Having fed you a glut from diminished plates,
decayed chunks from long-dead mad cows,
vegetables bearing poisonous pips,
fruits possessed by invisible worms,
discreetly, yet not very discreetly, prepared
in a faecal, steaming pit in the ground,
where squalid vermin taunt the sweaty cook
with shrieks of sneering laughter,
and much of the offering is retrieved
from the plates of earlier peasants
(quite likely you'll not even notice),
they'll take back some of your coins,
both the valuable and quite worthless,
and prepare further diminished plates.
Perhaps they'll send your pained, corrupted flesh,
which you believe to be quite sound,
to fight blunderingly on the planes
a looming, villainous champion,
and from a safe distance
rain down on him with slings and arrows
before he kills you
but only after he's broken your bones.
They will yet rationally sacrifice your purity
as the daughters of Lot,
expendable for just cause.
24th March 2005
It's a cold dark objective fear.
His face loose folds of jowls,
a sagging half squinted eyelid
and a lopsided woeful expression,
that hides cunning manipulation and brutality.
It's a rancid stench of flies
and faecal matter and musty mothballs,
that clings to the throat and nasal passage.
Entering the box white cottage,
one up one down, dark steps into
an eternity of mundane atrocities
and mass genocide of blue bottles.
A frozen winter, but not bone cold,
the neighbours say he starved and froze,
ate soil with his hands,
stripped wood panels from the wall.
His bulky frame denied starvation,
insanity maybe, greed undoubtedly,
as his hands grasped screw driver, plant pot
and bread knife rapidly stabbing,
bludgeoning, punching with frenzied violence
the face of an old woman.
Force and trauma and a wad of cash.
Now three square meals a day,
a warm room and cigarettes.
His lopsided blood hound face stares blankly
from BBC news.
I think of him at night,
walking across the lawn from his house to mine.
I think of him in the barn,
dank, dirty, a lonely space in time.
The darkness of man gapes,
and sits comfortably outside the window.
An article about a dung beetle
Says they devour matter that’s faecal
Imagine eating pooh
It’s what dung beetles do
The fetor of their breath must be lethal!
08-19-17