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Badger Poetry

Alan Zimbabwe
John Dillinger
Others
Clarence Peabody
Summer Fauve
Nick Green

Jocula the Vampire lived in darkest Gorbalsvania,
Where his tartan council castle was the cause of local mania,
While his taste for local delicacies covered more than neeps and tatties,
He'd wobble home worse for ten pints, it drove the neighbours batty...
Especially as the dwindling populace of the estate,
Wondered when their time would tick their turn to meet their fate,
While Jocula sat fat and well, and swished his kilt by night,
And vanished from the lock-in long before the dawning light.

Yet Jocula was popular with all the local lasses,
He'd gladly chew the midnight fat with women of all classes.
Snobbery came hard, you see, to one with such a hunger,
And if you'd seen his wholefood diet, I suppose you wouldn't wonder,
Cos blue blood tastes no better than the red once you have bitten,
With eyes and thighs, and fashion, Jocula was just not smitten...
Eight pints a night, then nearing light, He's up and there's no stopping
His wobbly winging homeward to his Caledonian coffin.

One night while whispering nothings into ears at the boozer,
Jocula mistakenly pulled a Class-A user...
She was sitting still, all corpse-pall white, in the shadows of the pub,
So close to death, he wildly guessed, 'perhaps she's in my club'...
Track marks walked unhidden in the pathways of her pulse,
Jocula smelt fresh spilled blood, and far from being repulsed,
He slid into the shadows, and sat down by her side...
"Why's a slag like you in a dump like this?" He amorously cried.

"To earn a fix, to pull some tricks, to make a little money..."
Came back the croak, he thought "that joke is old and just not funny",
"Allow me to bring Lager, or a liquor of your choosing,
And then perhaps a kebab, as homewards we go cruising
In my midnight black Ford Escort, with seats of blazing tiger!
You'll feel a lot more friendly when you've got something inside yer."
She sneered and said "It's been too long since I heard such shit crack...
Just slip us fifty knicker, and I'll gladly hit my back."

Jocula was not accustomed to such forthright style advances,
He was used to weighing up the stakes and choosing his best chances,
Still, gift horses should not meet with open mouthed wonder
And he led her to his Escort, as loud rolled round the thunder...
Satanic dice swayed in the breeze, an icy chill from Hell,
A hell hound nodded in the back, and winked at her as well.
"You're carriage waits, my lady..." he slimily flattered,
While secretly he hungered to see her soundly battered.

With "Bat out of hell" on the tape at eleven, he winked and turned over the key,
She was pinned to the back seat by acceleration, oh say at least fifty...
With pedal to the heavy metal, he sped on through the night
And then within the empty mirror, he spied the flashing light,
As he screeched to a stop, a cackling cop knocked upon his door,
"I suspect you are pissed, will you blow intae this?" said the long arm of the law.
"A blood test would be best..." Jocula stressed, ironically puffed down the bag,
As his draft pack awoke, begging a smoke, and she didn't mean a fag.

"I'm Constable Hughie, P.C. Mac-Helsing, pride of the tartan police,
And I see by the state of your bitter breath sample, somebody here is deceased...
I'll ask you to accompany me down to the station, to take a few details..."
But her world's turning murky, going cold turkey, and angrily she wails...
"You dumb bloody copper!", he's too slow to stop her, and clink-clink close the cuffs,
"You may not be dead, so perchance instead I'll get to bang you up..."
So out of the black Escort, and into Mariah, both of them are barged,
And down to the station Mac- Helsing a- hastened, choosing who to charge.

Jocula stressed that his garrulous guest was a thin long lost family friend,
"Thin's not the word for this skeletal bird, she's almost at her end..."
Mac-Helsing muttered, and Jocula stuttered "She's on a special diet..."
"I suspect that it's working" Mac-Helsing said smirking, "Perhaps the wife should try it!"
"Would this fitness regime.." He said with a gleam, "Have owt tae dae with drugs?"
"It's more like a blend of fine whiskey, my friend..." A nonchalant Jocula shrugs.
Something in his demeanour made Mac-Helsing keener to seek his next promotion.
"I don't think it's right that she's so deathly white, and blank of all emotion."

So blood tests were taken, and Jocula's shaking to give away even a spill,
While they struggle in vain to locate her veins, till she shows them with consumate skill...
And off to a lab, while they lay on a slab, in a bare cold clinking cell,
Cold near the dawn, he's fearing the morn and the tolling of the bell.
Mac-Helsing appeared, "It's all as I feared, the game for your girlfriend is through,
And I hasten to mention there's still further questions, I should like to find answers from you.
Her sample is opiate of the first rate, while yours is stranger yet...
It's type AB,AO, OB and more, we've sent it straight on to a vet..."

"So your blood group is Heinz fifty- seven varieties, that made me pause for thought...
Till I recalled the tales of my great-great granddaddy, and the monster that he fought,
I've been doing some research into the subject, and your face would seem to fit
The numerous murders and queer disappearances we've worked on for a bit...
In the file marked 'unsolved', that's sat in the basement of this station for fifty years,
While from the glens vanished women and men, like some Caledonian curse...
There are laws made by men, but meant only for mortals, others for poor souls sake,
The charge is mass murder, the sentence a long stretch, on the end of this sharp stake."

Up leaps the police, weapon held high, and jabbing it Jocula's way,
As it looms he presumes he has last seen his tomb, dreaded doom dawning with day,
As best he is able, he leaps cross the table, and darting for the door
But Mac-Helsings prepared, with slight time to spare, He's locked and barred the door.
He whip's up his kilt, it howls like a whirlwind, and before Mac-Helsing's face,
Jocula's vanished amid all the panic, and a bat flaps in his place...
Round, round the room as the cop tries to swat him, or pin him on his pole,
Then up to the roof , and up out the chimney, away, the tortured soul.

He flaps frantically back to his crumbling castle, on the grey council concrete estate,
Watching with blind eye the Moon waning lower, praying he's not yet too late.
In through the rafters, and down to the toilet, to Melamine coffin with trim,
And lifting the lid, he morphs into man shape, looks at his sundial and slips quickly in,
The tiniest trace of the fireball is peeking over the shoulders of Scotland so brave,
So Jocula drops down the lid like a hot coal, expiring exhausted to sleep like the grave,
With a rumbling hunger from losing his quarry, that gurgles and grumbles, bubbles and greets,
Despite being undead, he still slept no better, tucked tight in his tasteful tiger skin sheets.

But what of Mac-Helsing? He's not sitting resting, he'd fled from the station room too,
 Watching the wings of the retreating vampire, consulted his files and then knew what to do...
He went to his brother, by trade now a butcher, and asking him a favour,
And walking the streets of the bat's fast retreat, knocking up the neighbours...
Then deep in a hellhole, his tired eyes beheld the terrible tumble-down home,
With extension towers, drawbridge cross the fishpond, and 'Dun'roamin' laid in stone.
He knocks on the devilish hoary door knocker, but echoes his only reply...
So it's off for a warrant to enter the haunted house, and find where it's owner may lie.

Not unlike Peter Cushing, the day is spent rushing to gain the courts permission,
For he's true to his course, and for once the law's force is on a godly mission.
And a warrant is signed, Mac-Helsing resigned to exploring Jocula's home,
So he's back at the gate, as the sun sinks in state, scared on the threshold, alone.
The sledgehammers knock soon sees to the lock, and gingerly he strides
Through thick cobwebs trussed, and decades of dust, from the house guests who have died...
Three bats fly on the chimney breast, and the floor is thick with cans,
Trembling he treads through the muck and the mess, stake stuck fast in hand.

Into the kitchen, littered with curry trays and take-outs long forgotten,
Surprises the maggots that mustily wriggle on tin foil rusted and rotten,
And in the corner, half ajar, A door draped in deep shadows waited,
It smells of death, he draws his breath, tiny, tight and baited.
It creaks with a moan, and a disturbed grave groans, hissing past his face,
So downward he treads, towards the dead, into his resting place.
A sickly light, losing to night, still from the coal grate leaks,
And spies in the gloom his chipboard tomb, where cold as death he sleeps.

Down, down the stairs, ill-repaired, they sag beneath his feet,
And close to his cask, the last dire task, course of fate complete...
But down drops the sun as he raises the stake, and shadows crowd the room,
And Jocula's eyes spring wide with surprise at the visitor in the gloom.
"Och, nae, not again", He hisses in pain, and leaps high in a flash,
Grabbing Mac's wrist, and starting to twist, he cries "Oh , nae so fast!
Just let me explain!" He winces in pain, "I'm not a wicked wight!"
Mac-Helsing lets go, enquires  "How so?" In the gathering of the night.

"Two centuries ago, in the cold winter's snow, I strolled in the northern glens,
In twilight so chilly, with the Broons and Oor Wullie, up near the Butt and Ben,
And to my great cost, I wandered so lost, close to a frozen fate,
I fell to the ground to a dire howling sound, As the moon swam so sedate.
The flap of a gigantic Haggis Bat whistled past my ears...
And in the pale moonlight, I felt it's bite, and wept Hybernian tears...
To find Brigadoon by the light of the moon, but never to see it light,
To be reborn, but lost to morn, to belong to the night.

Mac-Helsing tutted, terrified stuttered "That seems a lame excuse,
For all the lost souls who'll ne'er grow old, drained by you of juice."
"They'll never be missed, once we have kissed, and there's plenty whence they came...
All doomed to begin, so steeped in sin, surely their fair game?"
"You frightful fiend!" Mac-Helsing screamed, and leapt high with the stake,
With a twirl of his cloak, like curling fag smoke, he made his last mistake...
Jocula grinned, finally pinned to the double top bare of holes,
On the dart board of doom, in his undead front room, release for the tortured soul.

And they say that the flat is devoid of all bat, and let by the council anew...
That Jocula's presence was just local legend, another tall tale, quite untrue.
Tall tartan vampires are just gory stories made to frighten the bairns,
Yet high in the peaks, something still seeks, among the grey crags and slate cairns...
Beware that dreaded Vampire Haggis, that out there watches and waits,
All foul and shaggy, a cow's stomach saggy, the undead dinner of fate...
And in Glasgow's thick mist, should choose to kiss, Tall, dark and terrible men,
Beware that his eyes do not hold a surprise! Maybe Jocula's risen again!
.