Customer Survey. A Poem by M. A. Schaffner

laughing at death, playing at death, dying

slowly and courageously like in movies.
 
 

Death as a costume party with vampires;

unlife as a zombie jonesing for brains,

crashing funerals, pretending to care.

 
 
Death as a product sells better firearms,

more lurid fantasies with the heroes

shaped by algorithms to buyers’ needs.
 
 

For needs read desires; for death, denial

in its most comic form. There will be sex,

of course, and thin pale girls with sincere teeth,
 
 

and over the far horizon the real deal

waits confident as a dealer whose marks