I am no goat.
I make no pure living eating grass.
Or tender leaves off young trees.

But more like a scavenging dog.

I paint my teeth red.
Lay down the living into the orange clay bed of the dead.
Buried, and dig up what was already, by me, buried.
Chase flighty rodents I know I will never catch.
Stare down cotton tails who stare back black beads
embedded in the thorn-covered brush.
Consume the shit of others, and lay mine
in coiled mounds just on the cusp of my urine-marked territory.

I will consume meat, and half rotted, ant-dotted pears from off the ground.
I hold my panting breath at each distant sound,
and will spill the blood of any creature who seeks to make a meal of mine.
Dirty. Ceaselessly hungry. Curious. Covered in fleas.
Hiding plump gray lumps beneath loose ears.

I am no goat.
I am not pure.
Fit to be no God’s sacrifice.

But I make for a pretty good knife.

I am a scavenging dog. And when I come across it,
will gladly make a meal out of any red-blooded life.