Alchemisland

I am the Tarot fool

I am King Lear’s drooling madness

I am Hamlet’s father’s absence and his son’s inaction

I am the waifish wife collapsing

I am the elapsing ways of routed factions, the last Gael taking martial action

I will march on Actium on my own orders, on horseback I will enact mystical stations

I am shunned away like a blasphemer in a pious land, evening sky colour of Pilate’s hand

Bowl, healed by the charist whose throne of many carats is a stone to holy Christ

Thrice divided like apple sliced for three, he died for thee

A black mass is performed in the catacombs of Paris, cataphracts from mailed ages impatient with the hasty living

Hale and pasty the likeness of Yorick in his twilight

Torchlight highlights gloomy miles of unlife to either side, walls of spines

And skulls, long lines of old demise, without eyes retaining guile

Rats file along bonepiles

Misers and miraculers alike await His triumph over the trident

Strident Seine runs violent nearby

Violet of an evening, red the summer night like wine on white

Xena the tarist, best in Paris, with slenderstrong fingers of a guitarist fans her fortune fetching cards 

Her blouse sports a pard pattern lending Bacchic aspect

A bard begs her for news of his unwritten novel, will he leave this hovel

Behind, will his subordinates grovel, the ones who called him awful.