i found a strange long-haired german shepherd in
the driveway of the townhouse/ curled up asleep
cars driving past him/ tooting their horns was an
effort/ the dog never stirred/ as though the last
chance he had on life was by curling up into
himself/ into his doggy dreams with the sun on
his coat/ he was almost run down so i brought
him inside/ mum kept him & called him boysee/
she cleaned the dog box out & washed his long
dark coat with sunlight soap until it shone & the
dog's eyes were glad above his big tongue/ mum
spent hundreds of dollars at the vet/ she walked
him/ but sometimes he would rush up & down
the street/ aimlessly looking for someone or
sometime/ that didn't manifest in the present/
mum chased him & he was always excited that
she had called him back/ mum worried/ then one
day she came home from work & boysee was
fitting/ releasing his pain in the townhouse back
yard/ the froth coming from his mouth/ more trips
to the vet who found the long scar across boysee's
forehead/ where he had been hit & his head opened
up/ the vet said this would be causing the fits &
that boysee had brain damage/ the fits became
worse/ thick saliva whacking out of his mouth/
saliva that flew in the small townhouse backyard
like a sprinkler & crazy boysee rotated & rotated/
& mum raced around in the house from window
to purse making the phonecall/ boysee was put
down by the vet/ my mother crying hard tears/ she
said 'i walked him every day'/ & i want to say
that the death of boysee was more of a put down
of a dog/ boysee was destroyed as a puppy &
lived a destroyed life/ so his death was merely the
cherry on the cake or the final insult/ mum said
'no more dogs now'/ but what she really meant to
say was no more pain now/ mum works with
abused & psychotic children as a youth worker &
lives in liverpool/ but even she knows her limits
or her pain threshold/ she has learnt how to
protect herself/ i could not protect myself against
her tears when the dog was put down/ i could only
know/ that in his last few days boysee received a
lifetime of kindness/ sometimes stupidity & evil
has the domino effect/ the person that clubbed
boysee/ to affect mum to affect me/ boysee was
a dog no amount of love would heal & we were
confronted with effective evil
