Alchemisland

Bull totem clan

Campbell, not can

See the antient man

Reaper and reaver of and on his lands

His mouth’s demands are brought around to heel by his hands

His fastness a forest fortress, like Vodalus, fighters from the Fianna

Who heard singing Lia Fáil, line its wooden walls, loyal to their Rí

They wear tonsures without papal guidance

They have old Brehon laws, high courts and taxes

They were yellow shirts called léine, yellow as an ghrian ag taitneamh

Tested for warriorhood by trial of violence

His motorless chariot all Eireann’s rotavator

His supreme victory and manner thereof motivate

His men to war

He looks askance at the druid’s teachings

His favoured lance craves blood like a leech

Approaching, his redoubt reveals itself; rebel nest like a natural copse at first glance

Oak palisades and exhaling skies mark his manse.

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On his foot’s muddy ball rests a shaft 

His aim he aligns to the wall

He stands tall as bible fauna, vile as pantagruel, twice as hungry thrice as cruel

Sweat pools about the cleavage of his tight lunula

He goes in his own time, a real mule

Wielding Ariadne’s thread, at his leisure unspools time 

His soaring spear glints in sun before it lands, splintering wood

His spear recalls

Embeds in flesh

All struck fall

Caster calls

Flesh outhauls

It screams back to his bloodless hand at master’s command, cruel barbs dripping 

Raindrop corona when you kick it and when it’s spinning

Like penalty at a rainy football match we’re not winning

Many bards its blows rendered future stories bland in a blaze of goried glory

Magical stones from Murias and Findias line his breastplate and kilt

Skulls, prizes and apotropaic wards dangle where hang his swords, tugged off those he killed

Gem-busy pommels like diamond christ an adonis shone there

His snake-painted scabbard lies empty, its lamprey mouth gaping, en garde!

Beneath his six-layer kingly tabard, snailed purple

He brings to his lips a tankard, flips a coin to thank the bard, retires behind a curtain

Uncertain of the time but wide eyed he calls for fresh entertainments

Stories of his ancient forebears, the shape of long-lost kingly raiments

Rain batters the battlements, all breath that of dragons

Demands to know what they meant

The Cumaen’s dark prophecies, what Cthons sent them?

Milk eyed crone sisters, brown of flesh, brought in from Keash

Read his palms and card, foreseeing hard times, hard hoar frost and long gelid climes

Knee-wrecking, lung-choking climbs toward the end of time but you end up downhill

Unwinding like a peeled heretic 

Unbinding his banded hair, blonde and thick just the way he likes them

Stoops to trough, licks lips, submerges and drains the broth

As kings before: Mael Mordha, Conchubar, Sláine Mac Roth.