13 Days of Halloween: Residents Unearthed by Bernardo Villela

I

In the cold ground necrotic skin quavers,
those lain in gravebeds sleep uneasy
lifespans end when light is snuffed out
but humanity’s undying fire can reignite the living dead.

The afterlife’s cycles occur in light-time.
The dead’s centennial reawakening 
is a needed respite for the long gone and reluctantly departed
in local mausoleums and those wind-scattered.

Resurfacing, a drowned man waltzes;
reintegrating, a cremated man rides windback;
rebounding, a itinerant girl walks to school anew;
thawing, a hunter boy emerges from an aeons-long freeze. 

As the Earth shakes itself out,
sending wayward souls shambling,
it’s no apocalyptic spectacle that unfolds.
Instead, a private show, a Petit Guignol. 

II

To bring down the toxins 
to dirty the dust.
To take out the pollutants
and befoul the bedrock.
To skim off the scum 
and taint the wellsprings.
To blacken the flames 
and whiten the ashes.
In the undertow of death’s rising tide 
the good go down with the rotten.
Human contaminants are the same as other poisons 
they mark the innocent for death. 

 All residents, earthed
or unearthed, belong to the land
and avenge it. 
The centennial spasm
is insufficient time to excise
so many violators.

Those who return as they were
to do as they had done
can only do so much
and not all damage
can be undone. 

As the earth shakes shambling souls,
wayward apocalyptic spectacles unfold
themselves; private shows, Grand Guignols 
for the living dead who come to destroy the destroyers. 

Bernardo Villela has had poetry published by Exist Otherwise, Zoetic Press, and Bluepepper and Eldritch & Ether; and poetry translations in New Delta Review and AzonaL. You can read more about these and various other pursuits at https://linktr.ee/bernardovillela.