By Tom Stovall
I didn’t know when I stepped out on the stoop,
That there would be a pile of Luke’s loose poop
Then the smell hits my nose and my stomach does loops
And my hair once bouncy, now does a droop
At the acrid smell of my dog’s runny poop.
I woke up early to work on some code,
This early, it’s really a lot faster upload,
And get values from databases in asynchronous mode,
In the morning silence of the pre-dawn peri-od,
On the laptop from work that I had borrowed.
There weren’t any signs that I’ve seen in the past,
Like when he needs to go out and eat grass,
He’ll lick the carpet around him fast,
And while he’s licking he passes gas,
It’s a sure sign trouble is forecast.
But he woke me up in the middle of the night,
Whining to go out in an urgent fright,
Grabbed my pants and shoes and flipped on the floodlight,
and when a patch of concrete was in sight,
He let go with a torrent of water and meteorite.
Then a thousand conspiracy theories come to mind,
Wasn’t someone poisoning dogs and making them blind,
I saw it on Maddow and she described her find,
Someone was tainting spicy pork rinds,
And going to the park only to leave them behind.
So, What did Luke eat and where did he find it?
This poop has nothing in it to bind it,
It’s like brown molten lava as it runs off the edge,
Of the steps that lead out of my room with my bed,
Wait, what is that I see? Is it… orange-red?
There’s something sticking out at an angle,
In the shape of a small little triangle,
What is that in this stratified sample?
His dog food yes, but something else inter-jangled,
Could it be he ate something he couldn’t handle?
And then I remember doing a favor,
Picking up off the floor with yesterday’s paper,
An empty bag of Doritos, Nacho flavor,
Luke ate the whole bag leaving none for later,
This mystery is no mystery, just misbehavior,
The sun’s coming up, it’ll be hot they say,
Not a chance of rain to wash it away,
This is a pretty heavily trafficked doorway,
I can’t just leave this fecal sorbet,
For someone else’s morning dismay.
I have to clean it. No choice, it seems,
Before my husband awakes from his dreams,
Before he fusses about dishes not being clean,
Before he’s even been out to the scene,
Of my dog’s affront to modern hygiene.
So I look for the bucket and some Mr. Clean,
My four-legged perp is no where to be seen,
Wait, where is the product of Luke’s latrene?
The only thing left of what was there is a sheen…
A wet spot where a dog-crime had once been.
Then I see her… Luke’s little sister.
She’s brown and Sometimes it’s easy to miss her.
She has a small amount of brown poop on her whisker.
My stomach turns but there’s no way to descist-er,
From repeating the last 24 hours, only with her.