Alchemisland

Are you bound for Coventry, sirs?

He is in bearing a laird 

In character a cur, clear liar

His seals of office wholly undeserved

His officers spurs you could not call earned

Eyes covetous as a drake’s dream of jewels gleaming in its lair

What Joyce called a heaventree

Of stars spans the sky above me 

Winding like the River Lee through Cork 

Corkskrew spiral worlds blazing helix through star chest whirl

Like a starmade dervish

He twirls his moustache and something in his baleful glare makes me glad I’m not a girl 

The curls of hair unfurl from his farl shaped hat peak 

We do not speak but to repeat his words when spoken to, fearing spear point 

He is soon to the point, he wishes to appoint us a guide 

To bring us safely to that city where ashes will anoint our brows, hiding 

Paler pallor too long bunched up in parlours with perfumed darlings 

Cleansed of my dalliances and vilest alliances

Vices vicegripped, urges fading to silences

Rumbling in my insides

Something in his eyes hiding 

He regards us, his smile chiding

His very glare upbriding 

Him ahorse upright a false knight

We have a Will but no ways toward denial

His guile is shark plenty, times twenty 

His stores of mental cunning count plenty

Meant he to take our lives, spear sent he 

To pierce me, blent flesh and steel, no court will hear or word against, he 

Is diplomatically immune, birthright infallible 

To us a rigid world to him is wholly malleable 

Judge with wig and gavel unravels his scroll

Reads, not aloud

We are free, perhaps deemed valuable 

Perhaps that parchment’s content we will ode in festivals annual

If we make it out of here, can you all 

Follow me, his spurred horse makes off at such speeds at which hubristic Knights fall 

Night falls at great speed, seeded by evening 

The cedars salute to Caesar, the sun their leader leaving 

Night’s remit is short, the night is freezing and we assured to die without seizing

Shelter soon, aborting our travels

We cavort below marvels, fallen marbles

Taking rest on the face of a gargoyle

Site of an elden chapel, dismantled at royal 

Say so, they are grateful though watchful

Awake and they stay so 

Stars above shine on 

Who knows for how long 

But God 

The dog star above 

We stand at Hod

Comets like flies bound for frog tongues

Skitter across the Jacob Ladder’s rungs

It is us they shine on 

Those beacons 

Those not quite suns 

Which idly spied Babylon.