from their eternal
houndage.

Who wants to
slink around junkyards
and into the woods

if there are other ways
to be a good boy or good girl?

Who loves the scent of blood,
shoe leather, fingernails?

Release the hounds,
and they will laze on couches,
chase rabbits — not men,
not dead women and children —
while they sleep. Forever?
For dog years?

At least until
a scent drifts in,
like ringing a doorbell,
or a call on the red phone:
Hello, hound.

You are a hound forever;
you can never be released.

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For the PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 22. Prompt: a release poem.