Dogs of War

There are just some things you don't want to let slip.

I hate it when someone lets slip the dogs of war
and I lambast them publicly for
that, but at the last second
they yank the dogs back
by their chains, and the sad dogs cry out
before slinking faithfully back to their master
and don’t end up going to war after all

and now my public indictment
of the person I thought was going to let slip
the dogs of war is just hanging out there
and since indictments don’t have chains
I can’t yank it back
and everyone is staring at me
because it looks like I just accused someone
of letting slip the dogs of war
when they technically didn’t

and the only dogs within sight
are panting amiably in orderly rows
alongside the person I accused,
their leashes slack, their teeth concealed. 
Even their tails are wagging,
sweeping the floor like brooms.

Suddenly, these dogs look so little
like dogs of war lettable to be slipped by anyone
that I look like a psycho for suggesting so
and their master in his magnificent ten-piece suit
leering at me, my eyes wide in fear
because I’m realizing why he pretended
to let slip the dogs of war in the first place—

to find out who would cry out in protest
if he did—and it was me. That’s when a new set
of dogs of war gets let slipped—
the dogs of war of those watching
from the sidelines, hoping to find
someone who everyone saw be publicly wrong
to let slip their own dogs of war on

in this case me
for my half-cocked condemnation
of the original fake dogs-of-war slipping guy.
Now I’m the one with the dogs of war
getting slipped on me, and all I have
is about fifteen seconds to make peace with myself,
and how I lived my life, and who I am—

and, thankfully, I am able to do it
because I’m young enough
not to have lived so long that it takes a long time
to make peace with the things I regret—
and I finish making peace with myself
just in time, before being torn apart
by the real dogs of war.
It’s so fast that even if I did have my own

dogs to let slip in response
I would not have had time,
making the dogs that were let slipped on me
not really dogs of war at all:
if someone is murdered before they can retaliate,
it’s not a war, so the dogs that do it
are not dogs of war—is my next-to-last thought.

There are no true
dogs of war in this story
being my last.