Dog Tags
What should I do with dog tags
Now that my dog is dead?
Should I frame them on the wall
Over the place he made his bed?
Should I put them in the drawer
With other memories I store?
Or should I just ignore
And forget about him instead?
The pain I feel is fresh
As a cold and biting wind
I’ll never hear him yelp again
Nor smile as he grinned
But I’ve felt this pain before
In a week or three or four
It will fade to little more
Than vaguely feeling that I’ve sinned
You see, I had him killed
They put a drug into his veins
They said he’s just asleep
They said he felt no pains
He was old and he was sick
And his cataracts were thick
But it’s like I used a brick
To bash out all his brains
Okay, enough of guilt!
I did what I had to do
If you were in my place
I’m sure you’d do it too
But his dog tags aren’t alone
Flesh of my flesh bone of my bone
My veteran father sits like stone
Waiting for the other shoe
I don't really know why, perhaps it's the tone, but Bill's poem reminds me of "the mockingbird" by Charles Bukowski:
ReplyDeletethe mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn’t understand.
yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman’s legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.
I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.
summer was over.