With Something To Discuss

all mine, no part of me dedicated to
or given over, or owed to an employer

since I’m all mine, all my own, since I own me,
I knock myself out, making and remaking poems
refashioning, reshaping

in pursuit of my own and those of others,
I knock myself out, knock myself silly

knocking on doors, behind which, I suspect
poems might be hiding or assuming I smell one,
sense one, requiring recovering, revealing

I scratch like my dog, Dash used to
when he wanted to force a rat out of hiding
to, without mercy, kill it: in his teeth, shaking it

allowed to drop only when lifeless
until it was, grinning with disgust, with delight


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
2:31 a.m. 29/march/06