SURVIVING THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, OR, HOW I STOPPED WORRYING AND LEARN TO LOVE BEING A LITTLE BIT SAD A LOT OF THE TIME

Jeremy will tell you that the stories about zombies
Are just climate change apocalypses, add decaying bodies.
“Lizard brains,” he’ll tell you, “rising tides of walking dead.”
In the quiet of our nonchalance, the negligences spread.

It’s nice to close your eyes, to get some rest and sleepwalk through it,
But these folks can’t read a headline without asking you to chew it.
You’ll find out with your eyes closed, even with your ears plugged up.
When you have your morning coffee, you will drink it in your cup.

Running will not help you. You cannot get far enough
To escape the fact that somewhere, things are desperately rough.
The West will still run dry and you won’t call the fires’ bluff,
And the ocean will engulf us while it carries all our stuff.

So you ache all through and through, whether you know it or you don’t
Because it doesn’t make much difference, if you will or if you won’t.
You can be aware and mindful and in tune to what is good
But the choices we can make are not the ones we really should.

Some days you feel a callous, and those days are clean and easy,
But some days the wound peels open and it turns your stomach queasy.
You go about your life and it disquiets you outright
Until you’re sick in bed with helplessness and shame and maybe spite.

And maybe what is most disturbing is this sense of pride
That comes with being so depressed, you can’t be bothered to survive.
The deeper that you grieve, the more you’re paying for your crimes—
But while you wilt in solidarity, there are still the old sublimes.

The wildflowers persist through the cracks in the concrete.
The way life readjusts to all the change is still a feat.
The ocean waves still crash and the mountain ranges linger.
The world still tries its best to wrap a ribbon ‘round your finger.

It takes some letting go to concede and be impressed,
And hope feels strangely somber when you hold it in your chest.

Is it fair to stare in awe when the sunrise paints the sky
While a wildfire burns a town to dust in late July?
And is it right to love your cozy inland neighborhood
While a hurricane sweeps up a coastal city’s livelihood?

And someone stole the land your home is built on from another
Who took care of it and practiced being kin instead of other.
People maimed and desecrated in a vile abuse of power
So your water could be palmed from lakes and heated when you shower.

What else do you expect to feel than jagged dull remorse
To see your comfort as a profit from the harms you don’t endorse?

This is not the time for playing silly games of blame and shame.
There has to be a way to stick it in a different frame.
It’s important that we learn to hold the anger and the fear,
While leaving room for hope and joy to render reasons to be here:

To feel the grief like fire lighting candles for our vigil;
To make sure the wheels keep squeaking so the captain gets an earful.

Jon tells me the only way he keeps from going mad
Is doing all he can to do some good to counteract the bad.
You tackle what you can and in the pauses, breathe it in:
There is more of everything, but deep inside it you have been.

Here is everything at once. Hold it tight but also gently.
Do some things with resolution but also some things incidentally.
Listen closely for what matters. It will sting to care, but see:
You are part of this and give and take is the only guarantee.