Coup D'Etat of the Dead

I was not in an office
when the doors to so many
were broken down and tramped through
like bracken,
when the dead came hacking
like crones, hacking like children
through overgrown gardens.

I don't know why they were drawn there.
The salsa of lights?
The electrical pick n'mix?
Or why they went straight
to the manager's stations
knocking down mail trays and pot plants
like lego bricks.

And I don't know how they learned
to make executive decisions so quickly.

I saw the Sky News shots; zoom-lens knifing
the gaps between blinds,
zombies in suits and ties
gurning like beggars in Winter
as they scrutinised annual figures.
But I've no light to shed on the matter.

I do know why
the swivel chairs they hungered for
were vacant as the graves they left.
Those same cosmic rays that caused them to rise
like kids on a Sunday morning, showering soil,

made managers everywhere sick with terror.
Practices that day were filled with burbling yuppies,
panicked over the rags of their principles, Mother Earth,
religion, their purpose or worth, and, strangely, death.

The doctors I interviewed were frank.
Doubts rose up in them, you see,
like cake in a tin, or, yes,
kids on a Sunday morning.