When the Dogs Bite

Thursday, 2 October 2025

2nd October 2025

heavy cloud

gradations in colour

the world's due

Devil's Bridge, 1998

stealing time away from tedious toil

the Aber estuary at the end

of three hour's drive through heavy soil

on roads through sullen mountains ever bend.

Through Telford where the roads are mostly holes

and Shrewsbury, modern city moated

with a blackened river of asphalt coals

and crossing country borders where the bloated

vowels sing praise of hills and pastures fair

and Y Trallwng with traffic turning right or left

to speed past Drenewydd and through mountains bare

Llangurig, and the twisting road through mountains there.

And with me, through the hours of tyres hissing

Alanis singing of the life I'm missing.

Wednesday, 1 October 2025

1st October 2025

jui-jitsu training

I pass on some helpful tips

happy sensei

Newcastle May 3rd 1982

Resident halls for degree level students

a mixture of disciplines and mostly men

or boys, to be fair, with most of us prudent

to minimise problems with settling in.

Almost a year and like sleep-deprived bears

we are revising for ends and exams

when Lino* comes up from the flat downstairs

with a portable TV in the kitchen he slams.

The black-and-white flickering shows us a ship

that sinks in Atlantic cold water

the General Belgrano has been sunk with a flip

by the Lady of Iron with some torpedo slaughter.

Terrified students struck silent with shock

as the second hand ticks on the Third World War clock.

*I honestly can't remember his real name, but he was a Law student.**

** His friends called him Lino because he was always on the floor.

Tuesday, 30 September 2025

30th September 2025

beautiful morning

the dog barking at an intruder

fallen bin

crime numbers are shredded, repurposed and spun

to make over half of the mad folk with guns

to be transwomen, lesbians, transmen and queers

and democrat liberal supporters with gears

revolving to take down the Capital State

and Republican mores of Biblical hate.

Arizona's John Gillette calls for a mass execution

of Washington's Pramila Jayapal elocution

to resist people allowing the President there

to be worshipped as Führer with peaceful despair

And while we do one, lets all do a mass hanging

of black folks and Mexicans, all of those banging

about how the Rich will manipulate voters

to trust in the One Percent social no-hopers.

But ignore South Carolina's Republican May

who pled guilty to hoarding his child porn today.

Arizona State Rep. John Gillette (R) | Arizona State Legislature

Suspected child porn distributor and anti-LGBTQ+ South Carolina Republican state legislator, Rep. RJ May

Monday, 29 September 2025

29th September 2025

Nigel Farceage

changing his name by deed poll

Alf Garnett

King Charles the third pledges for net zero

for the Royal House which includes the lights

lit by gas in each house he owns. A hero

in the war on Climate Change, still he fights

for the promises made are his to keep.

But LED lamps, though they look the same,

shocks every fuddy old historic peep

"They're tradition," says a man whose only fame

is aging husband of the Princess Ann

Sir Timmy Laurence wants authentic lamps

in Royal residencies, for they can

keep lamplighters in the working camps.

"And for Tradition's sake, we'll be returning

to slavery, Coal Mines and witches burning."

Sunday, 28 September 2025

28th September 2025

garden check

brings a late blooming cornflower

unexpected delight

Wolverhampton 1987

I was inspired by the works of Lewty

and his drawings of liminal worlds wherin

landscaped figures would writhe in the beauty

of fractured dreams and half-remembered sin.

Neither patience nor skill I had acquired

of yet, nor the space to strip paper down

to translucent sheets of rag retired,

reused as layers where the colour drowned.

My emulation of these works provoked

the use of words within the paintings wove

with canvas strips from skip-recovered work

by students to whom such talent that I strove.

But then, on textured surfaces I made

with canvas over woven stretchers frayed.

Saturday, 27 September 2025

27th September 2025

full lotus

for the first time ever

late-life fitness

Stubbs Road, 1989

the kitchen door open on summer days

in the upstairs flat we rented from a pratt

who, when we needed a third to help us pay

told a female student she could clean the flat;

who considered a deposit as 'excess fees'

to pay for repainting an artist's room

who refused to cut back the garden trees

because we were students deserving of gloom.

Who declined to pay me for signwriting done

at a Baptist church in old Bilston town

'till I told him the lettering soon would run

when I sprayed it with thinners and sanded it down.

Paul, Tom and Richard were friendly to me

and Paul's cousin, Susan, from Ireland's Tralee.

Friday, 26 September 2025

26th September 2025

Death Penalty returns

in Trump's Glorious Third Term

No queers, blacks...

Childhood, mid-seventies

I learned desire for the Afterlife

where souls would be judged by their living deeds

but not the one where the priests promised strife

but from earlier sources than Biblical reads.

From the earliest age I wildly devoured

the tales of Ovid, and Homer; Virgil too;

of Persephone, who was kidnapped, deflowered

by Hades, the brother of Poseidon and Zeus.

How I desired that he love me as much

as his queen of the Underworld there

I would gladly submit to his will and his touch

if only he saw me when soul was laid bare.

A glimpse of my soul was enough for the priests

to punish and cane me and throw me to beasts.

The Glorious Third ~~Reich~~ Term