Review of “Are There Zombies in Heaven”

 Review of “Are There Zombies in Heaven”, poetry by Eric “The Moebius Kid” Morlin, Wilder Publications, Inc., PO Box 10641, Blacksburg, VA 24063, 149 pages, 2011




Review by Barbara Bialick



There are some 101 poems with interesting titles listed in the table of contents of this book, 102 if you count the disclaimer as a prose poem. But the title poem boasts a great line in this tome about love and life as a street poet in Little Five Points in Atlanta, who’s currently working on a bachelor’s degree in the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Morlin, who lists scores of acknowledgments of people who have helped him, writes: “Are there zombies in heaven/are there undead angels waiting for me/when I die?”



Morlin will surely face down the zombies like he does the rest of his life.

He uses blunt, sometimes rough language in a lot of the poems, but in others, if he just edited some lines a bit differently, he can even murmur like a Shakespearian sonnet writer, as in “Anti-dotes and Sequels”: “Love doesn’t abandon when clarity/unravels, it weathers self-hate and intellect/baffles. They stymie detection, of where/the souls scarred in weals, but love is like/braille, where it touches it heals, Love/navigates us to learn to forgive, and in/learning the process, remembers to live...”



In contrast, consider the language in “Blessed Are the Weak,” where he pens, “for they shall go for the kill/every time and tell you/they love you./They shall offer soft words/And watch as you/Hemorrhage,/and they’re still too terrified/to tell you how they frakked/you over with intention…/What prize is there in/beating down someone/who loves you and/ won’t hit you back?”



In the Introduction by Warrine Lapine, the book’s publisher, it reads “”Moebius is a street poet. His work is uncompromising, raw, bold; it takes you to places that you’d probably rather not go. And Moebius is fine with that…truth is beauty” as Keats reminds us…



In his “Disclaimer” and/or prose poem at the end of the book, “Morlin declares “The world is an IQ test. We all fail some of the time. OBVIOUSLY, but that’s part of the point…”