Every Song Sung To A Dog

So that's it?

Eternity equates to forever walking towards without arriving any place?

With some beasts leashed

And the rest so hung up on the majesty of having two functioning feet

Don't con yourself with comfort

Don't talk about the future

In the fur patch shaved and sutured

In the tangle of tubes where I lose you

Everything is changed

And the rest of us remain

So could we exchange our lifespans?

Or would that be a shitty deal?

My eight potential decades--

sloppy, selfish and unreal

For your thirteen years of walking in one clear, pure line

Even with all this ridiculous talking I can never get through

And I can't get any help

I can just stand here in front of you and embarrass myself

So drag me out of the river in a backwards baptism

Take it back to the beginning

To make sure there's no revisions and we are all of one mind

While we watch this reel rewind

And I see myself there completely lightweight wasted on like a single drink

In 2003 in Baltimore

Smashing my first flip-phone on some piss-soaked alley floor corridor

Crimes of the heart

Crimes of the convenience store

A whole history of crimes felt more important at that time

I see them all from last to first as they play out in reverse

I get to find everything I ever lost

I get to uncast every curse

See every upturned motorcycle, every page from every bible

All my acid stomach mornings and my nights of deep survival

See those horses in the stables

Teenage tears and jumper cables

See me rattled and insane from all the changes strange and mangled

See that never-ending room filled up with everything consumed

A pile of everything consumed to fill a never-ending room

Hear every song sung to a dog on every walk with every dog.