Alchemisland

White as twelve ivories

White as the moon’s eye

White as the dying

White as runic lightning

White as Papal garb

White as paper sheaf

White as a chasuble

White as delight, charity, merrity, rare nobility

White as albumen

White as Algernon

White as studs along Orion’s belt

White as the skin around your welts

White as blizzard stuff

White as buzzard fluff

White as blind eye

White as kind lie

White as night’s demise

White as bride’s chemise 

White as a Templar’s alb

White as a skinshorn scalp

White as lab mice

White as boiled rice

White as phosphorus

White as the rushing Bosporus

White as a face drained by fright

White at takeoff those feared of flight

White pearly as gelignite

White frost on gelid night

White as surrendering

White as blank rendering

White as Charlemagne’s asbestos cloak

White as a tensed up hand a-choke

White as tenor Barry’s surname

White as prospective eternity

White as Proserpina’s foot 

White as my-side-goes-first’s rook

White like Matey suds and bubbles

White like Solomon Northup’s troubles.

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Pale as pail’s content and heated to constant

When you think you cannot stand more, apply twice requisite heat

Until your circle-shod flask glowers back, unglowing black as peat

Unloving father eats his son eats his father

Chewing half-made bread, genuflecting before the altar

In my last vial, the rest either cracked or defiled by reviled potables

Strange parthenogenesis takes place, the spermless egg multiplicates

Might be half-mad, words first confined to clay by the belt-length bearded priests of Akkad I whisper above my formulad

Half made things evenings of Genesis, before which reason falters

I am here seeking favour, in all but potato satchel I feel like Walter

Raleigh, months at sea now returned, my Lizzie, to no fanfare

I bring back less everytime I go out on the water;

Some fisher of mens’ souls

Unable even to find shoals

Every cave, every hole I stole down, cold and god-told

Until I found the sleeping tripledog, the skull knaves, marking Sheol.

My leather sandals destroyed with traversing, adversity everywhere

No sign of cities down here, the sand stains my shoes bistre brown 

Sky black as a granddad’s ashtray, the ash trees here drop tabash blossoms

There is always a bigger fish, the fang-gored Griffin flesh second to the Tarasque.

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In the church I feel different every time

Sometimes as a child to be punished

Sometimes to inter the perished

I have read the hymns, squeezed the old psalter for dear life as night bore down on me

Ornamenting my instincts with words, something pushes me to climb

Keep climbing.

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When the sun shines, though that is rare

Through yon stained glass window

It is observed to gild the very air

Even shed cells of dead skin that float like unmanned magic carpets this beauty share 

Thrumming and vibrant, the sun approves kaleidoscopic martyrdoms 

Its colours fly like unwarned Icarus, the martyrs shoed by cauldrons their faces dignified

Penetrating beams like steels past shields scan in lemniscate patterns, seeming to select

And highlight any Elect present, who come Doomsday delect

Upon the body of dead Leviathan

Light parting the shade, like an infection of luminescence upon the ridge of regal midnight

Some day, only the dimmest traces of light will reach our world due to senescence

And general entropic tendencies 

Glory highlights its imperfections

Where streaked panes are flecked with dirt

We of souls reminded, of good works made alert

Glory ignites the reflections

What in glory senses glory in you

What with lowered head you whispered of truth

What halcyon inkling rouses infirmity’s bold youth

Where the serpent commences let my arrow fall strong

Where the braver man tenses, folds, let me tarry long.