(c) Dead Horse Poem by Francis Curran

A sore seat's pedal on a sweltering road
That only time ever passed through.
And us on the banter of flowering girls
And the anticipation of a rare dead horse.

No other lads had seen it,
But it was there-

Gripped in the frenzy of grass the dead horse lay.
It's raging eyes, stitched on the stillness of sun.
In torrent of flies, hell bent on the crackle of skin,
On the sweetness of flesh, the redness of meat.

The sludge of the knotted steaming gut,
Seeping the lung of the baking soil,
Dissolving, to be razed to the sky on this strange day,
Around the offensive stench of a boiling horse.

One of us picked a hell of a stone, and hurtled it
Towards the black cries of waiting crows,
Whilst others blurted spurious caws of its demise.
And amongst the werewolf's and the dark gypsies

Was a beast's heart caved in, and toiled to death
As it lay there, idle as it could wish.
We brag to give a right good kick, to clump such weight
And grizzled bulk, with the thud of a measured boot,

In the glint of a rascal eye.
But something around it that couldn't be seen,
Buckled the gangling leg to give way.
Wracking our shot and stuttering brains,

As the white clam of our hands tightened,
Clenching for the menace, of an all too dead thing.

The grey upset of rain rubs,
And the clamouring up of a villain sky,
That blunts the sun and a lad's dare,
For we had seen it,

Were bound to say we touched it,
Though we hadn't.

We leave him in his dead thinking.
Scarper from those screaming eyes, glaring out
At the gathering above; stricken in the notion,
Of it's own sorry deadness.