The Black Dog Takes a Walk
Freeform poetry from the introspective collection, Black Dog, that runs with a folkloric figure that is often associated with misfortune and used as a metaphor for depression. Black Dog looks at this figure and gives him a voice, letting him bark back at a society that’s already made up its mind about him.
In their sticky orange glow,
coddled by a glare that doesn’t pretend
to fend the monsters off anymore,
the Black Dog struggles
to even stretch his legs, to open his jaws,
in streets that would just as soon
narrow the mind as the heart.
He’s sick of ruined night-vision
of star-strangled evenings littered with sky-trash
and the tinnitus whine of everyone else
going nowhere else
fast,
of crossroads where every devil worth a damn
will try to sell you a neon need
you never knew you wanted.
An intersection
one way or another
just means something’s going to
pass you by.
With every lap around the block he is starving
to pack it all in
and trade streetlights
for tree trunks.
Somewhere there is a place he knows
where their arms can stretch skyward
and link fingers with a night dripping with stars,
where the animal dark
so complete it flows, and runs
blacker than blood
dark as a dog
at the edge of your glow,
runs pad-footed along a road
that’s all downhill from here
to pool outside a cabin door
where his nearest neighbour
is a quiet nobody felt the need to clutter.