[New-Poetry] Jim Simmerman

[Rsgwynn1 at cs.com]

I just read on another list that Jim Simmerman has died.  I always liked his 
poetry.  Jim Cervantes, you knew him, didn't you?


> 
> >> Night of the Living Dead
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Fortunately the dead move slowly.
>> They’re dead. They’re all messed up.
>> The bad news is: they’ve got us outflanked,
>> outnumbered, bamboozled and on the run.
>> 
>>  Beat ’em. Burn ’em. They go up
>> pretty easy. But sure as shazam
>> there’s a passel more—groping
>> the grille-work outside the window,
>> 
>>  incorrigible salesmen with their feet
>> in the door. Their dead white feet
>> and what they’re selling’s no life-
>> time enrollment in dance academy,
>> 
>>  no new-fangled gizmo for tucking
>> the tummy, no minty elixir
>> for the heebie-jeebies.
>> Fair is fair. The dead are dead.
>> 
>>  But mainly they’re just like us:
>> doomed to redundancy, pushy
>> and scared, unlucky at cards, 
>> unlucky in love. Mainly
>> 
>>  the dead are the living in drag—
>> that’s one way to figure the gossamer
>> garb, the pancake make-up
>> that streaks down their cheeks.
>> 
>>  No wonder they stick to the dark.
>> No wonder the dead have so little
>> to say, no wonder they travel
>> in packs. No wonder they look
>> 
>>  on the living as meat, a raw 
>> ratio of protein to fat.
>> It’s what keeps the living
>> dead on their feet, dead
>> 
>>  tired, dead drunk in the dead
>> of the night. It’s stuck
>> as we get on our own quickened pulse.
>> It scares us half to life.
>> 
>>  
> 

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