Prose Poem: The Dogs of Rangoon.

 

I left home to become a feral dog at a young age.

I was tired of sitting at the table

and wearing clothes all the time;

I wanted to snarl over a piece of offal

and squat wherever I wished.

So I wandered the world

on all fours,

grew a muzzle and a tail.

Picked up fleas and lice.

Caught the mange in Budapest.

And finally came to Rangoon

one sultry evening,

when the street lights were

sickly yellow

and the flying termites 

dripped from the sky --

I gobbled them up with gusto.

Just my kind of place.

At first I simply chased other dogs,

nipping at their backsides.

Then I attacked the night people --

those brave, foolish people,

who were defying curfew,

marching in protest.

Being Buddhist, they never harmed

animals -- even a mangy creature like me.

It was wonderful.

I ripped apart their longyis

in a foaming frenzy, as they ran

from the police.

I loved chewing up their sandals;

most of 'em only had one pair

to their names. 

In the daytime I slept under the Yangon River

docks, where it was cool and fetid.

One night I attacked an old woman

on her way home with a package 

of soup bones.

She fell and hit her head on the curb.

She didn't get up again.

I feasted on the soup bones until

a crowd gathered around me.

They wouldn't let me leave, no matter

how I snapped and snarled.

They beat me with sticks and clubs.

Just my luck --

a bunch of lousy Christians.

But the laugh is on them,

because I've been reincarnated as 

a general in the Tatmadaw.  

And I remember distinctly each

one of them . . .