The Dogs of Moscow

I’ve got trouble driving down the middle of the road.  But that’s because I don’t feel much, really, for it.  I’ve got to wax bombastic, assaulting my own indifference.  Smelly little lithe deceit, I’m not the only one complicit in it.  See when it wanes who’s unblinking, breathing quietly.  They will speak at each other as to a dog.  Less given than a dog gives when keeping rivals from his harem, keeping people from his pups.  The dogs of tomorrow have another thing coming.  Euthanasia, sterilization.  Meanness never knew such a true channel as this, pain, never this apt a receiver.  We see each other though—it’s all right there around us, watch.  But gruffly we feel each other’s space, invade and vacate.  Fictionalize the only true thoughts we almost have by stopping to think how we might tell them so that they sound true.  See, it’s been a lost cause (truth) since that first exaggerated gesture, indeed since the first metaphor.  And this is something we sense, so we go on sometimes letting ourselves believe, knowing the day will never come from our lips.  We’ve mastered the hidden place.  But this is also why the dogs are barking, why we must walk by unalarmed.  Holier than thou, we’ll find that if it really is God’s hand plucking us from the preterite or losing us within the fold, it is with at best fat fingers, so better that we own our lucky numbers and quit figuring our debts are owed.  Do unto others before they do you and you’ll never even see the blood.  You’ll never need to lie with the dogs again.