ohmidog!

Long Road, Short Legs

When the road

 Is long

 And your legs

 Are short

 You might end up

Very sore

The plus side is

 You’re wiser now

For

You

Saw

So

Much

More

—-

(From time to time I have an argument with the poet within me. “I want to come out,” the poet within will say. “No,” I tell him. “Stay where you are, because you’re not that good.”

(Sometimes, the poet within wins. To read all his verse, click on the logo to the left.)

(Photo: ohmidog!)

Squirrels Will be Squirrels

You think you’re big and tough and bold
You chased me up a power pole
But can you run this fast, in fact?
Let’s see your high wire act

You can’t climb or leap from trees
Or use a branch as your trapeze
Up on rooftops you can’t dance
Your grounded life has no romance

You’re slow and fat, a big old lug
Be you retriever, Chow or pug
Down there you pant and drool and pace
Too dumb to know you’ve lost the race

Nuts to you, and all your ilk
I’m fast as lightning, smooth as silk
All you can do is sit there crying
While I’m up here — electrifying

(From time to time I have an argument with the poet within me. “I want to come out,” the poet within will say. “No,” I tell him. “Stay where you are, because you’re not that good.”

(Sometimes, the poet within wins. To read all his verse, click on the logo to the left.)

(Photo: ohmidog!)

 Love-Love

While many players chase them

Sharapova, Nadal, et al …

None, I think, are as enthralled

As dog with tennis ball 

(From time to time I have an argument with the poet within me. “I want to come out,” the poet within will say. “No,” I tell him. “Stay where you are, because you’re not that good.”

(Sometimes, the poet within wins. To read all his verse, click on the logo to the left.)

Footsitting

 With the people of whom he is fondest

My dog Ace has a habit immodest

After you greet

He’ll sit on your feet

To make sure that you stay the longest

————————–

(From time to time I have an argument with the poet within me. “I want to come out,” the poet within will say. “No,” I tell him. “Stay where you are, because you’re not that good.”

(Sometimes, the poet within wins. To read all his verse, click on the logo to the left.)

If Dogs Could Play Scrabble

I’m glad that my roommate can’t babble

And that he doesn’t drink all my Snapple

But wouldn’t it be neat

Wouldn’t life be complete

If somehow he’d learn to play Scrabble?

 ——————-

DOGgerel is a new feature on ohmidog!, in which, from time to time, we will wax poetic, or at least attempt to, on the subject of dogs.

Clicking on the graphic to the left will take you to a page where you can find all of them, once we accumulate a few.

 LEANERS

I wonder why some dogs lean

On humans as if they were beams

Do we support them,

Or do they support us?

It’s a little of both, it seems

Like a bad case of heartburn, the poet within me has resurfaced.

Ever since we completed (for now) our travels, the poet within me had been mute, given as I no longer have any Highway Haiku to write.

What caused it to gurgle back up was an offer from Paw Nation, the newly revamped AOL dog website.

As part of its makeover, I was invited to submit some dog poetry, along with photographs illustrating each short verse, which I agreed to do under the condition it could be silly poetry and not be taken too seriously.

(Most poets take themselves too seriously; generally they are the ones who eschew rhyming and wear berets.)

I turned in five poems, and they are published under the title “Minstrel of Mutt,” a designation I am happy to accept, provided there are no minstrel pains  involved.

You can see what I gave them, in addition to the example above, here.

They paid me a little something, which, if I’m not wrong, makes me a professional poet and entitles me to call myself “poet” when I file my income tax return. (My goal now is to become a poet laureate, even though I don’t know what “laureate” means.)

To illustrate “Leaners,” I opted to take some shots of my dog Ace and his good friend Al, who lives down the road, one of several people Ace is prone to leaning on.

Unlike some of my lengthier poetic works — my ode to feral cats, for example — those I submitted were all haiku, limericks and other short verse, all pertaining to dogs.

In a way, it’s a frivolous pursuit. For one thing, I don’t think there’s a great demand for dog poetry in today’s market. For another, dogs are already a form of poetry that outshine anything I could capture by stringing words together.

Alas, it didn’t evolve into a long term gig, leaving me with surplus poetry, which I’m now contemplating what I should do with:

Can poetry, like tots of tater
Be stored away and enjoyed later?
One year in the refrigerator
Might even make a bad poem greater

Crunching leaves

Shuffling through dry leaves

One of life’s distinct pleasures

 Wet ones … not so much

(All our Highway Haikus can be found archived here.)

“Ode to October”

If ever I’m told

I’ve only one month to live

I’ll choose October

(You can find all our Highway Haikus archived here.)

…

How Close Are We?

“Too close” to your dog:

When he completes not just you,

But your sentences

(Highway Haiku is a regular feature of Travels With Ace. To see them all click here.)