TO THE FUTURE - AND BEYOND
The dead walk
among the living.
It's the latest thing
in tourism.
The dead just can't
get enough of it.
VISIT THE LAND
OF THE LIVING.
EXPERIENCE THE PRESENT
ALL OVER AGAIN.
But this time with the benefit
of hindsight.
Aware of what can
happen or what has.
The pastpresentfuture
all the one to you in this
- now.
The dead queue up.
It's the latest craze.
People leaving their graves
in droves
for the thrill of walking
in sunshine again.
Feeling air
on their skin.
A snowflake on the tip of
a tongue.
The caress of a summer
evening on nakedness.
The simple pleasures
of what once was.
The frisson of walking
through a living body
being human again
even by proxy.
The mingling of
the quick and the dead.
The living don't like it.
Pass laws against it.
Being overrun
by ghost tourism.
"Our town has become
a ghost town!" claims the mayor.
But the dead are
not ghosts...as such.
But the living decanted
as it were
to a place parallell
so to speak
exploring life in this
uniquely new "now."
You have to of course
prove that you are dead
for at least a century
or two.
So that this meeting of molecules
are not that of the recently deceased.
A "passing through"
as it is called.
Yes there have been instances of
one being caught half in/half out
of a living being
not only highly
embarrassing but
painful for both.
They said it couldn't be done
but when it was done
they said it would never
catch one.
But catch on it did.
All the rage beyond the grave.
Comes from reading too much
Ray Bradbury.
Just like one of his stories
but we put it into practice.
"Ok! You 'deaders'
(as we call ourselves)
the next vibrations will leave
in the next second or so."
Just look at them
gooooooooo...........
*
The Bradbury story was called TO THE FUTURE and I think involved future people coming back on the tourist trail and clogging up the present....it was just a short step to have it be the dead come back. Also a friend wrote a very funny song called TAX THE DEAD so that was in my head...a painful sleepless night was the pressure cooker for the poem and in the morning there it was all written in scribble and waiting to be deciphered.
One things knocks against another thing and sets off a mental dominoes ...I couldn't remember exactly the Bradbury and was trying to get the gist of it( it turned out to be time travellers rather than the dead so I hadn't trod on his toes too much...but gave him a reference to highlight him)and friend Murray's song has always amused moi...so there ya go it just grows and grows and your mind ends up dancing on its toes as it cha cha chas the words around the room.