There's this junkyard dog
they let out each night,
she wanders the dirt,
to guard our steel dead.
That wretched thing, she is a blur, when she
darts between rusted remains of metal,
she runs with her shadow, lonely woman,
gnaws at vinyl flesh, as she thinks of wolves.
Ugly, fur caked in dirt, with a crazed look,
perching on a rusted red coffin, she heels.
Above her, stars shine like traffic signals,
so devout, she prays to streets in the sky.
Each night, she howls so loud, her lungs must ache,
and her throat must tear, pressure builds in her,
clawing her skull, pulsing at her forehead,
relieved by dawn when her duty is done.
A former friend and I
paid five dollar cover charge
To escape this consumerist world.
Driving in on the dark, glistening, asphalt road,
that cleaved the wild woods into two.
We looked for hogs,
who apparently lived there,
advertised with signs nailed to trees.
But the woods were quiet, weird, and lonely.
We heard the crunch of the shell path beneath us,
But that was all.
Until some deer,
friends, or family, close, intimate.
Clumped together, they looked like a hydra,
heads all peering from the same body.
They crept ahead of us. Stopped.
Looked down at us, with shiny black eyes
like polished obsidian.
We only caught a glimpse
before they turned away,
turning up their noses
and swinging their heads back,
and faded into the thicket
like spirits as dawn.
I know why the deer wanted nothing to do with us.