When the Dogs Bite

Saturday, 30 May 2026

30th May 2026

condemned boiler

no hot water for a good while

summer heat

The Sixth Seal

the chatter of chain guns

from the bay doors of helicopters:

giant locusts with stinging tails

and women's hair, whirling

like a desert windstorm

and it's not the stars falling

but a storm of bombs and missiles

forcing the great men to hide in caves

and underground bunkers

while the sky is rolled away

under a nuclear winter

when even the sun turns black

and the moon is tinted blood red

from the reflected light.

Friday, 29 May 2026

29th May 2026

bicycle seat

hits me in the clitoris

not pleasurable!

Jesus in a Cassock

Sunderland church condemned

for disobeying the law

and being kind to people

and letting transwomen use the loo.

It's almost like church

has actually read the Bible

and not just used it as a heavy club

church 'brazenly defies law'

Thursday, 28 May 2026

28th May 2026

slimming fail

I thought Coffee Mate was free

apparently not

Words Okay

Kindled in Bacon

a love for books

Shakespeare, Keats, Greek tragedies.

Literature should be devoured

not eked out and taken

in medicinal doses:

children should read voraciously

of any book they lay their hands on.

Father considered mental desire

an immoral impeachment

and intellectualism

an impediment to society.

Grandmother 'entertained'

(and read of that what you will)

and went to extraordinary pains

to stay slim as a reed

and athletic as a dancing girl,

and if one cannot dance

it is best to be amusing.

Wednesday, 27 May 2026

27th May 2026

Cook prefers bathrooms

be kept neat and tidy

short-cut grass

Old Men, Young Wives

"Don't call us paedophiles," they said,

"We love kids in Oklahoma;

we can ban their education

then they're unlikely to roam-a.

"The Bible verse allows us

to wed a pre-pubescent teen

We have to know they're virgins

'cause the old ones are obscene.

"We don't need no government

to tell us who to wed

we'd rather have our children

tucked up safely in our bed.

"It says right here in Hebrews

we can wed a babe in arms

unless that baby's Jewish

then deport them to our farms.

"It isn't paedophilia

if you're married to the kid

then when they give us daughters

we can marry them instead.

"God doesn't like divorce at all

that's why he gave us guns

and taught us to make alcohol

so "accidents' are done.

We don't like homosexuals

because their sex gives us the icks

we want the manly men round here

with kiddies on their arms.

36 Republicans vote for child marriages

Tuesday, 26 May 2026

26th May 2026

mowing the grass

with the day's heat ebbing

pre-empt the kid asking

The Most Decent of Vicars

The delightful Reverend Richard Coles

is sixty-four and now retired

from vicaring at St Mary's Souls

write novels now because he's tired

of taking stick from Powers That Be

about stuff he did in funereal rites

and breaking unfair laws to see

parishioners buried with their dear pets.

“There is a wideness to God’s mercy

that doesn't mind just who loves what

Love is like the wideness of the sea;

and it's up to us to judge them not.

He doesn't mind the gays, the trans,

or old ladies living in their vans.

Reverend Richard Coles admits to breaking law during burials

Monday, 25 May 2026

25th May 2026

young lad

offers to cut my lawns

every four days

Down Among the Women

the
desperate tragedy

traced back on an intimate scale,

when the entire world bends;

the horrors of war with characteristic verve--

truckloads of young girls,

ferried in for the troops,

crammed into catacombs beneath the desert floor.

Where are their memorials?

raise a monument in the heart of London

and call it the Tomb of the Unknown Whore.

Let the King pay homage once a year

on Mountbatten Day.

Sunday, 24 May 2026

24th May 2026

electrical wiring

where I can't see the terminals

failing sight

Rent-Free

I dreamt last night

you accused me of not loving you

and it was time for me to leave;

and you were right:

it's hard to love someone

who put me in hospital

and we've been divorced almost forty years,

so why are you even here

living in my dreams rent-free

when I evicted you so very long ago.