Imitation Zombie 6.20.2009 Poem by Margaret Alice

Trying to turn myself into an imitation
zombie, a list of work to be done, one
thing more boring than the other, agri-
culture, politics and complaints

I dream and read in-between, but the
heavy cloud of boring work obscures
all the beauty I conjure; made a list
today, of all the boring things

We have to start on Monday, complaints
by irate citizens, boring sentences that
run on and on, never going anywhere
I want to be, I follow unwillingly

Only a zombie, already dead; continuing
as the undead, could ever do this kind of
work without turning into ashes, wearing
sackcloth around my heart

As I go up to the office where corpses of
dead words and mind-numbing documents
await translation, I must have been born to
practice living in Purgatory because

Nothing could be worse than killing the soul
of someone who loves words…