So furry and snuggly but not too much...simply a touch
Are we gonna run run? Where are we going mum?
Can I follow you upstairs so I can get under your feet while you try to get ready? I'm so excited to get to the trees, the dirt, the slime of the bog of eternal stench. Please don't shower me off if I get too stinky by maybe rolling in a dead animal left in our sanctuary. I just want to run and chase the deer. I'll come back to you no matter what Mum cause I love you, you know exactly where and how hard to scratch my *** mum! You feed me too and give me that tasty orange stuff. I know when you're gonna give it to me cause I have memorized the sound of the package when you take it out of the fridge. Ok Ok I'm just so excited I can't concentrate on one thing. You tell me to go get my collar...I think I know what you mean. I'll go look for it. I found it, let's goooooooo mum. Spin spin spin around we're close to the door now so it's going to be soon.  I know you want me to calm down mum but I just don't think I can! Oh wow , we're going out the door....

Wake up and rejoice for the privilege, you once again are alive
Obsess over bringing joy and insight, in fact go ahead and strive
Relinquish all hatred in your heart and wipe your sleep-eye crust
Don't forget and let out a **** so you don't spontaneously combust
Savor every waking and walking minute before you join the dust

Offer something you really want to someone who's really in need
Find out how much we all are blinded daily by unnecessary greed

Advise a close friend with true altruism and listen attentively
Decide to truly help them instead of avoiding it ever so gently
Visualize who you truly want to be and accept it's possibility
Impose random belly laughter at each and every opportunity
Create change that at the least can induce an effortless smile
Embrace reality and your dreams, we're only here a little while

Here are some things I know:
2+2 is always 4, in the center of an apple lies the core.
One foot is left and the other is right, you need lots of wind to fly a kite.
Puppies are soft and the earth moves slow, red means stop and green means go.
Clouds are white, the sky is blue, and I am absolutely, completely, in love with you.

Based on a painting, "Nuclear Puppies", by Julie Nagel, 2001*

You’re a mutant, you know—
got funny dog babies sprouting
out of your head like they were
ears.  Those copies of your face

look up at a sky of ashy gray,
perked and tense.  Are you listening
to yourself?  What choir
of dog-eared deformities

sings to you?  Maybe they should have
howled louder before we dropped The Bomb.
Maybe the yellow caterwaul of their
melting butter bodies would have stayed our hand.

I doubt it though.  
This is what we do. We burn things.
We tinker, adding and subtracting until
what’s left is blasphemy—until what’s left is

you.  A yellow almost-dog, a sagging
body with melted flesh where there should
be fur. Sad monster; beg your alms
from the atomic Frankensteins who made you.

Your skyward eyes are bright, still happy
anywhere but here.  But your abominable
body lies here staring into gray space with
Alpo still sticky on your nose, wet, brown snow.