i know, i know, walking over skeletons doesn’t mean anything.
they don’t look up and curse you. they just want to sleep. deep
down, leagues below the mariana. i’m high, high above, way
beyond visiting tombstones that need some love. who’s
stomping six feet above me right now? is it just my cranium
suspended, swinging five feet and eleven inches off the
ground? my body: i’m i, i’m me, i’m man. made of dirt, of soil.
when i comb my hair i’m brushing the moss off the granite
headstone. and when i wash my feet i’m feeding the crawlies:
nourishing the roots of the banyan tree that sprouted from my
mycorrhizal bones. symbiosis is what we have. a good thing
we’ve got going on. i’m like a casket on a horse drawn funeral
carriage: already buried but moving still. that’s what you’ll see
when i’m plodding around, clip clopping, trying to find
somebody to haunt, someone i used to know before i became
interred in this vault. i can’t get out of it. i’m trapped, the
undertaker is the only one who can open me up. but he has no
intention to. he wouldn’t do it even if he could, even if i
begged him. because what’s in here, deep down, is nothing that
should see the light of day. so he figures the world should only
have to take in the sanitized. outer-facing facades. not the
intimate insides, the decomposing. the heart and soul of a guy
who became a zombie in his early twenties, careening back and
forth, looking not for brains, but for emancipation from this
mortal coil. looking for those things that can’t be weighed,
bought, measured, sold, tucked away underground. you can
walk over my corpse. don’t worry, i don’t mind. it’s actually
kind of nice to have visitors once in a while. you. yes, you, my
dear caller: if you see any fruit breaking out of my chest, please
take it, i made this gift for you. trust that it’s sweet but not
saccharine. tart but not sour. take it freely, without hesitation.
just don’t ask about the cost