The Police Dog

I am a police
Dog – happy, strong
I stand testicle-high and
              (about)
Javelin-long
(God – created me with
This limited view
So sometimes I forget he
Created you too)

      You've met me:

When you were fleeing in
The woods far from home;
It was dark – ‘Til I, snarling,
Wet grinning with foam –
With a man and torch beside me –
Roused you in the night
(With kerosene he doused you
And he set you alight – )

I’ve damped many a prison cot
Down through the years
With your blood or urine
(Or with your tears)

Best friend to humanity
Yet always I stood by
While others hanged you, burned you
Blinded you with hoods, my

Services were requested
 (Yes, this part is so)
In Harlem, Watts and Selma
 – Did you also know:

I’ve hounded Jews and Muslims and
Other renegades?
I was there in Bergen-Belsen
And in Abu Ghraib
I’ve guarded tolls and checkpoints
In Cape Town and Hebron
I’ve said to you “Hey black, Hey
Towel-head – Get gone!”

--
Yet still
If you want my
Dog’s two cents, I

Remain unashamed
To beg you not to blame
Me – in the eyes of God
We – are the same:
You and I are, if any,
        Innocents – The guilt
Belongs to men who

By means of  cruelty kicking
Made a creature that was
Capable of kindness, licking
Sweetly at the hands, of loving,
Lapping, running, catching games, into a
Mortifier of the human frame

(I did not choose it, I did not know, I am
A creature of simple loyalties, I
Could not have understood
The things that human hands and minds—
Would make me do
(Victim I) to victim you)

--
And if Man made me, a creature capable of caring
Yet into a dead (and deadly) vehicle for tearing
Through his fellow’s failing flesh—

How then to explain:
The almighty choice of God
In giving Man the savage will
To make the Police Dog?