The Dog
i leap
i never fall into the sky
i’m not a tree
although i’m tethered
i leap like a mad dog
at the end
of my rope
what a sad
pathetic rebellion
i’m not a car
i wish
i could roar like an engine
crash into everything
get somewhere
i watch a herd:
some mothers yell
i know they’re mothers because they yell
then the children yell
like them
the fathers come
and yell louder
they all run
after a ball
you’re supposed to pass it
to someone else
way out where they can’t
reach it
when i tried to trap
what they were chasing
they tied me with wire
to the fence
in this vacant lot
i’ve got sores on my neck
swarmed by flies
tethered i’m a spectacle
wretched
fixed to the earth
a tree is majestic
a tree rising up
is harmony made world
an animal rising up
who can’t come down
is a man
he spends his time
measuring distances
he won’t have time
to reach
a life won’t be enough
for him to reach a life
the human animal
is like us only
in its rabid
domestication
unlike for us
sex for him
isn’t a passion
passion is a sex
through the trees
you can see the sun
through a man
you can’t
a lot of trees
make a forest
a lot of men
make a war
sometimes they fill a stadium
and scream together
and say nothing
even when they scream
birds are light
and in tune
men aren’t birds
even though i move around all day
running this way and that
i go nowhere
i go nowhere
and i’m not a tree
i move relentless
without being a butterfly
once in a while i make a racket
to fake a dignity
i can’t remember
i can’t remember
me
humans call
observation
discovery
i observe:
not letting the other
arrive
one goal
before another
and screaming
means
the other thinks
they’re screaming for a reason
the tree is a dance
with the wind
unlike the tree
a man is soft on the outside
and tough in the heart
not a stone
that guards a chromatic
secret
if he’s loud enough
a man
can break a mountain
and load himself with gold
and sink into the sea
with the wind
the birds swoop
the trees sway
the man loads ships and goes
away to sell
the tree remains
unflustered
still flowing
inside
i pirouette
i used to be a wolf
and now
i bring them the ball
when it falls outside
but there’s no outside
the human anymore
it’s impossible
to chain the wind
confined
it turns to music
i’m not the wind
still
it turns invisible
it can strike
without cruelty
stroke
without losing its way
change direction
in no hunt
i turn and turn
imagining
that i’m the wind
i try to soar higher
the human thinks
i’m chasing
my own tail
a man’s hunt
means fencing off the world
forcing it straight
into his sights
we dogs throw ourselves
into the jaws of the sky
with a clean
and mutual bite
man
is an animal’s
moral sickness
a human animal climbs
the fence
and curls around me
seeking heat
we sleep like this
equals in helplessness
the wind heaps us together
god never raised us
the sky
and rubble
the sky
and a wall
the sky
and the fence
weeds
stones
the stars
and me
shipwrecked
with the whole night
around
ahead
instead
of sea
and the whole universe
if even stones are turned
to sand
so does the animal
settle as sediment
in the man’s desert
the sand’s passion is glass
man’s is the the mirror
and in the end what’s human
crumbles into infinite
digital grains
an animal that thinks itself
becomes a man
there’s no coming back
from a man who does
The Stone
at last the night
relieves me
of the responsibility
of form