Canine Glares

Although he is a handsome creature,

poodle bitches still glare proudly at him.

Tail in any case an ohmmeter needle,

genitals a pendulum,

Llewelyn, my Alsatian, skips along

beside my shins. He’s approaching middle age,

approaching Marks and Spencer’s camomile-scented bones

and a kennel mortgage,

but his eyes and muzzle and tail all still frisk,

frisk in defiance of a dozen Labrador bitch rejections.

My friend David waits for us at the bus-stop

in new tartan trousers that suit him

like a miniskirt suits a brigadier, that deserve

to be humped by a horny stick-chaser.

“Oi! Get off me, for Christ’s sake, get off!” he cries.

Although I grew up amid this concrete,

I still feel the glare of cement-eyed packs.

Shoulders then just stack up like attic junk,

arms hang outwards

as though preparing to catch something

any second now. My Dad’s northern friends

have laughed before, “Look, he even walks in Cockney!

Go on, buy us a house!”

and I’ll grant my step has a spring, a bounce even,

even though David’s insisting he buys some skunk.

His dealer, Kevin, waits for us outside the park

with a white face and a grey accent

that suits him like a bacon roll suits a muezzin,

gabbling about eighths and quarters.

Then he says to me, “Stop walking like you’re hard.”