It could be the smell
It’s the smell upsets them, he says. A small man, Jack Russell bristling, Hoodie proclaiming the backpatch club he rides with His limp a memorial of diesel on a roundabout.
He’s convinced his theory has a base. Their hearing’s no better than ours, they don’t see the same colours, But silently open the biscuit tin and they’re at your ankles like a shot. The dogs wait for the next lurid explosion celebrating Failed rebellion and ritual oppression.
Does he exist? Is that little man, half elf, half hobbit Attitude turned up to eleven Real or a Prytherch of my imagination, a player Who walks on stage to voice the lines I want to distance myself from?
Does it matter? Sitting at my desk Reading another email telling me that a politician’s anonymous constituent Demands something must be done, distancing them from Ideas they may wish to disclaim, providing them with a Poetic licence to say the unthinkable, it might.
Is that what we all do? Assume that seat, the one in the Corner of the room, the observer reporting Our inner lives, passing off what we think as what we're told As if that grants authority.
Next to me the dog sleeps. Should I Make him human, give him my opinion that there as many Experiences of the world as there are minds to experience it, Each making their own world? He grumbles, his leg in febrile spasms And I picture happy dreams of games of chase, not that he is ageing His body coping with change, difference, an approaching future. I remember that he barks at fireworks outdoors, but not in the house. It could be the smell.