Being Chased
E. Martin Pedersen

The Dogs of Hell, orange with black donut spots, and orange glass eyes
They’re on my trail
I look up and their slobber teeth shine in the twilight on all sides
If I run they’ll attack, no escape, no cover
If I stand they’ll attack too,
They will bring me down like a football team
And rip off my flesh like a kid opening Christmas presents
Like digging through the sand for your shadow who’s suffocating underneath
When the sand slides back in the hole, hour glass-style
I am doomed, surrounded, trapped by the pack; there are hundreds, coming nearer,
          growing larger, famished, hateful
All going for my throat and genitals first.

In high water, rough choppy seas
There is no order to the waves
The water’s gone berserk and lost itself shaking in panic
Like hundreds of people mingling in a crowded railway station
Who don’t go TO the trains or TO the exit
Just sway and slosh for no reason
surrounded by marble columns and cigarette machines
Can’t they see how desperate their plight is, why don’t they fight to get out, to see the           horizon, to breathe clean air?

I am blind, I hear only crashes, my spinning legs carry me nowhere
a sea hand puts its fingers through my ribs to squeeze the blood out of my heart
I am drowning in this chaos storm; they’ve won; I’m finished.
Underwater, things are even worse.

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