Lady Killer

Could you recognize a serial killer?
This one buys roses for his wife.
Each day, on return from work, two children greet him with bona fide love.
Even the dog wakes from its sleep and wags its mindless tail.
His wife, without fail, pecks him on the cheek.
She thinks to herself: He’s mine! ... Or something.

A dinner-party raconteur.
In his firm, unspoken grip, he holds men’s minds and women’s hearts.
He charms the ladies with his dark looks and urbane persona.
In the wider community, his foothold is also strong.

One Sunday past, at St. Peters, dressed in a perfectly-ironed suit and perfectly-polished shoes, 
In a perfectly-polished voice, he read from St. Paul’s Corinthians.
The congregation listened intently to a voice of subterranean faith.
Below the recited passage, he noted a missive
Not often spoken aloud in our Pious PC Age.
Silently he read the following: “It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with a woman.”

Five miles elsewhere, three women lay down at peace. 
Deep inside a forgotten skip; abandoned to Dogging Wood.
Dead.
Each corpse was methodically, meticulously, dismembered.
And all the while the public and the family slept.
Soon after these unbecoming deaths,
The death-smell’s putrid dissonance harmonized with inorganic waste.