Just a vampire girl
Livin’ in a zombie world
She took the midnight train
Goin’ anywhere

Just a city boy
Dead and raised in south Detroit
He took a bite of brain
Goin’ anywhere

Find a human in a smoky room
The smell of blood and cheap perfume
For a lifetime they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers shuffling
Up and down the boulevard
Shadows searching
In the night
Undead people
Living just to find emotion
Feasting somewhere
In the night

Slurping hearts till the lust’s fulfilled
Everybody’s out to kill
Doin’ anything to feel the vice
just one more time

Some are green, some are blue
Some have mouths that cannot chew
Oh, the horror movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers shuffling
Up and down the boulevard
Shadows searching
In the night
Undead people
Living just to find emotion
Feasting somewhere
In the night

Don’t stop
Bleeding
Hold on to that feeding
Undead
People
Oh-oh-ooooh

Don’t stop
Bleeding
Hold on to that feeding
Undead
People
Oh-oh-ooooh

He skins action figures
for his masks and stalks
the model railroad village
weilding his deadly pushpin
every Halloween
until Giant Michael Myers
tosses him aside, bored,
leaving him fallen
paralyzed on the tracks
for an eternity of waiting
in suspense
for the train that never comes –
his tiny imagination
a cruel justice
worse than a thousand thousand
carnage-ridden runovers

all chocolate is Chocula —
it seduces with its riches,
wraps your desire in the cape
of your mouth, and invites
the sink of teeth. we never bite
gently; we always suck it
to vapor, feeding on its potency
until we are left only with the empty
pang for more and more and more.
we are undead with diabetes,
obese with our obsession,
unquietly unquenched
while we dwell upon
the mortality of the melt.

she caressed my arm
but paid no heed
to the recoiling dance
of my terminal hair –
my infestation
my need
my friends,
twittering aimless
in the air
from wrist to sleeve –
a thousand daddy longlegs,
a thousand disturbed
grasping
ends

The mounted head begins to speak:
you know, I like it better this way,
I feel more like myself,

no body to worry about anymore,
just me alone with my thoughts,
and there’s time to talk to you
without the distractions of

yada yada yada

I know dear and I prefer it, too,
I say, putting on my
boxing gloves.

Now remind me,
where did you store
the tongs?

Tight as a tick to a scalp,
I keep my vampire nailed down
to the floor in my bedroom.
His arms are stretched pale and flabby
as the hairy little bat I know
he wishes he could turn into
when I see him squinching his lupine brow
and grunting like he’s constipated.
But the nails won’t set him free
from the clock-handed impalement of his limbs.
Maybe he could transform into a flying rodent
but he’s stretched so tight, the tension
between those silver spikes would only split
him right in two. I keep him fed
with stray pet blood and sometimes
he acts like he loves me for it –
cooing like he’s the one stray I kept,
the one pet I cared enough about to take in,
the lucky survivor I won’t kill.
At other times — usually at night
when I peek over the bed before sleep –
his eyes quiver ablaze and he stares
right at me like some starving feral animal
caught in a barbed wire fence.
Asleep, I dream of torture –
of drizzling holy water left-right
across pasty dead flesh, drawing
cross-shaped wounds in the gray canvas
of skin. I dream of taking needle nose
pliers to teeth before teasing him
with my bare wrist and strained neck.
But in the morning, the sunlight blares
into the windowpane, fizzling his face
and he screams like a drowning hyena.
It’s annoying. And as I close the curtains
I deeply wish I could just finish him off,
but this supernatural sundial
is the best alarm clock I ever had.

at the meat counter
cellophaned brains trick zombies –
the butcher runs out

***
The above haiku is one of many neat new ‘zombie zen’ pieces by various authors scattered throughout Kyra Schon’s website. Kyra is one of the coolest stars from the original Night of the Living Dead. Visit her site and you’ll recognize her instantly! And if you like zombie haiku, well, then you’d love this book.

When I push her down the stairs
she swims in the air for a moment
like we’re dancing
and I play a little song in my head
to accompany it
before the erratic thud of her skull
against the steps
breaks my waltzing daydream
with its own offbeat tempo
and I hear another voice sing
as I stumble forward

hippie vampires look the worst
because they refuse to Lugosi
their hair back with pomade;
they sit cross-legged beside their
broken coffins and tie-dye
their funeral garb into spirographic florals
of mold and mud, tripping on homegrown
shockwhite graveyard mushrooms,
believing they’re good vegetarians
until the thirst for human blood
animates their groovy shambling
and like stoned-out stone-cold soldiers
they hunt hungry for a feast of friends;
“make blood, not war,” some cry and
they bite men in the spirit of free love –
their undead heads slurping in shadows
that no longer see summer or sunshine
forever young

He found the bottle of People Repellent at a health food store. The package was right next to the all-natural bug sprays and fly papers and anti-mosquito incense. It cost $24, emblazoned with a stick figure logo that raised a scrawny arm in a “talk to the hand” gesture. He thought it would make a funny gift for his girlfriend, who always complained about the people in her office, so he blew what was left in his wallet for the novelty spray, along with his usual assortment of herbal extract supplements and offbeat teas.

At home, he started wrapping the gift. He chuckled at the logo on the bottle again, but then found himself questioning his choice. Maybe she would read between the lines and accuse him of calling her anti-social. Or maybe she’d assume that all the gifts in their relationship from that point forward would be juvenile pranks. She might conjure an image of fake doggie doo in her Christmas stocking or a squirt ring surprise during their marriage ceremony, and then quickly remove him from her speed dial.

He didn’t want to “repel” his own girlfriend, after all. So he grabbed the bottle and opened the lid of the trashcan. Something liquid sloshed inside. He shook it. Wondered what it really was. Took a whiff of the sprayer.

It smelled fantastic. Like flowers fountaining inside of other flowers. But it was still musky enough to be called cologne. He decided to try it out. He sprayed People Repellent on his neck, then his arms, then his chest, and then inside the waistband of his jeans…spritzing copiously until he was sure he could keep inhaling it like a floral cloud descended from heaven, floating around his body.

Immediately a number of houseflies stirred inside his trashcan and zoomed up from the refuse to glom onto his flesh. More flying gnits zipped across his house and landed on his skin, fizzling in the still-wet sheen of People Repellent on the back of his neck and on his arms. Mosquitoes followed, whining around his ears before dipping their beaks into their newfound nirvana.

They itched, and he was surprised by just how many flying insects were living in his house, but he also understood what was happening with perfect clarity. He went outside and walked slowly down the sidewalk, heading towards his girlfriend’s house just a few blocks away. A thousand thousand more insects joined their brethren on his flesh. His body became a living block party for the local gnats. Moths landed on his eyelids. Honeybees buzzed and nuzzled into his belt line. And people quickly got out of his way.

He was a living coat of writhing wrigglers when he rang her doorbell, waiting to see what kind of person she’d turn out to be. Beneath a mitten of mites, he still clutched the spray bottle in a free hand, which he held behind his back like a lover’s bouquet.

***
If you like stories like this, you’d like my collection, 100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories