Man the Butcher
olddarkgods.com
Man, that misstep of the Gods—
With cold, clean-cut cruelty carved from clay, bred from blood—
Bound to blunder, blight every beauty, breed only ruin and waste.
The Gods must’ve been mad when they made him—
This man—this cur of men, this clay-shamed mistake,
with hands not of flesh but filth, fingers fit only for tearing that which lives.
There in the slant-shadowed streets of Sarajevo, broken-backed Balkans,
Beneath a leaden sky, he stood—he who should never have stood at all—
A hammer of hatred hung in his heart,
his hand heavy with rage and his eyes,
black mirrors of something lower than any beast.
Medo, a dog with a heart soft as the earth’s spring pulse,
a shy twitch of sinew and fur, sun-brindled, gold-tipped;
Gave in its way all, wagged under the whip’s lash,
cringed at his master’s iron hand.
Not knowing a heart can be all poison—a pit of smoke and hollow stones—
A mind can warp like a gutter, twist in the muck-mired
soul of man.
Medo, Medo—once a name that meant mercy, love.
Medo—soft-mouthed mongrel with fur the color of autumn hay,
A patchwork of sun-kissed gold and chestnut,
Eyes that carried the kindness of clouds over a valley—
Eyes that trusted, eyes that wagged with the pulse of the wild earth,
As though love still ran somewhere deep under the bones of men.
But now, in a world where man is the only god,
there is no place for such innocence.
Fool. The Gods have long since turned their backs,
And men are their mistake, their error carved in skin.
He cowered, tail-tucked, shivering—the first strike was a slap of flesh on flesh,
a thunderclap of rage that rent the air open.
And Medo’s cry—sharp, wet, trembling—
Ripped from his throat like a prayer abandoned in the wind.
A prayer to what? The wind knows better.
There are no Gods here.
The second blow—boot to ribs—
thudded like thunder rolling through the blood,
the dumb, dull drum of violence,
the kind of violence that man alone knows.
Medo’s body curled in the dirt, a small sack of trembling fur,
All his love leaking from those wide, wet eyes
like water seeping into broken ground.
What creature but man knows this kind of cruelty?
What animal turns on its own in cold contempt?
None but the mistake—the fluke of the Gods’ blind hour.
And then the howling, the agonized yelp of being
broken for nothing, only to feed the black hunger in a soul gone void.
All the furred flesh flinching, and fire surged in its bones,
small rib-bundle of life collapsing in the fists of wrath.
No God above, no beast below, would bend to answer a howl like that.
But he—the man, the butcher—he, grim-faced butcher of life.
That’s when the shot came, bone-shattering sound,
sharp as the sky split in two,
A lightning bolt fired from Hell’s throat—
The yelp choked mid-breath, silenced in blood,
And Medo crumpled, ribs shattered, spine a ragged twist of snapped cords—
Gods, he wasn’t even dead yet—
Still breathing, still trembling, paw twitching like a half-crushed leaf.
And Medo, small Medo,
once running wild in the sunlight,
now lay twisted in his own blood, the warmth already leaving
his limbs, his heart already silent,
That heart that beat in time with the earth itself,
Now just a stain on the ground.
But this man, this beast in the worst sense—
With the same hands that men have used for eons
to twist the neck of beauty,
no pity in his eyes, no pulse of grief.
He dragged the body, limp and leaking, across the cold asphalt,
Hooked it like meat, looped the leash to the truck’s steel maw—
chain rattling like bones in the hollow belly of hell itself—
And in one great roar of rage, the engine flared.
Wheels spun fire, and Medo’s body—
his warm, blood-furred body,
the last gift of life in a world stripped barren—
Jolted to life, as though the pain of death could conjure resurrection.
Flesh sheared from bone, hair shredded in the grit of the street—
His skull beat against the road, cracking with every bump,
Eyes bulging wide, dry, blank with the horror
of love turned to torture—
And the wind, gnashing, licked the blood trail clean
Like a tongue of bitter ice savoring sorrow.
He dragged the lifeless husk of what once loved him
through the mud and the muck,
through the same streets that once held children’s laughter,
Now echoing only with the scratch of bone against gravel.
—And the land, which bore witness in its brown silence,
did not stir, did not move.
The black pines did not bend,
The wind did not whisper reprieve.
For what could the old world care for the spawn of men?
The earth turned away, the wind held its breath.
No bird sang, no tree bent low in mourning.
For why should they? The land has learned well—
Man is not its kin. Man is the walking sin,
The false lord, the thief in the temple of life,
Who kills not for hunger or need,
but for the cold, cruel joy of watching a world go silent.
Man, man alone—error of stone, freak of a star—
Born to murder the innocence of spring, born to smother
the pulse of living things with the lead weight of horror.
He is the false lord, the lie, the misstep of Gods gone blind.
Blood of the blood-hunter,
Who hunts not for food or fury or grace, but for shame,
for shame alone.
If only the earth had been pure—if only the bear, the bird,
the great silence that sighs between snowdrifts,
Had not been soiled by his shadow.
Would that the fields could rise up in rock-flame,
stone-white fangs of creation,
To scour this breed from the breast of the world,
This smudge of madness, this walking scar
On the still face of life.
But, cruelly, the Gods remain silent, their hands carved from time,
Shaping the same strange clay that breathes death—
Man, again and again—repeated like the blunder of a dream,
Dreamt by an idiot child.
Medo’s pale ghost, the husk of that heart’s furred hum,
Fades into fog, lost in the limbs of bare-bellied birch.
And the man? Still driving, staring into dusk,
Eyes like stones thrown in rivers,
And the river runs, runs red with his shame.
This is the mark of man—the butcher’s art of ruin—
Wherever his shadow falls, the grass is burned back,
The rivers cough up dead fish, the forest howls in lament.
He is the defiler of all that is sacred,
a walking plague born only to darken the world’s womb.
How can the earth bear it? How can the pines not rise up in green fury
and thrash him to pulp, pulp and black bone-mush?
How can the mountains not heave themselves down
to crush him, to grind every heartbeat out of that cold meat-heart?
Medo deserved better—every dog deserves better—
A bed of cedar boughs to sleep on,
a hand that feeds without a fist behind it—
But the world is upside down, twisted,
and the only beasts that thrive are those two-legged things
that slit throats for sport and call it strength.
Somewhere, the deer still nuzzle the soft bellies of fawns;
somewhere, a hawk knits the air with love-shriek and talon-grace;
The wolf mothers its pups in the ice caves.
All creatures blessed and damned in the glory of life’s mad rush—
Except man, man alone: the blight on creation.
Medo’s ghost—fur-blooded, spine-shattered—
lingers on the street where he died, a wisp of dog’s breath,
A shadowed memory of tail-wag and hope-joy,
Whispering in the wind’s cry: Why?
The stars blink back tears that are not tears—
And the Gods—if they could weep—
They’d weep rivers to drown the sickness they allowed to thrive.
Man, may you rot.
May the earth reject your corpse.
May the stones refuse your name, the trees wither at your presence.
May all things rise against you—
Not out of hate, but in defense of love,
The love you could never feel,
The love that died with Medo’s last breath.
And as Medo's broken body bounced in the dirt,
limbs lifeless, fur stained and soaked,
The Gods, who once dreamed of creation,
must have turned their backs in disgust.
For if there is anything to hate in this world, it is man,
This failed spark in the mud,
This accident of flesh that turns all love into ash.
Had the Gods known what they had wrought,
they would have crushed that clay between their fingers,
Would have smothered this species in the cradle,
left the earth to its true children—
The wolf in the wood, the hawk on the wing,
the quiet doe in the dusk who watches,
not understanding the cruelty that walks on two legs.
Medo’s spirit, if spirits linger, is not here.
The butcher drives on, his eyes dark as the road ahead,
His heart—if he has one—
as dead as the dog he dragged behind him.
And the world? It rolls on.
But it remembers. The hills remember.
The trees will hold this story in their rings.
The animals know. They always know.
Man, mistake of the Gods,
may you choke on your own blood someday,
and may the earth rise up to spit you out.