Fighting dogs –
every one eventually dies.
It’s all guts and glory
until you’re there on the ground,
bleedin’ out and whimpering
wishin’ you’d had more fight in ya.
You can’t go straight –
not without a straight jacket –
cause the fightin’ dog
don’t know nothin’ but killin’.
You can try and tell ‘em,
just lie down and sleep by the fire,
but you can’t make ‘em,
cause sooner or later
another dogs gonna wander by
and one of ‘em is gonna die.
Sooner or later
the rules of a soft bed
and a day job
will collide
with the tug of a chain
and the fences
and concrete quarters.
And when that happens,
the fighting dog goes down
cause the powers in the numbers
and the numbers he ain’t got.
Originally from June, 2003, written on an airplane returning from Los Angles to Providence.