I asked him what he thought,

my dog, about this referendum thingo,

you know about the voice

they want so’s they

can have a say,

said, there’s a feed

in it for ya,

a democracy sausage

and a walk on the lead

down to the local school.

No fool he took up the offer,

scratching his fleas,

stopping to wee on the

wheel of a brand new SUV

happily,

saying, the nose knows and

by the smell of it,

the fresh flyblown manure

allure of it,

the noes have steeped their campaign

deep in bullshit

and, listening, these ears

are picking up a shit load

of dog whistling, but

you’d have to be fucken stupid

referendumb (he likes a pun) to believe

a word of it. You’ve hit on it,

I said, I thought a country

full of fucking red neck

racists was the basis of the traction

here but maybe we’re plain stupid,

no clue at all.

Yep-yep-yep, he said, what was the slogan,

if ya don’t know vote no?

And ya thought dogs were dumb

Sniffin’ bums and lickin’ –

That’s enough, I cut in ’cause

the queue was getting thin,

you can’t come in to cast a vote

even though you’ve got more sense

than those

voting no with the big potato

because they can’t be arsed

even finding out what’s what, or

are scared of a metaphor.