Death of a Dog

By Mercy Moige Mecha

The night was hot like a desert day
As I lay in the heat half in death, half in sleep
Tossing and turning, finding no comfort in
My preferred sepia colored setting
My mind refused to find respite
My heart could not let go of the hurt
Responsible for the unceasing pain
Yet
His cries they pierced it, reached me
At first, I thought it was me that groaned, only to realize it
Asserted another.
It was a dog, my dog yowling
A-Who-OOO! A-WHOO-OOO…
Awake! Awake!
A listen! A listen! I Dying…

My mind screamed,
Quiet Dog!
None of that A-whoo, A-wa-wa business!
Trying to sleep, roost, and forget
Hear me dog?
Dye silently, die your own death…

Naughty dog
Could not hear my silent admonishing
He carried on groaning
Woke the cricket to an early rhapsody
Catbird began to me-who, me-how
Rain bird to Too-too-too-too!
And the dog he went in crescendo
I die! I die!
All the neighborhood dogs
Joined in the concerto
Do-You? Do-You?

Dog Eyes

I saw his eyes
Used to be brown and fuzzy, now teary, needy
Appealing for a piece of myself: I had none to give
I, flying high on the wings of depression, empty, emotionless
Quickly veered from the needs of this dying beast

A paw! A paw!Paw!( I heard?)
A paw? Is that what he wanted?
To shake paws as I had taught him in life…
Buster! Buster! Sit down
GOOD DOG
Buster! Shake Paw
GOOD.GOOD.DOG

Dog,
Go away, let me be
Wake that snoring guard
Call on your guardian angel
You are a dog, can’t be afraid
You-who watched over us every night,
Surely can walk on Hades Highway alone.

Ruminations of a of a distanced mind

Dog. Why such pain
Yours I thought would be an easy death
You know. How they used to put them to chloroform sleep.
Said it is painless. Could not Buddy.
Let you get so old. Thought was the right thing to do.
Called them murderers, wanted a law
That you were something
Entitled to a respectful death.

Who said that dogs had no place in the hereafter?
Why would you die to nothingness and they rise to something?
Why walk through the shadow of death if it leads to death?
Why don’t my feet hearken to your cry for help?
Dog, do not die tonight, die on a better day
After I have seen the shrink
Got myself evaluated
Will be ready.

Hello, I think my dog is dying and I can’t get up to rescue him

Death of a dog, death of a man
Equal denominator-Death is equal to death
Tell me when I die or how else would I know
Then I will tell you when you died
Let’s share our notes with each other
Ha! A dead dog no better than a dead man
A live street dog’s better than both
He still can roam the streets.

My dream Dogs
Kept me awake that dog
Then stepped into my dreams and replicated into a thousand clones
Dogs and dogs with eyes that burnt like the fires of Hades
Dark, threatening, snarling, spitting creatures
Dogs with fangs like vipers guarding the Gate of no Return
Wraithlike creatures imbued with the rich umbra of death
Dogs that melted into walls and showed up on the other side
They hounded me all night
Accused me for my indolence, my negligence
Till the sun rays pulled me out.

A rotting Carcass
When I finally arose, weeks later
It all seemed like a bad dream
The voices that had offered me solace in ten tranquilizers were gone
And as for the dog business, I must have imagined
Must have been my mind
Playing tricks on me as doctor had said
It would.
Reality came in the form of
Big blue obese flies that fought over the slice I’d smothered with full blooded plum jam
I tried to swallow but was hit with nausea from the smell of a rot.

I sought it
I found him behind the outhouse
His teeth clenched, face gnarled in death
Black ants seeping from his eyes
The scavengers had done their postmortem
A bare skull and an open stomach
Spilling guts were the evidence.

Retching and weeping
I pushed him with a spade into a shallow grave
Leaving behind a trail of overfed maggots
As an all black crow choir sang a protest threnody-
I said rest in peace and tied two sticks as a cross.

The crows continued- Caw, caw, Caw
Food cannot rest in peace.

Talented Northampton based writer and poet Mercy Moige Mecha is part of the Northampton Writers group and on the way to having her short stories and some of her poetry published in their literary journal. This  September she will be pursuing Writing for Children(MA) at Winchester University.