Overnight News: “You might have rhymed” – dogs, doggerel and the music of a thriving mind.

Shakespeare has Horatio say, “You might have rhymed,” and that reproach is never far from my mind. To live around me is to live in a world of verse: Couplets, a lot, but songs, too, written on the fly as conversation. But: No cheating: Everything rhymes, scans and makes sense – as poetry in English must.

And how stupid is that? My wife might be impressed – or perhaps she just pretends to be – but it profits me truly nothing – perhaps less than nothing – to do things this way. It is pleasing to me, and that is sufficient, and I don’t (often) torment the ears of strangers. But speech is sound and sound is music and poetry – spoken or sung – is the music of a thriving mind.

Let me sell it to you that way as I tell you about my poetic relationship with Miss Cleopatra Chioux, the now-eleven-month-old French Bulldog to whom I am mentor, Dutch Grandfather and valet. I can say whatever I want with dogs, and I always have. Miss Chioux is patient with me if I have to dig for a rhyme, and she has never yet mocked any club-footed trochees.

Because so much of what I say at home is sung-spoken verse – aka mock-Broadway-style musical comedy – and because I am so-much focused on this ding-dang dog, it could be I’m writing a musical of my own.

What’s it called?

“Dogshit – a musical.” If my second hope is that there one day might be a “Dogshit on Broadway,” my first would be that you do not groan, “Not again!”

Is there a plot? We had our troubles with every puppy’s evil twin – Poo Peter – but his noxious influence is easily vanquished by plastic bags deployed like disposable gloves on the hands of people who make enormous money at other times of the day. That just by itself is hugely funny to me: Children and grandchildren alone are an insane capital sink to any accountant or actuary, but policing the poop of pets – hands-on, as it were – can only make sense in a calculus devoid of numbers.

And yet this morning before dawn Cleo put on a performance of bio-mechanical excellence so inspiring, I felt myself impelled to write a song about it:

She changed her name to Philomena.
Philomena Phullapoop.
She came to make a huge bowel movement.
She left it there laying on the stoop.
If you complain, I’ll warn you fellow,
she’ll just as likely knock you for a loop.
She changed her name to Philomena!
Philomena Phullapoop!

You say vulgar doggerel and I say: Tell it to George M. Cohan – or your eight-year-old nephew. If I could work that song in three or four times in a ninety-minute extravaganza, you might-could be singing it for the rest of your life. I expect I will.

Meanwhile: Remember: “You might have rhymed.” It takes just a second longer to say what you mean colorfully and memorably.

In other news:

Clarice Feldman: The Drooling Class.

Andrea Widburg: Trump’s Alabama rally gave us a powerful phrase for the ages. Tee-shirt fortunes were made last night.

American Greatness: The Deep State Comes for the Big Guy.

Lee Smith: Assabiya Wins Every Time.