a woman

[dog]

somewhere
a man believes
rather egotistically
he has a woman under
his proverbial thumb

while somewhere else
another man believes
he has a woman
firmly in hand,
at his beck
and call

both
are very,
very wrong
about her, she's
nobody's pet on a chain
there for befondlement out
of bemused boredom
or sadistic avarice

somewhere, two
antagonists are finally
on the same page neither having
any idea whom or what
they are dealing with

a woman
not a dog
on a chain
nor a freak
on a leash

[dog]

down not out


a dog lies down not out, belly flat
to the ground, no idea
who she is anymore
or what her next
move will be
as she
continues
to chew through
and yank links from her
combined chains
with her teeth
til her gums
bleed tears
of red
but
not her
eyes
dead
as drought
riddled rivers
are her eyes
not a single
spiritless
quiveringly
dripdripdrippy
tear trickles
halfheartedly
from them
just hailstones
of dagger sharp ice
the dog abandons her chain
chewing, rolls over onto her
side, scratches her fleas
til they jump off her hide
and rises sinuously
from the ground
a woman
labeling
something
a dog
doesn't
make it so
but it's what
she's called
it's her
name
and she
wears it as well
as the collar
comprised
of beige
vulturine
bones
circling
her
throat

[dawness]

champion, dog! a great gem!

[dog]

thanks, dawness! dawg.

[dog]

i. to protect the innocent
and the not so innocent
as the case may be
from the vehement
liquidic sword
of a bitterly
blessed
and beautifully
cursed woman

sometimes, it's best
for all concerned
if one adorns
a mask,
not of contentment
but of reality
no matter
how thinly
disguised,
as the case
may be

ii. sleeping dogs
always lie...
barking, growling
howling dogs
are the grandpups
of Cerebrus...

not afraid
of a tangle
if there is
a brush

never
shutting up
when told
to shush...

hush, puppy, hush...
hush, poppet, hush...
hush, puppet, hush...
hush, puppy, hush...

iii. beware Pollyanna...
the flip side of such graceful
equanimity, is the Wicked Witch
of the West, at best and worst...

given smiles are not the guises of friendly idiots
easily led astray...but, a gamer extraordinaire
with her game face on...playing poker
with her guileless happy face on...
she's walked the land of shadows,
senses shades of the walking dead
when she feels and smells them...

try to cheat her at cards
you'll see how quick
Pollyanna is really
paying attention...
while getting
her dogfaced smile
on to draw you in...
see what you're made of...
friend, foe, cheater or regulator?
dross or floss? worthy of the honor
of being woven into the warp
and woof of her good memories
contained in the story of her life...

vi. Beware Pollyanna
Cerebrus was her great-great
and so on and so forth, grandfather...
Arachne the bitch he bred to make the line
she spun and sprang from way back when...

with the crowd, this entity of past and present,
does not blend...Hecate, sothically disguised,
she follows the wake of the pack...
searching for lost heads to stew loose of their decaying
cranial meat and throw like shards of pottery
at her feet to make a path for the worthy
to cross over behind her to the land of milk and honey...

v. if this life were some mythical legend...
some old folktale with moral of the story moments
embedded within it's text...I would wish, as it's ending...
to magically, Guineverishly disappear with my individual
personal pain, cloistered and hidden away with me,
behind the thick walls of a nunnery, off the beaten path...
never to harm another with the titanic tragedies
continually playing out in this life...nor to draw their
derision nor sorrow, for this life, either...my luck,
the god damned abbess would mistake me
for a dog on her front stoop and chain
me to her dratted ponycart,
instead of giving me a room
with a view, to call my own, alone...

[dog]

The Legend of Wooley Swamp lyrics
by The Charlie Daniels Band

Well, if you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, well, you better not go at night.
There's things out there in the middle of them woods that make a strong man
die from fright. Things that crawl and things that fly and things that creep
around on the ground. And they say the ghost of Lucius Clay gets up and he
walks around.

But I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself. And I couldn't conceive
it 'cause I never would have listened to nobody else. And I couldn't believe it.
I just had to find out for myself there's some things in this world you just can't
explain.

Spoken:
The old man lived in the Wooley Swamp way back in Booger Woods. He never
did do a lot of harm in the world, but he never did do no good. People didn't
think too much of him. They all thought he acted funny. The old man didn't
care about people anyway. All he cared about was his money. He'd stuff it all
down in mason jars and he'd bury it all around. And on certain nights if the
moon was right he'd dig it up out of the ground. He'd pour it all out on the floor
of his shack and run his fingers through it. Yeah, Lucius Clay was a greedy old
man and that's all that there was to it.

But I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself. And I couldn't conceive
it 'cause I never would have listened to nobody else. And I couldn't believe it.
I just had to find out for myself there's some things in this world you just can't
explain.

Spoken:
Cable boys was white trash. They lived over on Carver's Creek. They were
mean as a snake and sneaky as a cat and belligerent when they'd speak. One
night the oldest brother said, "Y'all meet me at the Wooley Swamp later. We'll
take old Lucius's money and we'll feed him to the alligators." They found the
old man out in the back with a shovel in his hand, thirteen rusty mason jars was
just dug up out of the sand. And they all went crazy and they beat the old man,
and they picked him up off of the ground. Threw him in the swamp and stood there
and laughed as the black water sucked him down. Then they turned around and
went back to the shack and picked up the money and ran. They hadn't gone
no where when they realized they were running in quicksand. And they struggled
and they screamed but they couldn't get away and just before they went under
they could hear that old man laughing in a voice as loud as thunder.

And that's been fifty years ago and you can go by there yet. There's a spot in
the yard in the back of that shack where the ground is always wet. And on
summer nights, if the moon is right down by the that dark footpath, you can
hear three young men screaming. You can hear one old man laugh.

Well, if you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, well, you better not go at night.
There's things out there in the middle of them woods that make a strong man
die from fright. Things that crawl and things that fly and things that creep
around on the ground. And they say the ghost of Lucius Clay gets up and he
walks around.

But I couldn't believe it. I just had to find out for myself. And I couldn't conceive
it 'cause I never would have listened to nobody else. And I couldn't believe it.
I just had to find out for myself there's some things in this world you just can't
explain.
there's some things in this world you just can't explain

[Sam]

There are too many things
happening in this world
for absolutely no reason....
A person could go mad
trying to rationalize them......


Mad! I say mad!!!

Good one!

Sam