There’s a Dog Loose in the Woods

 

Foxhound splinters from the baying mass of legs,

Escapes quick beneath the mist of exhaled dregs –

Down the plough, through copse, he runs about a mile,

Heading straight up the track with a dewlap smile.

Happy little fellow you don’t know your place

And I’m sad at the gaiety in your face.

Thick mud smothers your black and tan belly 

Leaving your stomach all speckled and smelly;   

Not destined for upside down sofa tickling 

And the thought of this has my arm hairs prickling.  

I can see you don’t know you’re a hunting dog - 

That you’re destined to track each dawn in the fog;  

There is sadness in your playful pleading  

As your future is mapped out by your breeding.

Keep running little dog, keep running faster -                 

I see the approach of your human master;  

He’s cut from his herd and he’s coming for you

While the hillside is echoing view halloo!

Immune to the law, he has rights on this land 

And flourishing, pulls up his horse where I stand.  

There, from his height, mouths at me, Lovely morning!

I say for who? His eyes narrow in warning.

His breeches are tight and his big horse is flash, 

Cuts a white toothed, square jawed Jilly Cooper dash;   

He shifts his hips forward and the saddle squeaks  

And there’s red in his Nine am hip flask cheeks. 

His black velvet cap is a blot on the sky - 

There’s a bone handled whip curled up at his thigh; 

Light lands cold on the spurs that sharpen his kick   

And the hand on the rein is tight like a brick. 

Don’t be fooled by his smiling because this man   

Has killed, and will kill again soon if he can –

His eyes tell me he likes to hunt, drink and screw

And I think oh yes, I’ll do all these things too  

But words are my prey and I hunt them, I do 

And I use them to talk about cunts like you.

So kindly trot off with your cowering cur

With its woebegone eyes and shivering fur; 

Doomed inside the womb, since its birth in the straw

To a dehumanised mind and a hardened jaw -

Doomed like the ending of a well-known story ;

A battery chicken or a Young Tory.