Yipping & Yapping

Yipping & Yapping

i go to their home
because
i'm supposed to visit
from time to time
so i go
and visit
and their goddamned dogs
never shut up

they scurry around
yipping and yapping
but i'm not their master
so i sit
like a clown
assaulted by their peals
the idiotic center
of their cacophonous attention
while flashing smiles
as false
as mail order
dental veneers
i sit there
cucked and frozen
in this perverse game
of four-legged femdom
as they 
yip and yap
and scuttle around
and never shut up
and i always wonder
why not put them
in a room
in the garage
in the basement
away from us
for a while?

i'm not proud
but i've imagined
throttling those dogs
by their tiny throats
or slapping or kicking them
across the room
like furry little footballs
this fantasy
my only comfort
as they exploit
humanly decorum and manners
allowing them
to be the bullies
that brute force
in the absence of decorum
would allow me
to be

so i sit there
being yapped at
with little to say
to their owners
who have little to say either
so they allow
all the commotion
to dominate
to smugly and confidently
own us
with the incivility
of feral mutts
given free reign
to dominate
everything
the way those odious
animals
are accustomed to

i try to be nice
i try to be understanding
i try to be courteous
since it's no small thing
being invited 
into someone else's home
but i can't help but think
it takes a level
of profound witlessness
to not understand
the annoyance
of those stupid dogs'
incessant yapping
to anyone but them

theirs
a level of dimness
not just toward
their guests
and those dogs
but everything
i believe
a level of dimness
gotten used to
like growing accustomed
to a pointless 
unnecessary clamor
that some people
just settle into

those yapping
obnoxious dogs
one symptom
of an overall problem
which leaves
a lot of distance
between us
filled up
for a few hours
by all that goddamned 
pointless yapping
which offers little incentive
to ever want to visit
again

this home
used to the incessant noise
and i'm a guest
i'm in their space
so i suppose
it's not my place
to impose my will
yet each minute
of that piercing
unnecessary clatter
like another minute
of friction
between ass cheeks
already rubbed
to raw

so i leave
finally
to visit another
i'm supposed to visit too
this one
with no yapping dogs
at least
but i know
with a lot to say
that rarely amounts 
to much more 
than those yapping dogs

this yapping
this rubbing on raw skin
of a different sort
of obnoxious
bloviated 
frozen dinner opinions
never to be questioned
since disparaging
a stupid idea
is disparaging
the intelligence
of its wise and proud
possessor

under threat of provocation
those stupid opinions
never examined
never criticized
just accepted
with more
cheap veneered smiles
just like the ones
those fucking
yapping dogs
and their owners
got

passive acceptance 
of trivial opinions
the easy way
for salvaging the time
and a bit more tolerable
at least mildly sensible
so rubbing my ass cleft to raw
in my time of potential peace
inside of an hour
instead of just ten minutes

and if not entertaining
trite opinions and ideas
then storytelling time
the inflections
and pauses
and phrases
the cues
and all part of the act
the performance
of something
a play
a song
a poem
like this one
with no direction
or any real
substance
just a performance
just the art
just an act
of emptiness
to fill the time

it's funny
all these noises
between us
whether the empty yapping
of dogs
or people
some sort of damper
or turbulence
that always prevents
understanding
which is probably
the reason 
they're there
as the false substance
as the noise
as just something
when there's nothing else left
to understand
about one another