Postcards from Thailand

master was hoping to get rich
by selling her pure
he knew that puppies poo
several times a day
whilst i only poo twice
regular as clockwork i am

anyway this puppy can
go a more than a day
without pooing

he s become so desperate
he s taken to rubbing her
with a wet cloth to push
the pure out of her

don t know why he bothered
with the cloth he should lick her
like my mother did to me
when i was young

she s also useless
when it comes to
killing frogs

master put a training frog
into her cage

what did she do

she s not even a
moderately talented artist
doesn t even have the skill
to shred a piece of kitchen roll
just drags it around the room
in her mouth

useless

how much longer will master
put up with this waste of fur

of course he s right to be cross
killing frogs is my responsibility
i m really very good at it

anyway master doesn t appreciate
my efforts and how skilled i am
in the fine art of frog dispatching
so he brought another dog
into the house

to be honest
i think it ll be a few months
before she s any good
at killing frogs

she s only 3 weeks old
never killed a frog
in her life in fact
all she s ever done is
live at the side of the road
sleeping playing with her siblings
and suckling on mother s teats
no frog warrior she

***

on reflection there may be
another explanation

master s getting greedy

he wants more pure
to sell to the tan yard

silly master
if he wants more pure
he doesn t need
to get another dog
he just needs to feed me more
i m perfectly happy to eat
all the stinky cheese and
foie gras he can give me

master was very kind to me this year
he gave me stinky blue cheese for breakfast
it s my favourite kind
and chicken

master says i m not
very well trained for
a three year old dog
i don t think he understands

when he says sit
i first have to check whether
there isn t something more important
to do such as
scratch my ear
or chase a fly

and when he says home
i have to think whether
i d prefer to carry on
sunbathing or chewing a stinky bone
or go inside

and anyway master isn t very well trained
when i sit next to the cupboard where
he keeps the whisky treats
sometimes i have to wait five or ten minutes
before he gives me one
can t he even remember that he s
supposed to give me one immediately

i m still upset that master doesn t give me
anything for all the pure i produce
i ve now discovered that he doesn t
take it to the tan yard himself
people come in a big noisy
truck and collect it once a week
from where he leaves it
along with the rubbish

i tried to negotiate with
the tan yard workers
and barked at them
to get their attention
through the gate
they just ignored me
sometimes life s so unfair

i know that some people are skeptical
that master is making a lot of money
from my pure but it s true
i saw him looking at a website saying
turn dog poo into gold

anyway the rainy season has started
and there are a lot more frogs around
a couple of days ago master disturbed
a really big evil one
when he was cutting the grass
he does that to make it easier
to find my pure
he was lucky i was there to save him
but then that s my job

happy whisky day to one and all

whisky

a start

good joke

yes

well it s not so funny
if you re in the cell
next to them

i ll explain what happened later

here s a photograph of
the pomeranians

Evil Incarnate

i think they re being treated
the same way they treat
rohingya refugees*

the navy has put them
back on a boat
and is towing them
out to sea

but back to my problems

i failed master

i m mortified

a frog almost got inside
the house to kill us all
in our beds

in my defence
it was very high up
and i didn t see it

Frog on Wall

still master was not happy

he put me in prison to punish me

it wasn t fair
i went on hunger strike in protest
apart from the tasty bits
in the food

master was so afraid
of being attacked by frogs
in his home
that he fled to singapore
when i wasn t there to protect him

i guess they don t
have frogs in singapore

a few nights ago
master found a small piece
of pure on my blanket
he took it to the tan yard
and washed the blanket
i felt devastated

i think another famous dog
wilfred
captured the feeling perfectly
with what he said
after his master
stepped on a piece of his pure

you just put a footprint
on the mona lisa
did you see the swirl
on that masterpiece
the form
the texture
the taper of pinch point
what do i bother
you don t know sh*t

you see i m trying to create
art using my pure
it s in the tradition of marc quinn
who formed a head
out of his own blood
and andres serrano
who used his own pee for
piss christ

other artists have used pure before
chris ofili used elephant pure
and mary kelly exhibited
dirty nappies as art
but they haven t had
the artistic courage
to go as far
as to use their own pure
that s what makes my art so great
my willingness to go that one step further
to bare my soul and show my poo

and that s why i m
so frustrated with master
every morning when he
gathers my pure
he thwarts my attempt
to establish an open air sculpture park

whisky

usually he only goes
for an hour or two
and comes back with
a bag of meat
or a stinky bone

this time he was away
for four weeks
it wasn t a very successful trip
i think he caught a deer
but on the way back
he ate almost all of it
all that was left for me
was a short length of antler
to chew

there s a siberian husky
that gets rather frantic
whenever i pass her gate
i d thought that she was
an art lover and that
she gets overexcited
when she sees me
the world s greatest living artist

who am i kidding
i m the greatest artist of all time

anyway when i was taking master
for a drag she managed
to squeeze between the bars
of the fence and she attacked me
i guess she must be a rival artist
jealous of my enormous talent
what she failed to take into account
in her misguided attack
was that i am
not only a magnificent artist
i am also a fearless frog warrior
in fact i was just about
to deliver a killer blow
when her mistress s maid came
and pulled her off

i was only pretending to be losing
to lull her into
a false sense of security
she had a lucky escape

whisky

on the label it says it s
a grain free formula
with real roasted and smoked meats
and fruit and vegetables

wait a minute
that sounds familiar

oh no
master s secretly put me
on the paleo diet

***

when i took master
for a drag last night
i saw a strange creature
lurking under the security
guard s hut waiting
to attack as we passed

master told me it was
a thai neekitun
well of course it was thai
you re not likely to find
a french neekitun here in thailand
are you

but what is a neekitun

it doesn t look much like a frog
it s all covered in fur
and has a long tail
still it must be very dangerous

i wanted to go and kill it
before it had a chance
to attack anyone else
but master was so afraid of it
he wouldn t let me anywhere near it

silly master
i would have protected him
i m not afraid of anything
whisky the fearless
that s me

it s not true that
i m afraid of thunder
the only reason i come
and sit next to master
when it s thundering
is because i think
master might be afraid
and knowing that i m there
to protect him
will comfort him
that s also why i
come upstairs during the night
and pad around outside
his bedroom door
whenever there s a storm