Cataclysmic Doggerel

Cataclysmic Doggerel

A schoolmarmish lady in Zuni

Had canines subversive and loony;

Her Communist felines

Made neighborhood beelines

With doctrines both outworn and puny.

The KGB cat was a lean

And speckled-nosed beauty serene

In appearance alone

For her countenance shown

Multi-faceted plots as she preened.

Her Weathercat history was tops:

She sprayed on dozens of cops

With a Commie aroma

But joined Sertoma

Cavorting with phonies and fops.

The ringleader hound was a red

And curly haired rascal it’s said

Whose Trotskyish leanings

And Maoish gleanings

Were pondered curled up on the bed.

Princess Redfeather, they tells

Of this curly red bitch of the cells,

Forsook her fine lineage

To sip of the vintage

of Lenin, and Gulags and hells.

The worst of the felines, Bearboy:

Striped and cross-eyed and coy;

Politically weak,

Had claws that could tweak

Bourgeois carpet, and bedspread, with joy.

The Uncle-Tom dog of the hut

Was Ernie, the gray-bearded mutt;

Dog-tired, and dogmatic,

He thought, “Problematic:

dog-eared dialectic and glut.”

The Uncle-Tom dog she called Ernie

Began as a dog-pound attorney

Commuted from gassing

He pondered in passing

Discretion’s demand for a journey.

A calico hound lying dormant,

Most likely a police informant:

A capitalist clown

Took his food lying down

Resisting the commie allurement.

The Stalinish kittenish spies

Spread foment and torment and lies

To Indian curs

And mutts that were hers

And War-Gods high up on the rise.

Princess and Ernie and, Spot,

And Chester, the narc-dog; the lot:

For half a piaster

Would bring a disaster

To Zuni, once called Camelot

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright©2002 Jack Purcell