Stab a corpse, bury a zombie: within four lines the poem has shown two actions that cannot achieve anything. A corpse can't be hurt any more, and a zombie won't stay in the ground. The list then runs on through ten short stanzas of wasted effort until the last pair of words names the whole pattern: "Mindless, / Behaviour." The central idea is that much of human life, including anger, regret, fear and even sleep, is spent reacting rather than choosing, and fighting enemies who are already dead or were never real. The poem never says "I" and never explains itself. It stacks up evidence and leaves the reader to reach the verdict.
The construction is strict. Every stanza has the same shape: a present participle ending in a comma, then a short object ending in a full stop. There is no rhyme and no regular metre. The opening words swing from the two syllables of "Stabbing" to the four of "Remembering", so the rhythm comes in jolts, like blows, not as a tune. The comma after each verb works as a hinge. It leaves the action hanging for a beat before the object lands. The -ing endings matter too. They say "stabbing", never "stabbed", so nothing in the poem is finished. The repeated pattern is itself mindless, and by the fifth or sixth stanza the reader has fallen into the same loop the poem describes.
The imagery starts in horror-film territory: corpse, zombie, and later ghosts. All of these are dead things that refuse to stay dead. Then the poem loosens its grammar. "Sleeping, / Through day" drops the word "the", as though the day itself is slipping past unnoticed. "Hurling, / Abuse" gives words the physical force of thrown objects. "Fighting, / Yourself" is the turning point. Until now the violence has gone outward, but here the enemy is internal, and the word "Yourself" pulls the reader into the frame.
The next two stanzas mirror each other. "Remembering, / Regrets" clings to the past, while "Forgetting, / Tomorrow" throws the future away. The second phrase is a paradox, since you cannot forget something that hasn't happened yet. Judging by the wording, the speaker is describing someone who has stopped planning and lives only inside the loop. "Hating, / Ghosts" echoes the opening image, because ghosts, like corpses, cannot fight back. Then comes "Fearing, / Death", the largest word in the list and the only one that is real and unavoidable. It may be the root of the others, though the poem leaves that for the reader to decide.
The last stanza breaks the pattern. "Mindless" is an adjective, not a participle, so instead of another action we get a diagnosis. The comma also separates an adjective from the noun it describes, which grammar doesn't normally do, and the gap gives each word its own weight. Every earlier verb becomes an example of "behaviour". The poem also loops back on itself, because "Death" near the end recalls the "corpse" at the start. We finish where we began, which is the point.
What makes the poem worth reading is how little it uses. It has roughly twenty words, no sermon and no story, yet its form acts out its meaning, which many longer poems fail to do. It also works as a kind of mirror, since almost every reader will recognise at least one line, whether the regret, the wasted day or the fight with themselves. The name attached to it, Asta La Vista Baby, sounds like a cheeky sign-off, and that bravado sits oddly against such a bleak inventory. The poem is the only evidence we have to go on, so the contrast is best read as a feature of the text. The poem offers no cure, only the shock of seeing the pattern named, which may be the first step out of it.