a dog's heart

the loyalty
simplicity
a dog will give you more
unconditional love
just lying on the floor
than people ever gave before
for dogs do not want
to go to war
and dogs only want
to feel secure
to be loved
more and more

a heart is like a dog
the loyalty
simplicity
a heart will give you more
unconditional love
just lying next to you
feeling as it did before
it ever learned to fear
or go to war
for hearts only want
to feel secure
to be loved
more and more

and when a heart is broken
the infant inside
awakens to unspoken
tears to be cried

the heart wants to mend
but afraid to bend
and afraid to fall

so the heart goes to sleep
hoping dreams will keep
no feeling at all

sleeping like a log
i'd rather be a dog

the sleeping dog mends
with his only friends
a bone and a ball

and when the dog wakes
like when the bow breaks
the cradle will fall

and the baby cries
and the dream dies
the baby cries
the dream dies

but is that hope i see in your eyes?...
where the sleeping dog lies...
can we be so wise?
is it a surprise?

the dog is like you
the dog is like me
the loyalty
the simplicity
and we can share much more
unconditional love
than we ever did before
if we do not want
to go to war
if we only want
to feel secure
to be loved
more and more

comfort food

She sits there eating cookie after cookie, crème wafers covered in milk chocolate, chunky chocolate chip, double stuffed oreos, the chocolate covered kind that is sometimes hard to find in the stores. After two Italian subs, half a meatball, half a veal, and a whole eggplant (because the vegetables balances the diet, you know), all parmesan with double cheese and extra sauce (because she is so very oral, you know), and she is looking forward to the midnight snack, the two halves she did not just eat. It is only just after eight o'clock, after all, and she always has a snack before bed. The prime time hours have just begun, her favorite time of the day, so she has her snack tray laid out around her and she's making the great escape into other people's lives and carbohydrate heaven.

He knows how to be healthy, he's done it before, after all, as a former marathon runner and almost Olympian, yet he sits at his computer writing about his life, complaining mostly, because he must have given up on his dreams somewhere along the way, at least temporarily, long enough to pack on fifty pounds, much against his medical advice, and lose any connection with a social life, except for the messages on his computer. As midnight approaches, he drinks another Red Bull so he can continue on into the night, writing, writing, writing out his life, pouring out the loose thoughts and careless emotions that remain after whatever it was that shut him down and drove him to this, a shut-in existence linked to the outside world only by the umbilical cordless mouse-ball he ordered on the internet where he taps on into the night feeling like the king of his cyber kingdom.

They are two lost souls living in a fishbowl of electronic compassion, real as they want it to be. Her phone rings, she ignores it. The best part of her favorite episode is on and she must see it for the seven or eight hundredth time, year after year.

There's a knock at his door, he ignores it. He is on a roll and nothing can stop his fingers now for they are tapping out the symphony of his imaginary existence.

They are content, or at least numb, which is a form of contentment, I suppose.