Life goes on, and all my wishes have whittled down to one:
To be remembered as someone who tried.

I have outrun everything but desperate sincerity

And this shape-shifting fear-hound,
Nightmare dog on the heels of every thought.

Mutt, I have spent every night of my life
With my fist down your throat,
Clawing for the name to call you by
To cast you from me like a herd of pigs.

You are aloof, sarcastic,
You pretend not to notice
When you're coming or going.

I'm embarrassed by how casually
You drive me over cliffs.

You are so close these days that sometimes
You wear my body
And I watch,
Dumb,
Numb,
And skeletal in a fur coat,
What you do and say
And wonder
If my voice has always sounded that way.

Even now, alone,
I hear your paws picking paths
Down the hall outside my bedroom
And the hot fog of your breath.

Your eyes are fearful yellow and always glowing closer,
Like the headlights of a train constantly closing in
On a cartoon woman chained to the tracks.

What ritual will exorcise you?

All I want anymore is my skin back
And a knife to your throat.

forgive me

There are times I disappoint you,

O friend or fear behind each face --

And times I disappoint me, too.

But the former does not displace

My doubting of the latter's due

In the dispensing of our grace.

.


We travel up, between, and through

Exchanged relationships of space.

No transgression is old or new.

We disentangle. We embrace.