Samhain Dogs

by Patrick Johnston

I don’t understand anything I’m seeing

I don’t understand half the things I’m seeing

And seeing eyes wide naked bodies smeared green brown ochre cocks swinging balls

swinging in laeping strides that compensate the ground wet clay mulch slip tide gullies and

ridges amongst oak and ash, hollering and yellering, eyes wide mouths teeth grin grimace,

dragging bursting through the underbrush, dog running, dog chasing

and the females too with their painted dugs swinging as they run, more shrill in their hunt

cries wide eyes and ragged jagged fiery teeth

And face pressed against wet bark wide eyed tree howl and again the giant one the one with

a staghead head antlers protruding throws back its head, enormous, shoulders enormous,

and bark howls the chase the chase the chase, and he is leather and vegetation, leaves and

branches and trinket skulls of rats and voles and twine binding small cage ribs to his arms

and legs and adorning his legs and his head jerks back with impossible, his cock priapric

and outsized

And the dogs that run with them the dog hounds half wolf half man half hound, with blood

mud pelts of stink ragged, ragged mouths, ragged eyes, ragged tails cobbled in shit and they

bark howls like the runners like the stag thing who throws back his staghead head

impossible hand yells some kind of bababadalghar hundred letter thunder word….

And they are hunting

Ghost face killers in the night forest

And I do not know what is their prey

And I do not want to know what is their prey

Excepting only that it is not I

Owl brush stumbles my face perhaps confused by the torch fire and I’m panic slipping

wondering if they lied when they said I was only there to watch but a mottled hand steadies

me, wolf eyes, wolf grin, wolf watchwatch and see brother

watch the wild hunt

Samhain dogs let slip

And hunt howl

And the green man

The stag man

The impossible man throws back his neck colossal chinking bones moss faced stag

Ax spear ivy wrapped haft

And Samhain dog hound howls

And then I see the child

Eye gouged hollow eyes blood streaked cheeks, naked he is but filthy wrapped around him

like a serpent mark tattooed on his skin and his head shaved in tufts and the ululation I see

the the ululation and blind though he is or perhaps because he sees it too because the

hunters are deathly silent now and the hounds too also, lying in watch, but the child knows,

the child knows, and the beast man approaches with calm gentle stealth and in exaltation

throws back his impossible head and rips apart the child’s torso with a curve tail thrust of

his kill blade

and the ululation hits my bones like old rocks

and the Samhain dogs howl

BIO: Patrick Johnston is a writer of poetry and hybrid prose based in Southeast Asia. A former professor of psychology and neuroscience, his work explores myth, cognition, faith, and the breakdown of meaning at the edge of perception. His poems and stories appear in journals including Love and Literature and Blood & Honey. He is the author of the poetry volumes Aria Nur Fitria and The Hanoi Sequence – A Dirty Bomb.