When the Dogs Bite

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

30th April 2025

garden work

cutting back the honeysuckle

hospital trip

VI.V

Tough without her mighty steed of dirt-flecked white

with liquid eyes of milky blue like hers

this rider of the final storm gives fright

when she enters in the last few days of earth.

More terrible than the her siblings, she

cares little for the lives of those beneath her sight

for like the teachings of the early church

she knows that suffering is the lot of human plight.

Unlike War, whose love of conquest is unending,

and famine, who will follow close behind;

and Death, who comes with mercy vending,

Pestilence is to forgiveness blind.

Tuesday, 29 April 2025

29th April 2025

another day

doing mostly nothing

emotionally burned

VI.IV

In every depiction ever painted

this figure appears a constant theme

though always male, since art was tainted

by the vanity that patrons deem

that figures from the fables often writ

be men, should they awe or terror bring

for women should, subservient, sit

or else within the choir of angels sing.

But before stands a vision of St. John

who dreamed he saw the end of all good things

though starved through pious fast, his mind was gone

and adhered to binary of an angel's wings.

Monday, 28 April 2025

28th April 2025

hot sun

standing in front of the town hall

chanting

VI.III

Rehydrated skin returns and sores recede

as Horror's face upon her turns to bear;

despite rejection of her Catholic past, her knees

fall to the grimy floor; a wave of fresh despair

sweeps out from deep within the lady's hollow flesh

and knowledge springs unbidden to her mind

a vision of the world about her, made afresh

without the chaos brought by humankind.

What devil from the netherworld is this

she's summoned from a dark, medieval past?

but her memory negates the thought, insists

this apparition from not Hell was cast.

Sunday, 27 April 2025

27th April 2025

establishing rules

to limit the freedoms of minorities

Fascism 101

VI.II

She wears of robe of petrol gleam

like oil spilled upon a lake of blood

and prisms cut from captured sunshine beam

reflected into honey-coloured mud.

The frightful thing surveys the council-painted walls

and where her gaze might linger, blooms black mould

which spreads and blooms, and every spore that falls

she knows will start to shoot despite the cold.

When full-circle brings to bear the lady's fateful gaze

she feels her body wracked with new disease

while sore break out upon her skin, she fears the end of days

has come for her at twenty years, through cracking lips says: "Please?"

Saturday, 26 April 2025

26th April 2025

felling leylandii

a whole year ago this week

google photos

VI.I

And like a key that's turned in some old-fashioned lock

a woman stands before her in the light.

Not a sound is heard but for the ticking of a clock

though not a single timepiece is in sight.

The figure looks familiar, she believes,

though she never in her darkest dream has seen

a face of perfect symmetry that cleaves

revulsion and desire at once, with nothing in between.

Just as she drew in shit and piss and blood

and coloured in with dyes of rotten peel

the figure she depicted upon wood

has stepped right through the realm-dividing seal.

Friday, 25 April 2025

25th April 2025

back on the mats

with some frequent breaks

nose blowing

V.X

The stiffened residue is wax from candles burned

in makeshift ritual in likely gleaned

from Satanic horror films or learned

from the pulp detective comics we were weaned.

Her post-religious knowledge serves her well

to see the arrogance of errors on display

and like the chiming of Pavlovian bell

she corrects the badly drawn array.

Six points upon the star should be

and not the five of demon lore

a circle carved with steady hand and free

and sigils of the guardian angel's door.

Thursday, 24 April 2025

24th April 2025

celebrating hatred

with a cigar at a warm beach

smug transphobic

V.IX

The surface scratches on the table

seem attempts to draw a pointed star

although the artist seems unable

to draw his sigils up to par.

Whatever god received this prayer

was not one she would want to see

and would like as not, not give a care

for those at Wolvo University.

To reach the Christian of modern times

needs pristine attention to the rules

and not haphazard, minor crimes;

their God will never suffer fools.