"The Wine Dark Dog"

What darker claret could you pour
into the minds inviting cup,
to pollute and pullulate once more
at the thought of giving up?

Why did you drift from me,
down, down leagues of memory,
to a farther unfathomed sea,
where I can't feel your form?

A diablo, devil, long known shadow,
follows me on into dreaming slow,
onward, into my middle years
where I can't let him go

For he's the keeper of the tears,
the one who knows of keys,
where all dark doors lead,
and master of that heinous power: need.

"Old dog, no tricks"

I carry dreams around in my pockets
cried out at moment of waking
suitcases full of black-hearted books
so heavy my arms are breaking

I look for the memory every night
as my eye clamps shut on the day
of when You poured in the window light
like wine for body's entree

You can't give an old dog any new tricks
just play him a couple of tunes
in hopes that the sweet gear of mind might slip
and his old dog smile, crack slant from his lips
before the night consumes
and he's gone.

"A dog’s life"

A century spent in an iron shed chained,
A further hundred years, howling at the moon,
A millennium lost in the dark wood snapping at phantom twigs
An eternity of sniffing thy brethren’s collective arse
A long afternoon skulking the streets, grey whiskered and homeless

A procession of Dogs - stealing though time,
on an ever decreasing length of twine
padding a concentric walk around
the post of an endless walk wound