The weak were said to inherit the earth
I say the Hungries are the next leap
We operate with pure instinct
We have no morals to stand in our way
The time is now, let us band together!
Let us feed and be merry!
If you will nod your heads in prayer with me:
Thank the almighty powers of nature and consequence
For allowing us to thrive in a world pitted against us.
Let us converge on the meal that has been offered to us:
Man meal trapped under wreckage.
Feast with me, fallen men, women, and children,
And gain your clarity!
As always, your creative writing is an enjoyable read, and your poetry is on par with your short stories from PB's class. And while I'll admit that poetry has never been my favorite, I found myself reading these more than once. You did a great job in titling the poems: soprano, bass, tenor, and alto. I equated each to one of the four role's that we chose at the beginning of the semester (ruling counsel, defense, citizenry, and zombies, respectively). And in much the same way a choir needs each voice range to sing certain musical compositions, the post-apocalyptic zombie world would need each role to function.
I'd second Ms. Henning's sentiments.
Your Alto poem is fascinating. Mostly in it I find the perspective of a leader emerging among the zombie horde. There's also a hint of something here: you've put human feelings into the mind of the mindless. This has been bugging me, being a person that's not terribly well-versed in zombie lore. I don't know whether there are instances of zombies where the brain is still active, and simply not communicating in the usual manner with the body. I think this would be an altogether more terrifying portrait of the zombie, being that they would still be much closer to humans, but with a different programming than our own.
“True clarity comes not from the heart, but from the brain meat, Made from insubstantial stuff, The fuel that powers this mind is will alone.” -I like this line very much, as the beginnings of it can double as a perspective on the zombie, and the zombie's prey. It can both function as a declaration of how zombies function on their own, but also a statement on how they feed.
-W.F.T.
Thanks for the positive feedback. You're both fascinating. Fun trivia, the last picture (Alto) is a bust of T.S. Eliot...