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Category: Horror/Dark Fantasy
Description: The dead rise. The world dies. Mankind falls and enters Death's halls. Over 90 poems of carnage, hopelessness and despair mixed with oodles of the living dead await you. Featuring poems by W. Bill Czolgosz, Paul A. Freeman, Keith Gouveia, J.H. Hobson, Rich Ristow, Lester Smith, Steve Vernon, Zed Zefram, Zombie Zak and many others, Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes will not only melt your brain ... it'll tear out your jugular!
eBook Publisher: Coscom Entertainment, 2009 2009
eBookwise Release Date: August 2009

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [168 KB]
Words: 18054
Reading time: 51-72 min.

Isabella

The bile

Drip

Drip

Drips from her distended jaw.

She hovers above me

And I cry

This was never supposed to be.

My throat clenches

And hers

It flexes.

--

Before it all started she was someone else.

We all were:

Me--a father

Her--my daughter.

The roles have changed:

Her--the hunter

Me--the prey.

--

Her eyes are glossed over,

Empty,

Instinct at its most primal.

And she

My Isabella,

Is surging with raw hunger.

--

The officials, they tried to explain,

They gave reasons,

But there's nothing

That can truly explain the horror

When your daughter is a beast.

There are no reasons.

--

The smell of rot is strong.

Isabella is salivating in streams.

She lunges and bites.

My tears aren't from the pain;

Spill and mix

Blood and saline.

It's all come to a head.

--

Nothing more than an object

Of blind rage;

It was her mother who killed her.

Since the virus,

Family has meant everything

And nothing,

Depending on your side of death.

--

I am nothing,

Not to her,

Not any more.

Her teeth are dull,

But she's quick and strong now.

Whatever she's become makes her mouth hot on my flesh,

A fever like she had during a bout with chicken pox.

I should fight,

But I don't,

Can't.

She's my Isabella

And she hasn't won.

So much as I've lost,

So much as we've all lost.

--

The spread was rapid

But we were careful.

Isolated.

It was a stray dog that did us in:

My wife,

My daughter,

Now me.

--

As my throat tears

And her blunt teeth crush my windpipe,

I'm thinking of the swing set in the backyard.

We built it together,

The weekend before her sixth birthday,

Three years ago now.

And I'm wondering if she remembers,

But her eyes remain blank,

My blood staining her mouth and chin.

There's the smile

That got me through so much,

Now tarnished and tweaked and twisted.

--

I'm slipping

And my greatest fear

Even above the pain

Is a gnawing thought:

When I come back

Will I remember?

Will she still be my Isabella?