Alchemisland

Hephaestus of the lean-to, the villages hammydown armours seen to

As if they were Pope’s robes purple as peacock’s tail fanned like a winning hand to mock the downy cygnets, parading that office

He mends lockets, shoes oxen, builds strongboxes, tests locks, ensures a sword’ll knock through an enemy’s props and drop him

He beats dents from bent gorgets on his blackened forgetop

He mends runnels along a gauntlet a Saracen knife tried to flense

He has fletched arrows with goose and turkey feathers which flew

In front of the sun over Jerusalem, slamming into Saracen shields

He had heard of Damascus Steel, how the light caught their gospel-banded blades and shone as if the sun had peeled back a heretofore unseen shield to its sheen.

---

The time of conversion is over

The room settles

A waterbowl atop a pedestal reserved for blessings

Font of Messiah

Which sunlight turns silver as Diana’s

Mirror, his Papal tiara resplendent as an angel’s arya in the aureate shafts

Cease of chatter natter laughter quiet comes after, chary the Fathers of their Father

The altar altered by his presence thereon, the golden monstrance like a monstrous million armed sun

He armours against the megatherion, abhorring his appearance

The cloven one is heinous, our prayers honour the increate

He stares to the ceiling, his hands appealing for appeasement

These Saracens, their lease on the Holy Land has ended.

---

The official version of the Bible is settled

The pen the page

The Word the metal

The wisest Virgin closest to God in a throne averse to violence strides the stage in silence

Attendent the flipside of all alliances, all ties and called in tithes, thrones from which rise the armies of demise

He wears the robes of a miser, the mitres submit to his might and divine right, solemn rite

This night the battle lines are decided, the forces divided, the hosts defy the right

To life of the eastern side, they send out 12 spies to seed lies about their coming

Drumming keeps the time of their oars, warlike driftwood bound for foreign shores

The struck drummond rumbled, the rum barrels tumbling in the wavestruck brig, frigates

Clinker built and tide-jousting triremes with wide beams for flapping sails cream the oceantop

The crop’s cream lopped by the scythe, the blood greases and eases the tide, Homer never lied

To speed those crafts, a King’s daughter must die.

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They have no conversions but troops converge on besieged Damascus

Unmasking the unworthy, ashes and death in their tracks

Pale as wax the pallor of the once-living and apple cheeked quieted laughter and empty ages and aeons thereafter

No names are exalted, the crop ground of the croppy boy and the peat bog soldier is salted

The statues are assaulted, limbs chopped off at the order of the exorderers, their sworn exords 

Sworn to defend order against froth-lipped rabid and natural disorder

Mercenaries from the borderlands are recalled and armed with holy swords 

They are told to ignore the written law

An army of recorders, representatives from the Church’s most obscure orders under obscurer orders

Plunder of relics, thunder of Jove, righteousness of the first order in a mailed fist

Destructive mist rising like a wraith from the catapult prey

Prayers speed their missiles, godspeed our missives

Trials and tribulations, the healthy and god-approved testing of nations

The lion is a lion and warlike by his nature, it is not always his to nurture

The Pope frees the beast in man by condoning his shapeless rage, an army of ape berzerkers

Arrive rape and battle fervent, the perverse and the pious and the piteous, the Pontius Pilates

The anxious boat pilots steer through the narrow streams between the sedgy islets

Never daring to shut their eyelids, such quantity of royal and lofty titled

Blood aboard his beloved Trident, it would not serve to deny

The Pope his violence by serving his servants to the tide, ruled by Abaia.