1752 c/o Mark Edwards

the universe forgot my dog's birthday

yo pope gregory XIII
stop pontificating
about space-time,
give my dog his birthday back

it was/is today, the third
of september, which mysteriously now also
seems to be the fourteenth.
you fucked up the calendar

and caused the longest night
in the history of sleep,
backspacing the work of julius caesar;
a man named after a salad.

why not let everything drift
out of sync with the seasons
instead, equinoxes traversing the year
like endless bank holidays

anyway what should i do
with this dog-shaped
birthday cake/meatloaf?
i could freeze it until next september

but that is not the point

no birthday song
no birthday card
no birthday monogrammed dog bowl
richard has been unbirthdayed

and now he has a long face
by which i mean he is sad, yes
i realise his face is actually long
but that is because he is a dachsund

also not the point

vatican? how about vatican’t
your year is twenty-six seconds
too short for the sun
so you are wrong on a cosmic scale also.

julius and gregory, two assholes
beefing across the centuries
thanks to you and your incompatible
systems of chronology

this is one
bummed
out
dog