Alchemisland

Gloaming, petrol fires at sunset wearing mitres of black smoke

Strong bellied fire like a broccoli head bubbling saffron and fixing to see dawn

Orpheus’ melodies careen in a sleeping gun’s ear

Orders from HQ seek the Line’s source

Navigating three thousand miles along a wire narrower than a gypsy’s kitchen

Barely audible from the receiver, muffled words

Orders from HQ, they want an evening barrage

Maledictions over the phone, the receiver hums

Maledictions with static blent, leant infernality

Whizzing across manless mounds, fed on dead vernality,

Slenting between permed razorwire and sandbag palisades

Impossible degree of sentience, witnesses swore

Twice, the bullet turned clear of obstacles that should have stilled it

A bullet has a man’s name on it and when that bullet is fired near where that man is

That bullet will find that man’s heart, pierce it and end his life

Bullets swim shrilly through martian air like apologies fighting stubborn lips

Temporary kingship ends not with tears but pools of blood

Stanley defaced portrait of youth

White-faced ghost child in khaki, pushing his blood back in

Plugging a split casque with a drupe’s lith

Spent canisters sent spiraling many fetid helixes

One man, had leant, now slumps

Partings in the firmament, apertures rending the dome of the world. Windows, inviting the curiosity of nameless denizens from nihilistic realms

A face emerging from clouds; its cirrus-built smile parting as if poised to whistle, loosing a scouring beam of unbellied fire from vast solar lips

Tell us a story

Spits licks along the paper spits

Gestures for a Lucifer, moths into the flame with fag in mouth

Long drags off it, exhales smoke through his nose like an angry drake would

Spits, tiresome really, sits, fidgets, indenting, long drags

Looks out wide eyes, languidity revealed as furniture of stagecraft

Bard on duckboards, the bored yawning at one they have heard

But tonight he’s got a new one

Everyone snaps to attention though he gives them ease

Mad Kraut scientists pulled out the sick brain of a mass molester and implanted it into the skull of a vicious dog

Abominable project, Cain’s old science which the angry brine of the flood had failed to quench

Marauds manless mounds, making men into meat, masticating manhoods messily

Jests suchlike a pearl of truffles in the ivy pips, freshest fruits like all gemstones buried impossibly beneath desert sands

Jests jests jests delights, how can delights pervade 

Light fading, encroaching night, approach of martial might with drums and shadow and drizzle

Some smiles, nervous titters, others steady themselves as if feeling faint suddenly, despite all they have

Some power in stories told beneath clouds, golden face Tartarian gilding of a petrol fire

Orange fruit came before orange colour

Orange flames warm him

His pallor oranges worryingly, sling him in a rough grave with quicklime; our bard

Alas, knew him well