Alchemisland

Cattle cattle cattle 

Years of battle 

A decade waging a pro-war campaign, sabre-rattling zealots at last touch down on the frontline 

Meeting the chain death of rises lipped by gatlings 

Skulls in a line, as would dot tribal idols’ feet

Slumped dead along ratlines east of the Seine, rivalling rubbish for scent 

Spent shell wreckage like a sea sponge

Toadstool leather coraline 

In a former forest where fermenting bodies drip out corpse cider

Skeleton of a female with pale, neverskinned babe inside her buried four hundred years prior 

As if the petrol fires pauldroning the horizon truly licked as high as the eye thinks, the sky perspires

Ired adder hissing heard, stubborn fires spitting in defiance of the stubbing storm 

The once-lovely valley where hanging lily dangled amongst the root tangles underlip, daisy daring the overhang like a waterfall hung so long in time climbery has clung to it

Now is it a charnel midden, 

Tunnels by Tim Burton’s set designer

Dented cuirasses wrenched from corpses by wretches retching

Wraithlike clouds allowing crowds a glimpse of infernale

Vast unsettling masquerade an occulted plain-day satanic mass 

Battalions wearing gas masks cross a salient swathe ‘come waylaid by chains of serrated razorwire 

Mons’ angels could not save them

Fires six years burning 

Any day, they say, tides turning