Barely midnight unfurling familiar red thread whose frayed end I know
Sleeping lover undercover for it is bitter cold outside but You sitting coiled
Better here inside with heated hearth and heart spare for you
Cats always coy, knowing they are spoiled
Sometimes when I talk I swear you understand
With time recognition, trusting first the fleeting fingertip then the long caress of this hand
Bond older than articulation, wordless but more pleasant by statement made
For pure pleasure play and ever rue the shorting day
Every cat as every person has a way, such have you, and what onesuch!
Though furtive, cats rarely are seen shy or lacking expression
Yet I called shy feel caged, termed bon vivant
Outside, forge-belch clouds occulting constellations
Inside, a projector-painted star ceiling; no less alive than their stellar antipodes.
Sometimes attunement stands me from consideration, bars patience
Sitting thus riled composing, hair of the arm like sleeping horses
My hand seeming faster than thought rapt by unseen forces
Around me the sleeping on their quests, bubbles of bright protection
By a lantern’s holder blessed, chin to breast the best and worst of us must rest
As if by means of course correction a coarse interruption intersects prosody
Imagined prodigy, my thrustless collared progeny demanding inclusion
To them prostitute focus and in payment abundant minute trifles.
Unsealed boxes in mind’s attic contents thoroughly rifled, I feel stifled
When I can neither voice my hurt nor joy exert, words curt dim feeling exhume
When costless the peacock-phrase gilds the hearer, silvers the speaking tongue, reddens both bloods, whitens gruesomed satins.
Some innocence reclaimed in rhyme, revirgining. Versions countless vast tracts of unusable trash midden-bound.
Dim rhyme abounds in such quantity that’s criminal, yet my lure to places liminal rebounds to the speaker,
Cannot scribe free my ignored gift yet on I grift, shrift of old soul I chronicle shifts,
Bright my gift from Thoth, to write; pyre ignite with mire-tricky pithy wits or flames sooth
With easily-sticking stanzas,
Stamen wilt with weight and volume of petals; word with weight of metals; let man as Gods meddle.
On sectioned mind’s mist wreathed fringe, where oft recalled falsehood and desired fantasy decide life’s symbols
Vestry of eagles, house of gold’s innermost misericord
Relaxed standards, a ban on standards in favour of worldly rags star emblazoned, alike which Magi hastened toward
Enormous walls girdling garden of pearls, passwords primrose, where pinemartens furl – my ward
Hereout the verse cursed spite adversity singled out for virtuosity smuggle out fine verse
Nursery of verse unguarded, thimble measure of wonder tincture
Place of mind where inward eye alone descries, yet finds dispensation, self-hated and desperate though granddad spoke Nil Desperandum
Dismal, lonely sinecure, self of selves interred like King’s old wife
Though kept head am kept confined, no lease but leash for life
Like Lear I see every sorrow reflect my own, my souring bones
Hidden beneath my light; a mask across the riven face of one crone.
Alchemisland 
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