# The Black Dog Takes a Walk

Author: Dakaar
Tags: Poetry

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.

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/rnaQJRBn
Part of the series Black Dog
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