“May Allah hound you, and then again hound you in very truth—
hound you as a father, and hound you as uncle and kinsman!
A splendid elder you are when shame is afoot,
yet what a wretched elder you prove when honor is required.” (1)

Among the verses he composed to vilify his own self are:

"My lips today refuse to speak of anything
but evil—yet I know not against whom I shall fling it!
I look upon a face whose very form Allah has marred;
accursed be such a face, and accursed the one who bears it.” (2)

People then lodged complaints about him with the Commander of the Faithful, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who had him brought in and imprisoned. The immediate cause was al-Zibriqān ibn Badr, who complained to ʿUmar that al-Ḥuṭayʾah had lampooned him, saying:

“Leave high virtues—do not set off in quest of them;
just sit, for you are the eater who is well-clothed.” (3)

ʿUmar said to him, “I do not see that he has slandered you. Are you not content to be one who is fed and clothed?”
Al-Zibriqān replied, “Commander of the Faithful, no insult is harsher than this.” So ʿUmar sent for Ḥassān ibn Thābit and asked his opinion. Ḥassān answered, “Commander of the Faithful, he did not merely satirize him; he defecated upon him.” At that, ʿUmar jailed al-Ḥuṭayʾah, declaring, “You scoundrel! I shall keep you too busy to violate the honor of the Muslims.”
ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ then interceded; ʿUmar released the poet, took from him a pledge not to lampoon people, and accepted his repentance. It is also said that ʿUmar intended to cut out his tongue, but intercessors prevailed until he let him go.

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār related: Muḥammad ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk told me, from ʿUthmān al-Ḥizāmī (4), from ʿAbd Allah ibn Muṣʿab, narrating from Rabīʿah ibn ʿUthmān, from Zayd ibn Aslam, from his father, who said:

ʿUmar ordered that al-Ḥuṭayʾah be released from prison after ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ and others had spoken on his behalf. He was brought out while I was present, and he at once recited:

“What will you say of the nestlings in Dhī Marakh—
soft-downed fledglings, with neither water nor trees?
You have left their provider sunk in a gloomy pit;
so have mercy—may the King of mankind guide you, O ʿUmar!
You are the leader to whom, after his Companion,
mankind has handed the keys of sound judgment.
They did not show preference to you when they advanced you;
rather, for their own sakes they found their welfare bound to you.
So bestow your favor on children whose home is the sandy waste,
between the mountain passes where destiny has closed in on them.
My life be your ransom! How vast the trackless desert
that lies between me and them, where all tidings are lost.” (5)