Black Dog Becoming
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.
He’s a timelapse
immobile
a guardian statue
enthroned in his own skull
waiting for the flickering world
to overgrow him.
They told him he had to walk on
come to heel
or he’d be left behind,
but here in a temple of bones
the osteomantic remnants
of every Dog that walked ahead of him
he’s never felt more welcome.
He feels them underfoot
the upcycled dead
a transcendent creep
a wired neuropathy
a revolving door
to push.
He shrugs off his pelt
and sloughs away flesh
and lets the moss crawl in
to soothe his bare bones.
He will wait here, and let the hollows of his eyes spill over
exhale his held breath
his mouthful of dust
and let the veil tear.
He doesn’t know if it’s possible
to kill with meaning
but he knows with a certainty
decay exists
as an extant form
of life.