Some Poetry

Werechihuahua

He’s fierce for six inches high
Is Werechihuahua.
After changing at dusk
Scampering after his prey
He often sank teeth into ankles
Hoping a victim might fall
Exposing throat to tiny teeth.
Now people don high boots
Whenever they hear the yap
Of Werechihuahua.

Small wonder he’s fierce
— At least in his heart —
For the Aztecs bred him
And worshipped him
And they tore the hearts
Out of prisoners-of-war.

Noble families might house
A thousand Chihuahuas
Each with its own personal slave.
Imagine a thousand Chihuahuas,
Like canine piranhas reducing
Their prey to a scatter of bones
In five minutes or say half an hour.

When he retransforms at dawn
He’s that funny little bootmaker
Tapping away at his bench
Coining silver from all the demand
For boots knee-high at least.

In fact not all of him
Turns into a crazed Chihuahua,
Merely the mass of his foot.
So when suspicious citizens
Peer through his window
They see that he’s still abed
And never notice how the blanket
Near the end falls rather flat.

But I’ve spied a tiny pet dog
Burrow under the sheet
At sunrise — and why by day
Is it never about in his shop?

(first published in Mythic Delirium 6, Winter/Spring 2002; slightly revised here)

With thanks to Bob Snare © 2002

True Love

“I love you,” he said deceitfully,
“Let us become of one flesh!”
So off they went to the body shop
Where he exchanged his left arm for hers
— A popular token of bonding
(Sometimes an eye for an eye,
Sometimes a thigh for a thigh).
How sleek the arm he stroked
That night with his right hand
As he lay alone in bed. Next week,
Since she was deeply in love,
They exchanged both legs.
One on its own would have caused
Imbalance. Her breasts came next,
Transferred to his chest.
By the time they had swapped
More body parts, he was her,
She was him, except in the head.
At last exquisitely and repeatedly
He could make love to himself instead.

(first published in Weird Tales, Summer 2001; Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem, 2002)

The Pleasure Surgeons
Instead of an anaesthetic
they inject a drug that reverses
sensations so pain becomes bliss.

Their scalpels cut so gently
exquisitely engendering ecstasy
as they slice your flesh,

Your nerves, your sex.
The healing process
Will last for months

Of permanent orgasm
while the previous pleasures
of life will nauseate you.

Hence a flavourless diet
To guard against toothache
And those nostril filters

Lest a fragrant rose should
wound you, and the goggles
to uncolour a sunset

And distort any sweet sight.
I see you on the street
Trembling with delight

Staggering slightly,
unobservant, deaf
to music, masked,

Wearing a shapeless gown
Of coarse cloth. Such, perhaps,
were the ecstasies of saints

Who grew lice in their hair
and wrapped thorns round
Their dirty private parts.

When at last you’re healed
making love with another
human being would hurt

So you’ll need to visit
the pleasure surgeons again.
After several such operations,

Slicings and subsequent healings,
you may graduate to the operating
room where now they slice your mind.

Afterwards your thoughts will slowly
reconnect, and you will wonder
at all past clamours of the flesh.
(first published in Dreams and Nightmares, May 2002)