Dandy Of The Apocalypse

 

The Dandy Of The Apocalypse
By Christian Chensvold

 

I am the dandy of the zombie apocalypse

 Riding the underground tunnel amid blips,

Lights from $hining $creens, the undead’s sustenance,

 While, inconspicuous of their wrath,

I read a volume of Byron bought for sixpence

 On a semester abroad in the town of Bath. 

 

Grandpa’s pocket watch no longer ticks away.

 The repair is too costly, so I know not the time of day.

I ask the dead soul beside me,

 But he wears headphones and stares vacantly. 

 

They communicate incessantly, these vacant-eyed,

 In a strange tongue that uses not mouth and lips,

Only the twitching of fingertips 

 Typing platitudes of the ego’s pride.

      I communicate in silence, too,

      With nap of cloth and shine of shoe

      A cravat’s weave, the hosiery’s hue,

This lonely dandy of the zombie apocalypse 

 

Condemed to dwell

In this digital hell

LOL!

 

The train stops and I crawl into the sun — great globe of noon!

  Its billion-year breath still pants

From out its golden life like a deflating balloon.

  And from which the sidewalk shufflers here must appear like ants.  

 

And how they all march, humpbacked and head-bowed,

 Wobbling down Fifth Avenue. My pipe in smolder, 

Is scorned by a valetudinarian of the crowd,

 Forgetting that we all grow older, ever older… 

 

Then suddenly, beside me, a face fresh and fair!

 Reflected in the window at Tiffany’s, with wind-swept hair —

      A flaxen

      Among the waxen!

 

Oh let me love thee, living human, with all I can muster!

 But see me she does not

For she just hopped on Instagram to post the luster

 Of a shiny ring that, had she looked up and loved,

‘Twould have been my everlasting joy to have bought. 

 

New York, 2019