When You Feel The Bite

 

When You Feel The Bite

 

 

When you feel the bite, it’s probably too late,

you’ll find raw ankles in a state,

or the very tips of your ear lobes,

your wrists, if you’re unlucky, your nose

swelling up like an excarnated globe.

And have you wondered how they know?

Here’s me, sedentary, watching news,

hearing the pundits give half-assed views,

every bulletin extracts another expert’s

grave address to camera in scabrous shirts,

helmets on, giving tongue and going for it –

then here comes another of the bastards.

You swot in violence, kill that little shit

it lies like black ink in your satisfied palm,

quivering, twitching in its impurity

and thereafter a period of quiescent calm,

you relax in some false sense of security,

before another swarm of the little bleeders

fill their thieving sacs with bloody feed.

When you feel the bite, it’s definitely too late,

so roll over and resign yourself to fate.