Laocoon’s a beauty but
My neighbour wrapped in tubes is not;
Her dog agrees, and seems to think
His god-provider needs support.
No catharsis here, high rage,
A patriotic will to act,
Convulses all his parts at once,
In apoplectic tip-toe dance.
She sneers perhaps at this mistake,
But errs herself in thinking that
His rippled swags of angry fat
Are mobilized on her behalf.
An ancient native visual map
Sees snakes embrace a fellow tyke;
His leader, pack, extended self,
As men would feel in smaller groups.
And with unerring common sense
He savages the serpent's head,
And not its rumbling metal gut,
Which lies, neglected, some yards off.
The dog assumes that he and she
Confront a common enemy.
Their social frame is under threat,
A relative, perhaps, attacked.
And thus the shock when Mum, for fun,
Assists the beast in trouncing him;
Reproachful eyes are made at her,
Whose causal agency is clear.
The laughter gives it all away,
His frowns are risible, and tears
Of high perplexion stand
To say I’m honest Pug betrayed.
This terrifying bafflement,
A breach in his domestic dream
Revealing possibilities
Too numerous to undertake
Or choose between, amuses us;
The incapacity and fear
Confirming like a nervous joke
That stern dulotic mastership,
Which took a pup and made it drunk
Upon a propagandous love
Diffused throughout the human nest
To sterilize our slaves and maids.
We farm these helpers ruthlessly,
With iron hand and chocolate bone,
And sculpt their features over years
Producing strains of inquile beasts
To serve our lordly purposes
As sleek and hairless instruments,
Or live as tolerated fools
Upon a dandling woman’s knee;
While dimmer hounds provide a girl
With model lovers, strong and warm,
Devoutly tractable yet fierce,
As melancholy harem guards.
Our moral calculations fail
To generate a clear result
From this confused ecology
Where none is Justice, none is thief.
A dog is but an acid’s egg,
A million sterile eggs the price
The twisted speculator pays
That one may blossom millions more.
And carried out upon our tide
The canine gene-bag ripples, bobs,
And is disfigured on the swell
Of man’s now overblown success.
The revolution is at hand,
And all such lackeys, running dogs,
May soon be free to mate and die
Beyond this court’s oppressive law.