Tug Dumbly's long-term ambition is to write the Great Australian Novel. This will follow hot on the heels of the Great Australian Play, Great Australian Poem and Great Australian Fart Joke. Some accuse Tug of being a comedian, others call him a poet. He doesn't much mind, and is content to describe himself either as a comic whose jokes rhyme, or a poet whose rhymes are a joke sometimes.
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I had a dog named Dali,
a bastard bag of bones,
a smelly, slobbering, moulting, mobile
flea retirement home.
I only kept the hound around
coz of Granny's will,
he'd been hers and even dead
she swore to watch him still.
I cursed her for the ill bequest,
the dog was worse than hives,
a farting, puking, cat-composting
bane on our lives.
It ripped up lounges, barked and howled
and bit the postman's arse,
but the bottom line was when it dined
on my prize book of art.
Six centuries of masterpieces
shredded on the spot,
from Rembrandt through to Renoir
it ate the friggin' lot.
I chased the mongrel, screaming murder,
half-way down the road,
lobbing bricks and language blue
till I was fit to explode.
That evening the beast returned
with slobbering idiot grin,
slunk itself onto the porch
and curled about the bin.
But later on, come dinner time,
we found to our dismay,
on the dinning table
he'd gone and struck again.
A stinkin', steamin', festerin' turd
spreadin' through the trifle,
"that's it!" I screamed, "I've had enough!"
reaching for the rifle.
I put the barrel to it's brain
and said "this ain't a bluff,"
'till my brother cried "hey mate
there's something in the stuff."
"What stuff?" I says, "the shit" he says,
"'ave a closer squiz,"
and sure enough there seemed to be
this pattern in the biz.
No word of a lie, strike me dead if
I don't tell the truth,
but in that pile of dogshit
was etched a bowl of fruit -
Grapes and peaches, plums and pears,
not brilliant, but not bad,
about at primary level,
Dali's tail just wagged.
"Jesus mate!" I stammered stunned
and downed the gun unspent,
"what are the odds of witnessin'
such a freak event?
"Okay dog, I'll let you off this time
but one more slip,
and no weird turd in all the world
will save you from the tip."
But in the days that followed
the weirdness kept apace,
each turd that Dali did seemed
to contain a scene or a face.
The works were no great shakes at first,
etchings rough and crude,
but gradually the lines grew strong,
the complexity improved.
He started dealing out Ken Dones
in sunny diarrhoea,
until a Jackson Pollock
exploded from his rear.
But the Brown Poles? That were nothin'
to what he had rehearsed,
one fine day a Monet came
in a fragrant burst.
He laid down Waterlilies
outside the butcher shop,
even as the butcher kicked his arse
he had to stop.
"Fuck me drunk!" the meat-man cried,
"Ee's a clever little tyke,
I don't know that much about art
but I know what I like!
The dog's a friggin' genius,
with talent true and class,
mark my words these are turds
from a dog with a golden arse.
Get the mutt a manager,
you'll make a bleedin' killin',
the dog deserves a tuckerbox,
national treasure billin'."
Well word got 'round about the hound
with the golden arse,
and agents flocked from everywhere
to ascertain his class.
Crapping for the cameras
he shat a melting watch,
other Dali's followed,
each teaming turd top notch.
Woolfing down a Vindaloo
he siddled to the path,
where to roars and loud applause
he birthed a burning giraffe.
Twelve turds exact in shape and size
saw him on a roll
when the crowd exclaimed as one
"My God, he's done a Warhol!"
His art found homes in galleries
from Sydney down to 'Frisco,
'twas said his Sistine Kennel
rivalled Angelo.
Sotherbys and Christie's fought
to auction of his works,
and brought in record prices
from Bengal down to Bourke.
From Downing Street to Buckingham Palace,
the Whitehouse, Kremlin onto Paris,
the bids came thick and fast,
to have a turdscape, big or small,
preserved and mounted on the wall
from the dog with the golden arse.
But for all the acclaim and clamour
Dali didn't go in for the glamour.
He worked his art without a fuss
and quietly made a mint for us,
but I knew one day he'd quit the race
and seek a stately change of pace,
until one morning instead of a tiger or bird
he shat what looked like, well,
looked just like a turd ...
just your ordinary, average,
no-frills, garden-variety dog turd.
Then I knew it had come to pass
that finally the dog with the golden arse
was putting up his paws at last
and resting on his laurels,
the muse had melted in his bowels,
he preferred to sniff out gals
of less than saintly morals.
And yet the frenzy didn't abate,
In fact the critics came to rate this
as the statement of a major genius,
renouncing his past to boldly embrace
a new phase of Dogism.
Huddling around each fresh deposit
they'd say:
"Surely this act of primitivism
speaks of a quest for redemption in an
essentially amoral void.
The brutal intensity is a ritualistic
severing of the umbilical cord connecting
Modernism to Dogism,
the work of an Auteur,
shattering, as with an anvil
the fractured singularity of the
schismic leitmotiv of the fine de siecle
zytgeist,
a viciously satirical skewering of the
materialistic squalor at the heart of
arts existential crossroads ...
Don't you see? The art in the beast,
the beast in the art?
Wheels within wheels,
Russian Dolls,
Freud's penis,
pick up the washing,
pay the phone bill,
eggs, milk, bread, cheese ...
Oh shit! That's my shopping list.
But what I'm saying is that this
is genius, sheer genius,
surely you would have to agree?"
And I'd look at the turd,
then look at them and say
"actually no, mate,
it looks like shit to me."
Well to walk the streets soon grew too hard
so I kept Dali in the yard,
but the artworld started crowding the fence
in numbers growing and immense
until I cracked and said "okay,
would you like to see some art?"
"Yes, yes!" they cried 'bring us the master,
his work so gladdens the heart."
So I pointed out one of Dali's turds
glistening in the sun, and said
"Watch this artwork carefully,
I call it hit and run."
And as they watched with baited breath
I started up the mower,
pointed it towards the turd
and ran the damn thing over.
It pureed in a slippery swirl
and showered all in view,
the critics howled "barbarian!
What philistine are you?!
How dare you vandalise genius
what gives you the right?"
(Although others were divided
and argued into the night as to
whether this destruction of great art
was in fact in itself a great art happening).
But now, thank Christ, the artworld's
found itself a brand new flunkey,
with the chance discovery of a
vomiting Sumatran monkey.
And our life is back to normal,
unremarkable and quiet
and I say to my bro "I don't know about shit,
but I know what I like."
And Dali? It's no problem that
he's still ill-behaved,
we bought him his own house to wreck
with all the dough he made.
He's free to rip up lounges and
shit where it comes to pass
coz the artworld bought some privileges
for the dog with the golden arse.
Tug Dumbly
© 1999
