Neon nightmare dog

May 6, 2016 By in Poetry 23 Comments
~

Neon nightmare dog frightening a child’s dream

Each curly golden hair aflame with water drops prisming the sun

~

Coyote jaws salivating raw fluids wetting lips held in grimace face

Smiling on my small life. I am alive. I am alive. How long has it been?

~

You appear now as if we are friends old man, for man dog you are

Holding all life’s genders in your jaws, all our unpaid bills

~

Your karmic pinball game has kept me lean with a taste for wine

Too often a static cliche′ tumbling through icons of improbable possibilities

~

Show your real face and prove me wrong

There are no mirrors in this dark place. No broken glass. Only song.

~

Another “form” to tackle. This time an Epistle. I decided to wing it. See what came up through the pipeline without placing “form” anywhere near it accept while writing it down. I woke up this morning and there it was. This is the first draft. The nightmare was real and one I remember having around 3 years old that has stayed with me visually. Made me wary of dogs for years until my father told me dogs need to hold their mouths open to breath. Perhaps they drool. When I was looking for who to write an epistle to, the face of this nightmare coyote showed up. It was thrilling physically to address this nightmare face and I thoroughly enjoyed writing this. I am going to start thinking of writing forms as a “form tango” and learn to hold my own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Artist: Doug Lawler

23 responses

  8. your artwork is so scary and beautiful that it took me a while to get my eyes down to the poem. but the poem creates equally powerful images. interesting to write an epistle to one’s nightmares, which appears to have been cathartic. my favorite stanza is the second with its wonderful messiness of jaws “salivating raw fluids.”

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Scary indeed, Michael, but another artist’s nightmare! The painting is one of Doug Lawlor’s. In writing the poem it was enlivening, exciting, to address an old worthy adversary with adult eyes.

      Like

      Reply

  10. “lean with a taste for wine…” Yup! as is this poem, gorgeously greyhound and pinot noir …”Epistle”, a letter form I always thought, like Saint Wallflower’s Epistle to the Lilliputians et al. This one from you to Neon Nightmare Dog? Don’t know this poetic form of epistle but like its, your, Spartan thrust…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave your thoughts....

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: