OUTRUNNING BODEMEISTER

When fire and smoke
streams out of my nose,
I know I’m getting close
to a flabbergasting finish
at a private Preakness Stakes.

My favorite fans cheer wildly,
admiring my elegance and grace,
as if no one else ever won a race
coming down the home stretch,
a superstar young colt.

Freed from being tethered in a stall,
though never milkshaked,
a cube of sugar in my mouth
keeps me racing toward the finish line
as if I was a hot-blooded thoroughbred.

Aching haunches, and spinal stenosis
can’t extinguish a gemlike flame
of poetic passion
that fills me like music, -- Niinsky, in equine form.

A triple crown winner
with vintage eyes
peers at a blurred vision
of the absolute horizon.