A family of sheep live in harmony, all from different areas
Different ages and different ideas. They all came together
United in a friendship, strong enough to be called a family
But there are wolves out there…. Terrible creatures that
Want nothing more to attack the sheep. They once might
Of been sheep, but something dark and twisted shaped them
Into the creatures they are now. They stalk, coming closer to
The family, moving in to destroy the harmony they live in
But as they come close they feel a presence pushing at them
Something protecting the sheep, something dark as them, sending
Shivers down the wolves spines, something terrible enough
To scare the mighty wolves

A mighty bear, massive in size, vast bigger than the wolves
The bear has strong curved claws ready to attack any that
Approach. Its speed is also a deadly trait the bear possesses
Able to out run any evil coming at him. The bear also has a
A super amazing sense of smell, able to smell the stench from
Miles away.
The bear perks up, catching the smell of a creature that doesn’t
Belong…

The other creature is the sheepdog. Though not as big as the
Bear the sheepdog has a presence that scares the wolves.
The sheepdog has fangs as long as the wolves and attacks
Just as ferocious as the wolves. While the bear knows when
Violence can be avoided by scaring the wolves away, the
Sheepdog does not know this, he jumps at the violence
Instead, taking the impulse to attack and destroy, marking
Him close to the wolves.

The bear circles to the sheepdog and together they move to
The wolves, ready to protect the family behind them
The wolves leave, scattering to avoid them, facing away
From the ever presence

The sheep are swimming in the Nile; they must be living in denial!
Denial is our best friend, the constitution we must amend!

Guns are our mortal enemies; their only use is to commit felonies
To stop these tragedies, we must impose harsher penalties!

There is no wolf, we will not die; there’s no need to put your life on the line
Sheepdogs are for the paranoid, those who live in a void

Remove the sheepdog and the enemy goes away, to happiness this is the true way
Ban the wolf with a no trespassing sign, surely we’ll be fine

Respect and common courtesy, the wolf will live in harmony
Close our eyes and he goes away, all we have to do is pray

Our herd used to be bigger; we don’t ask questions as long as our denial can deliver
Until our children are in the fire, then the sheepdog we require

But the sheepdog is out of practice, we fired him for “malpractice.”
Ruined by us, he looks no better than us – but he’s not like us

The sheepdog is weak; his sheep made him an antique
But his mind is strong and he’s eager to **** the evil and wrong

Wolves are predators, feeding on the weak; it’s denial they seek
The sheep will never fight, but pray the sheepdog is able to take up their plight

i like to watch the sheepdog rounding up the sheep
first a little run then a gentle creep
rounding up the herd as gentle as can be
drives them to a pen a clever dog his he

listens to his master to his whistle blow
so he understands which way he has to go
always very faithful by his masters side
just to watch the sheepdog fills my heart with pride.

I know my motives
and they're far from pure -
The lengths I will go to
for a pat on the head.

And then there's you -
you, with your pure indifference
and your thousand words for soil

Reminding me
that real art
is its own reward
And that I have created none.

But oh!
I am grateful for the lesson,
for the knowledge of the destination
and the chance
to be on my way.

one - i don't understand why saying "it's the 21st century" is somehow seen as a compensation for 20 centuries of our inhumanity, or a case of: only improvements reside in us - seems just as false to say - men can overcome angels, as stated by the first Christians... yeah, we can do miracles with technology and ultra-secular communication dynamics - discarding the existence of such beings resulted in hen parties with plastic wings and halos... what a great method to discard such being, and subsequently appropriate their features, if ever needed, but altogether unnecessary... two - that disrespecting heterosexuality aligned with the power of science has made it altogether a pointless endeavour in re-enacting the monogamous nature of swans: if we can breed the many perversions, ahem, deviations, we surely require en equal share of respect, before science undermines any deviations into an economic format of breeding pure heterosexual contingencies... three: who the hell said i was throwing anyone off a roof? i was just curious about the slack pressurising the alias big brother / grey matter dictator into teaching us language, then to later make us into a Koranic cyclops or having to sway one side, but not the other, teaching us vocabulary in school, but robbing us of a fluidity of language beyond school, in society... any rational man would say: just teach me the knuckle, the stone and the stick to express my manners... because, to be frank, i'm not into faking being civilised, just teach me to be a barbarian from the start, don't dangle the magic carrot in front of my eyes when it's a fake... teach me the barbarism you want to suppress later on in life: i'm not into being Dolly 2.3419, and an attache to a sheepdog for herding purposes to take it up the **** and shut up: because a member of Parliament did it to me aged 14; for example.

subjectivity is doubled attacked, it's not the merely rationalist
approach of an objective side of things,
i could understand tiresome efforts
Chinese politics while walking
the tourist plot on the great wall -
in a society that's seismically acknowledging
social or whatever coherence,
i find it a bit of limbo of paraphrasing
trans - or trans-physics, or the active
way to usurp metaphysics, by deviating
from thought as an activity, and more
how words are sense datum co-ordinates
that are like dictators: because it just, feels,
funny, and, offensive. ***** vocabulary,
that's what i call it... after a while you concentrate
on what ****** you off, first the educational
autocracy teaches you a vocabulary,
then come the St. Thomas' terrorists with:
you need to revise your vocabulary...
like **** that'll happen, you don't own
language, i don't own language, you're
little fascist agenda to censor such awoke
the boy that was supposed to wake Barbarossa
from his slumber with the cry: crows! crows!
a cloud of crows! funny how the eagle is a
failed emblem for empires, and the crow isn't...
mind you, the English succeeded with
an empire half-and-half: a lion and a unicorn...
i'd guess as much with a monkey and
a centaur, or at least a Cerberus - something
mythical - well, sure, the Poles are attacked
in Britain... but ever hear about the Scot
being attacked in an English village?
a Scot was attacked just the other day,
because kilts were deemed offensive...
so trans-gender is good, meta-gender is:
had a wee t'ink 'bout it...
   robots start with the pronoun use: one...
royalty start with the pronoun use: we...
                 and in between we have paranoid
they and we... and insecure you and i -
or as e. e. cummings would have it:
    *i say no world
                 can hold a you
   shall see the not
             because
  and why but
                          (who        -
true, but as much of not is entanglement
              with knots - or ought to tries -
  to not or to knot and be -
                              Shakespeare also said:
  funny how i was born neo-liberal,
millennial tattooed - and fake-left...
   i hear the right is a tsunami of focus these days,
all the generation Z are buying into
obstructing gay-marriage, and are adamant
   on not abusing pronouns - hence the current
revival in grammar school education in England -
they don't drink, i.e.: taking psychopathic gambles,
they're prone to social-media overdoses
rather than succumbing to excess ecstasy and palpitation:
i had 190 "friends"... let's just call them vantage points...
   sheered that social media sheep: only 13 left...
but at least objectivity outright says:
       subjectivity is subhuman, science taught us
that subjectivity is the fire between two flint stones,
all in all necessary - but objectivity said:
             two flints! two flints! no fire!
what attacks subjectivity is not objectivity,
it's satire... to humanise everything: good or bad,
with a standard of humour... well... telling a sad
joke to later tell the same sad joke by satirising it...
punch in a face; because there are only so number of
things that are funny in life... the English language
doesn't seem to understand that even the odd chance
of black humour, will not lift the spirits of those,
who, quiet frankly, don't want to be humoured...
the only humour left is not to provision the public
with barbaric satire, sometimes empathy will do,
because it's emphatic humour,
   it's Godot's roundabout humour: the shared experience.
laughing for the sake of laughing is
             a cry from apathy's lost interest in
being pardonably dasein - laughing at all the truthful
autobiographic desecrate is apathy's last
chance to impress: but how foul it all sounds by then...
   the western version of buddhism suddenly feels like
  a taste of pears in november: not sour, not bitter...
just maggoty foul - yucky goo
                  of a plum-shaded rouse of the skin
tinged hue after contact with knuckle and knee.
  but they attacked a ******* Scot in an English village,
because of a kilt...
                                   he knows the strand of ganging up
in hyena numbers and then the celebratory drink
of compensating conscience - they'll sooner accept
     a trans-gender dunno'h than a hot-blooded
heap of tartan - ever ask the homosexuals what
they think of St. Thomas' gospel?
              i think: too much, too early, too innocently.
and if they tell you: speak differently!
they will, i'm ****** sure they will want to
control your grammar without any specialisation -
you'll wonder: summer in Syria?
                     because as racism goes,
they attack the difference, and the difference is only
skin deep, like they did with the Afros of Kentucky,
the Kentucky Afros will spring right back,
    because the abuse was only skin deep,
therefore their soul was enlarged, and they'll
play the blues, and the jazz, and rap, and break-dance...
but if the abuse goes to the depth of soul...
in that it's soul-deep...
                                and because it's white v. white...
it will ferment, and nothing positive will come from it...
no jazz, no blues... nothing of cultural importance...
   it will be haggled in the political market
to the point where both sides will find it utterly
unbearable: and then start to sheer their skins...
        you won't get anything from this soul-deep
attack... if the holocaust is what it felt like,
            then this is a minor post-holocaust episode,
a reminder...
                          and by god, i thank god
for the fact that the Picts are involved -
                                                            whe­re to now?
O Imperium Gladstone paraphrase?
                            it will be hard to beat the unicorn -
all empires donning the eagle duly fail -
centaur and a frog? maybe next time.

“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,
The Beneficent, the Merciful.
Owner of the Day of Judgement,
Thee (alone) we worship;
Thee (alone) we ask for help.
Show us the straight path,
The path of those whom Thou hast favoured.
Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger
Nor of those who go astray.”

This we said to you, oh Great One, in the Quran
So many years ago.
But Lord your flocks are fleeing from your fields.
We need your Sheepdog to round them up in their confusion.

They do not see you are a God of many names,
“God” being one of them.
Over the ages you have been Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Mother Earth, Jehovah, God, Allah
And many others.
But always you were The One True One,
Beneficent and Loving.

All men (and women) are equal in your eyes.
All Life to be cherished and preserved.
Thou shalt not ****
Is what you said.

So Allah now’s the time
To correct your children:
Breathe into them
The essence of your thoughts.

Enter their minds as The Holy Ghost,
So many Scrooges there:
Enlighten them
To know what is really Good
And rediscover what it is
To Love.
Amen.

Paul Butters

you don't like girls who sass back

you want a girl who'll follow you around like a sheepdog

cleaning up your scraps.

you don't like girls who talk a lot

or too loudly

you'd prefer meek with a dash of kitten sweater

and i don't have anything against kitten sweaters

they're ******* awesome

but i've got a huge problem

with meek

so you and me...

it's not gonna happen

there was a little sheep dog he was black and white
i watched him round the sheep up it was such delight
following close behind them so they wouldnt stray
for the little sheepdog this was his working day
he was very clever and knew just what to do
by the farmers whistle every time he blew
a charming little fellow as busy as can be
working with the sheep such a lovely site to see

She readies the tomatoes & radishes
fresh lettuce leaves & green onion
then finishes with salad cream as a garnish
& puts the evening’s fish pie in the oven

The salad sings sweetly to her
of the bygone days of childhood summers
fast cars on winding country lanes,
the way her grandfather would say

something to his sheepdog
& watch it rush away again
in the sunlight’s  warm
grasp,  before the rain

wandering fields & farms
or out by Thor’s cave
always with a pair of binoculars
for counting birds & bats

& how he’d sleep in his armchair
in a red brick stack of a house
& how the dazed garden air
always smelt of tea roses

many years have gone past
& she keeps all the old photographs
under lock & key in Europe
& old birthday cards in their envelopes

Every Christmas the phone rings
out above a coal-filled fireplace
& the call goes to the answer machine
all that love gone to waste

* Thor's Cave is a cave in Manifold Valley in the county of Staffordshire in the UK

i like to watch the sheepdog rounding up the sheep
as he crouches down.  around them he will creep
keeps them all together keeps them in a pack
fully in control so they cant run back

using all his skill he guides them to a pen
then back into the field to do it all again
i just love to watch him it gives me such a thrill
a very clever dog born with so much skill

I hear your voice echo on the walls of the Tiffany box—

hello hello
hello

hello

—with that southern-belle cadence
you spoke with always, like when you
told us we never had to knock, just
come in through the garage

on my graduation day I opened it for the first time
little silver teardrop on a little silver chain
delicate, like all of you, except your fingers
delicate, like the line you’re walking now

your robin’s-egg antique pickup gathering dust as I am miles away
sheepdog going deaf, legs shaky when she stands

I only allotted for that one loss this year.

on new year’s morning when we all
stomached the black eyed peas for tennessee good will
hung over and sweet-heavy with cinnamon rolls
and decadent, permanent, big hardy love
I spent my wish on the usual

and hey, maybe a couple more years for the dog.

hello hello

hello

hello

hello?


your lilting voice echoes every time I put on that necklace
and feel you, savor you around my neck for every
wine-drunk dinner and every nantucket porch photograph—


god if I would have known to wish on that