The beast bent on my destruction

Grows hairs from its pores, shaggy,

malkempt. Sharp blades cut them

but they cut back. Salt liquids pool

At the corner of its eyes, rims rage red,

Irritants all it sees. Its teeth twist like trees

Bent by competing winds, roots muscle roots

& between the beaten stumps meat remnants,

a hint of rot. Its head teeters on iron posts,

the whole apparatus creaks in the wind & on windless

days it howls at the hurricane churning in its skull,

the blind eye seeking but never recognizing

the sources of its rage when it glares at the mirror

in the bathroom steam hissing that’s me, that’s me.  

Copyright © 2019 by Roger W. Hecht.