The Restless Doghouse

I have a wicked side.
It sleeps in the doghouse.
It pants a lot.
It mutters things under its breath.
It ingratiates itself.
It reminds you of a human infant.
It growls at passing neighbours.
It is incapable of looking up.
It is grateful for the leftovers.
It naps a lot.
It has shameful dreams
about running, and pouncing,
and shaking.
It grows restless in the doghouse.
It growls at passing fancies.
It ages seven years
for every
one human year.
Scientists don’t know why.

The Getaway Plan

After catching a glimpse of your bodies in the mirror,
I felt a sharp little shiver shoot down my spine.

Ignited by the flares of a dozen flushed nerve endings,
it aimed to find safer ground by way of my buckling thighs.

The rogue endorphins liberated themselves from my body
through a double barrel pair of charcoal tube socks.

Looking up from my smoking craters of footwear,
I watched as the distraught shiver accidentally skidded

into our newly-renovated kitchen island.
Then with a theatrical flourish of banging backdoor,

I saw it duck down a dimly lit alley,
where an ominously tinted luxury vehicle

idled by the crumbling curb,
its passenger door dangling obligingly ajar,

like the slackened jawbone of
a dumbstruck believer.

The Hangover Cure

I awoke this morning with my headache lodged
beneath the lid of an antique player piano.

Admittedly, I do not recall much about last night,
except that a half-drunk Manhattan on ice

was needlessly heaved at a short-fused bluesman.
After numerous attempts to liberate my head

with brute force and tougher talk, I gave up.
Instead, I belted out a song of automated apology

into the tuneless dawn, as if this change
in key might somehow let me out.

The Gospel Record

I was rotating somewhere in the background,
running a long fingernail along the worn grooves
of my forehead, waiting for the music to come.
"You take requests?" asked a voice from up on high.
It was a girl, riding upon her boyfriend's shoulders,
waving a flaming lighter beneath the heavens.
"I'm not a house band," I said. "I'm more like
a home theatre system. I need to be programmed."
"I see," she said, and I watched as her blue flame
disappeared against a stretch of uninterrupted sky.
As night fell, the voice and the light were replaced
by the murmur of white noise constellations.
Above me, radio signals were loose in the stars,
muttering for release from the cluttered ether.
"I know the songs have always existed," I said
solemnly rotating in the darkness. "But all I ever
receive is blank static - like the rise of water around
an island, or the rush of wind inside a tunnel."
"You can't complain," said the girl, who had just
reappeared, only this time standing upon the
shoulders of her giant boyfriend. "Inspiration,"
she explained, "is a murmur loose in your brain."
As my audience wandered off a second time,
I noticed that the ground beneath me was worn.
I had been rotating for so long that I found myself
unwilling to seek alternative grooves to inspiration.
So, I vowed to observe my patient rotations
whether I was delivered the music, or not.

The Fourth Wall

I’m a descendant of the first cave painters
who thought to include human beings in their art.

You see, up until then, prehistoric murals
were mostly just bison, bison, bison.

The theory was – if you drew them on the wall,
you drew them from the land.

So, once my ancestors began to
include themselves in their own scenes,

the land became strewn with
artists, artists, artists.

Soon the scene was all played-out,
leafy greens were over-priced,

and the bison felt excluded,
so they left. My bad.

The Ornamental Cannon

I used to think that meteor showers were glorious occurrences,
that is, until a comet dropped from the sky and blinded my dog.
What happened was, we were walking through Tecumseh Park
when a fireball ricocheted off the barrel of an ornamental cannon.
All at once, three-fifths of the detonated rock illuminated the
Thames riverbed in a shower of red and white sparks, while two-
fifths of the remainder headed straight for my unprotected calves.
Then I felt a slack on the leash, and I realized that my dog had
heroically heaved his body between my legs and the meteorite.
The local ambulance crew appeared on the scene almost at once.
As it happened, they were speeding toward the park with such
haste that they rebounded off the barrel of a vandalized slide.
"I'm fine, fine," shouted my dog. "I can still smell goddamn it!"
Despite his protests, he was rushed to the local hospital where
I dutifully sat by his bedside, describing every inch of his dimly
lit room, until the needles and the sleeping came. At daybreak,
an eager reporter from The Daily Procter came by to interview
the heroic blind dog that had selflessly saved his master's legs.
But to the reporter's dismay, my dog denied the entire glorious
occurrence. "Well, what about the witnesses?" asked the reporter.
"Bark," said my dog, with a dismissive flick of his paw. "People
will remember what they want to remember." "But what about
the ornamental cannon," asked the reporter, "it bears the marks
of an explosion." "Weapons will bear what they want to bear,"
said my dog. "Besides," he added. "I wasn't even in Chatham
last night. I was holding defensive positions with the Shawnee."
In front of the dubious reporter, my blind dog continued to drone
on and on about his role in the War of 1812. "General Procter
had retreated up the Thames with such haste," said my dog.
"That he'd left more than half of his men and supplies behind
with Tecumseh's last chance at honour." "So," said the reporter
who's eyes rolled like looping meteorites, "were you very scared?"
"No," said my dog, "my job was to fetch the scattered supplies
from the river. Our last remaining cannon could not longer fire,
and the enemy knew it. Their artillery thrashed at the Thames
until the shoreline resembled a pot of boiling water." Then my dog
turned his head away from the reporter, and I knew that he had
just shared everything he cared to. "This interview is over," said
the reporter, and he left the room in something of a huff. My dog
sniffed the air and said, "Good, he's gone." We sat alone for a while,
and I asked him, "So, were you really in that War? Or were you
out walking with me, saving me from the ornamental cannon?"
My dog turned his bandaged eyes towards me, "Victims will
explain what they want to explain," he said. Then as a heavy rain
thrashed against the hospital window, I rested a reassuring hand
upon my dog's unsuspecting paw. "I get it," I said. "Sometimes,
I find it very scary to tell people how much I love them, too."

The Pill Bottle

Standing topless in front of the old mirrored cabinet,
I stared at the open bottle of pills until the voices came.

“You cannot continue to view your illness with contempt,”
said the bottle of pills. “It’s not something beneath you.”

“The illness,” it added, “is an adversary worthy of your nerve.”
Instinctively, I sucked in my gut and stood up a bit straighter.

This sudden shift in posture caused the pill bottle to rattle,
and my ears were filled with the peals of well-rung bells.

As the room fell back into stoic disquiet, the childproof cap
on the counter gave voice to the silence. “The path you seek,”

it said to me, “is a unique expression of your symptoms.
And it will lead you to something that’s been missing.”

I rolled my eyeballs in their sockets, scanning the bathroom
for any misplaced lotions or decorative soaps, but nothing

seemed out of order, except the pill bottle. “What you need,”
said the bottle, “is less estrangement from your various

selves.” Then almost as if they were searching for something,
the dozens of pills left in my bottle leapt from my hand,

and threw themselves towards the peeling linoleum below.
Standing topless in front of the newly painted wall,

I stared at the open pane of glass until the constellations
came. Careful not to crush the wandering doses at my feet,

I turned to face the bitter pill of the moon, as it called out
to me in a booming voice. It said, “To be estranged from

what makes a person human is to diminish all remaining
humanity.” Then an alarm on my watch face began to chirp,

chirp, chirp, and I knew it was time to discover whether
or not my pills still worked after they fell onto the floor.