Say Goodbye

    It's like Frank said when
    he worked in the pound,
    killed all those dogs

    in the evacuator, sucked the life
    out of them in the oxygen
    deprivation chamber:

    he took a lot of them home,
    the cute ones, the ones he
    couldn't bear to kill -

    the ones he wanted to save,
    and they ran out in the
    traffic,

    broke their chains and disappeared;
    one got killed in a fight,
    another ate rat poison.

    One way or another they died,
    every last damned
    one of them.

    One day someone came in with
    5 perfect poodle puppies
    and Frank was told

    to kill 4 and save one. The choice of
    who lived and who died was left
    up to Frank,

    so he took the runt of the litter,
    the one who seemed he could
    adapt

    and he killed the 4 best ones,
    reduced their air pressure
    to that at 30,000 feet,

    where they puked their hearts out
    like all the others he
    "put to sleep,"

    and took the little one and put him
    up front in a tiny cage,
    where he would appear

    pathetic to the general public,
    some of whom selected him and
    took him home that very day,

    but who returned the next week
    for another puppy, saying
    the one they got

    had "just died. He was fine and then
    he died. The kids are all
    broken up" they said.

    And they wanted to know if there was
    a money-back
    guarantee.

    You can't save anybody, Frank decided,
    the system takes over
    and that's that.

    After a while Frank stopped
    taking any of them home.
    Frank modified

    his objectives, but you can't say
    he ever really gave up on them.
    Like Frank said,

    "I don't want to save them, not really,
    I just want to rub their
    fucking ears."

    And he rubbed their ears, the furry discards,
    the smart ones, the dumb ones,
    the old and the young,

    the rejects, the crippled and lame, the ones
    with bad markings, the wrong coloration,
    With problems beyond

    their understanding. And each time before
    he put them in the chamber, he looked
    into their eyes.

    And if there was no salvation, if there was
    no redemption, at least there was
    someone to say goodbye.

      Michael McNeilley
      © 1997



    Back