Cadavers - Brian Dewan

Cadavers, cadavers, everywhere cadavers

Cadavers, cadavers

Everywhere cadavers, lying all about

Their clothing is in disarray, their teeth are falling out

Discoloring and decaying, they cannot pull their weight

They block the path of passersby until they desiccate

Faces sunken hollow, forward in a slump

Sandwiched in the wallboards, hidden in the dump

Face-down in a puddle, spoiling in the sun

Exuding hideous odors, offeding everyone

Wasting in a basement, left out in the rain

Propped up in a stairwell, dangling from a crane

Beneath a pile of rubble, hoisted up on high

Rising from the ocean, falling from the sky

Cadavers, cadavers, set them out to dry

Paint the head with pitch and put a penny in its eye

Tie it to a fender and drag it all around

Tell it that it ought to have been buried in the ground

Insult them and degrade them, they will not protest

Except with quiet gurglings arising from the chest

Kicked aside and picked on by ordinary folks

Employed by student doctors in ungodly practical jokes

Where signs of life are present, cadavers are as well

There’s no use trying to look away or hiding from the smell

Where once beloved people were, cadavers are instead

It falls upon the living to live among the dead

The fluids that they’re leaking will trickle by and by

And overnight contaminate the drinking water supply

Floating down the river, strewn along the banks

We’ll share in their diseases, we’ll join them in their ranks