WTF, or HOW DOES YOUR DOG?

WTF, or HOW DOES YOUR DOG?

How does your dog smell was the joke

Once told and shared with the masses,

As the stench passed between ‘comics’

Who told it time and time again on TV.

With these broken boulevardiers falling

Short, the same retort tarred all senses,

While a humour hailed like a taxi

On a disconsolate day went to seed.

Now a new joke returns: chiefly a fresh

Rash of symptoms. Including rashes

And headaches, to run alongside

Fevered coughs. Diarrhoea, loss of smell,

No doubt lucky in that case, but loss

Of taste also, leaving politics barking

And the kept pigs ensconced in their troughs.

While others go free! So, WTF is the message?

What and where’s the direction that will lead us

All back to before? Someone surely now takes

The piss while the target for tests stays unmastered,

And despite all projections, a lockdown release

Still seals doors. They didn’t know? How could they?

Well, clearly not with God laughing at them.

For there God is, urine stealing, as if up to now

We’d been queuing and were still to see the full

Show. ‘Terrible’ was the punchline about

The dog. You all know it. And terrible now is

The moment in which nothing stops, or quite goes.

The horror returns, through the dare to do

And housed exile. The Piper’s rats reclaim cities,

While most must still remain in the mountain,

Hearing only distant sounds through the stone.

And now another wall grows as even Migraine

Marries Covid. In this Coronic age,

We’re made morons by the knowledge

Dispensed from far thrones. How can this

Have happened at all? Just when we believed

Things were easing. We were promised a peak,

Then surpassed it, but apparently, in this country

160 have died since Sunday. Nearly 35000

Since March. Each day the numbers are Bingoed.

A National Lottery loving nation are spinning

Through sense by Tuesday. You will lose your

Sense of smell, then your taste and in doing so,

Forget pleasure. You’ll still have sight to observe

Things in which you can no longer take part.

For this is how freedom is stripped and the truly

Dystopian day is delivered: with withheld

Information that is only emergent

When the normal morale becomes art.

Something to hang on a wall, along with

The threats they have labelled. The stray dogs

Of past punchlines who are, or so they say,

Immigrants. They are the humans or Apes,

Depending on which filmic adaptation

You’re watching. And their smell is awful,

As these souls without a home bear the brunt,

For a prejudice on the wind that may no longer

Remain purely racial, as it transforms into

A matter of those who have a temperature,

Or head spin. Even poor old conjunctivitis

Becomes another flag fear is waving, as blood

In the eye cries foreboding and stains the still

Shadowed face kept within. Meanwhile, in Italy,

Churches fill and the communion wafers

Are offered, but in glasses now without ice-cream,

As if that taste of Christ could still soothe.

With the Priest’s hands separate from each tongue,

The Jesus kiss avoids Judas, whose modern name

Could be Covid, or more familiar ones from

The News. Donald, the dumb takes anti-malaria pills

To defeat it. In Brazil, El Presidente defies

The tarnished breeze with hot air. And we, still

Marooned, take a step past the guardian gate,

To test water, only to retreat and sit blankly,

Scared to eat or make a noise. Who will dare?

Who will change things? Or tell? What is going on?

Reason’s raped now. Everything’s still, yet it

Tumbles, as if in our sitting and staying we could

Practically fall off the floor. Something has been

Redesigned and when and if we emerge,

Dogs may lead us, for their silent spirit

And sudden bark sparks from threat.

They will smell our fear through their fur

And make jokes as they pass their canine pals

When they walk us. For whether blind or full

Sighted, deprived of flavours’ sense, we’ll forget

What we were and could be and why this

Might have been wrought upon us; by either

An angry God, or a shellfish, which decides

To smother us all in this net. Meanwhile,

The dog lags. Its long tongue sags. The heat blazes.

Even the fresh air seems tainted as they do not

Seem to know what comes next. So, I suggest

You talk to your dog, if you have a dog.

Seek its counsel. Look it in the eye and implore it.

Its nose can be trusted, unlike of course the sly cat.

A dog is all nose. Its sense of smell saves it.

Stop any dog when you see it. When it licks,

It talks to you. As somewhere, beyond language,

Its silence sustains you and the love and support

That it offers is what you need to learn:

Fate’s last fact.

David Erdos May 19th 2020

For more poems from David Erdos visit The Corona Diaries collection 

David Erdos is an actor, writer, director with over 300 professional credits. He is a published poet, playwright, essayist and illustrator. He has lectured on all disciplines in theatre and film for leading performing arts colleges, schools and universities around the world. His books include EASY VERSES FOR DIFFICULT TIMES, THE SCAR ON THE CLOUD, OIL ON SILVER, NEWS FROM MARS, CHANGING PLACES WITH LIGHT (penniless press) and BYZANTIUM with the photographer Max Reeves. He is a contributing editor for The International Times and maker of documentaries all over the world. David’s work has been acclaimed by many leading figures including Harold Pinter, Heathcote Williams, Alan Moore, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair in whose recent book THE LAST LONDON, David features. He can be reached at David.erdos@sky.com.

David Erdos

©    David Erdos has asserted his moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.