new (light) verse

If dogs wrote poetry

If we dogs wrote poetry,
no meandering iambic trot,
but galloping dactylic pace,
or else, we’ll do the spondee strut;
no host of golden daffodils,
but oak or elm each forty feet,
or lamppost, hydrant or park seat;
no odes to nightingales
but rather odes to rubbish dumps
or as we call them, the long free lunch;

ah, if dogs wrote epicurean poetry,
please, no blackbirds in a pie
but raw, still warm, beside the road,
though as familiaris we’ll acquiesce
to eulogize freeze-dried, chicken-flavoured lumps
or beef or lamb,
or liver, turkey, rabbit, venison,
however made and marketed,
we’ll wolf it down,
swallow it whole,
then lie all day before the fire
dreaming of composing couplets.

If dogs wrote epic poetry they would not
tell of Norway’s Amundson versus England’s Scott,
but rather would recall the victory
of Greenland Dog over Siberian Pony.

If dogs were meant to write love poems,
then why the hell do you have us done?
“done” – what an idiotic euphemism
for nothing short of castration,
just one more sign of your slave-owning mentality,
like the kennel and collar and leash,
or words like “down” and “sit” and “fetch”,
without ever so much as a “please”.

If dogs wrote modern poetry,
in more abstract lines we might debate
the merits of silent movies versus talkies
but only to set up a rhyme for walkies,
and likewise, Gysinesquely sample
the boundless imagery of Keats,
soulful fugues of Ms. Simone,
religious thoughts of Apostle Paul,
and communism espoused by Marx,
but only so we might make mention
of treats and bone and ball and parks.

But we dogs do not write poetry
because nothing rhymes with grughh.

Grughh grughh, grughh grughh grughh, grughh ...