Don't move or make no noise.
They react to the sound.
This place was once a shopping mall,
now there's bodies all around.
Such dread!
they're searching with soulless eyes,
From sun up,until sundown!
Their broken wailing, unearthly cry.
"THE END IS NIGH!"
My picket sign once read.
I'm forced to lie here and play dead.
They search for the living-with no rest-
I'm alive because of putrid, rotting, flesh.
I dare not make a move.
in this food court.
this unholy mess.
I lie underneath defiled remains,
insides ripped out from their chest.
I dwell within these monster's nest.
Subsist beneath decaying stench of death.
It covers my scent well:
The undead react harshly
to how the living smell.
This new world-I can't tell,
Is this hell, or a fiendish fresh start?
Are they really so different?
I can't tell either world apart.
fear has always been a substance
Pumping through my old heart.
In those days I was ignored or-
they would notice,then shudder.
While folks that lived-well,
well: they ate one another.
I'd fall asleep by night.
under street lamps shivering, uncovered.
Lived my life as a ghost.
haunted those who walked by:
My picketsign.
My shaking fist.
"THE END IS NIGH!!!"
I was cast aside;I did not exist.
they refused to see me,
Notice me when i speak.
The world was a table
With no room for my seat.
Outside corner stores I'd sit with resentment.
I needed to be noticed.
Yet my efforts never got me closer
To being seen by any ONE of them:
An exquisite type of torture.
I see now so ironic, what i used to beg for:
Maybe zombies are ghosts...
that refuse to be ignored?
Maybe if that man in the store window
-he was standing next to a mannequin-
If he hadn't lost his balance...
I could've began again ...?
But that false life fell.
Futility in his attempt to flee:
They ripped out his throat
before he could even yell.
In the commotion a man with a minor creeps,
Crawling toward the exit,
for a stealthy retreat.
Oh yes! I do see it too.
There's a car parked outside,
its engine running right there in the street.
Six hundred and sixty feet.
Salvation has four wheels, power steering
and leather seats.
Something is shouting in my stomach.
Their opportunity.
Their window is closing to leave with no trace
Seconds stretch as I stand
I connect - making eyes with the man.
Him and the child hesitate.
out in the open, words aren't said,
but I can see his face deliberate.
Too late: they can't turn back.
How to sneak past that last zombie
without a face to face?
It shambles in the path of their escape.
They hide under a counter:
I think its better if that child left here safe.
See.
there is bodies, all around.
Bodies all around.
Bodies. All. Around.
Those dead bodies kept me a secret.
Kept me safe and sound.
It's my turn to be that for you.
I nod at the man.
Can you see me?
Witness.
Witness,what I'm about to do.
A rush.
Air fills my lungs.
All fear dissipates.
The four words I yell make the zombies irate.
" THE!!!
END!
IS.
NIGH!!!!!!!"
**** cretins are closing in;
My two friends sneak deftly by.
I see the man and child look back.
I pick up a baseball bat.
Safely on the street
they both wave goodbye.
The end is nigh.
Please notice me.
-
A story of a homeless man trapped in a shopping mall overrun with zombies and of sacrifice paid forward.
