I don’t “know my own mind.”
Food has thought for me. Shoes
have thought for me
but more often
“the ideal life” has unrelentingly
screwed up its brain
on my behalf.
My thoughts have not suffered
like Lon Chaney’s in Laugh Clown,
Laugh when he falls in love
with his ward, fourteen-year-old
Loretta Young, or those 
of a racing sled when flakes
don’t fall, not to mention those
of the dogs, chained to their cenotaph
houses–though I suspect that one day
when my thoughts are tied
to opposing mythological horses,
the poor thoughts stretched
to transparence by albino life
on one side gray death
on the other, they will utter themselves
freely.