Alchemisland

Before toilet-named Merlin averted Irish stone to Avebury

Before Arthur wielded king blade a lake lady had given him

He owned favour, loud céilí at Camelot

Suffering also, even at breast, fakery and deception

Arthur’s Lady Guinevere, fairest ere of Albion

Heir to a holy holly king’s love, eloped with Launcelot

In shaded glades graced with queen’s tensing flesh, her touch lends him courage enough to betray his lord beloved, his lover languishes

Lavishing her with lascivious thanks, flanking she who a king highest prides

Anguish this malicious act would cause

Roundtabled court’s rightful uproar

Such thoughts sore him

Saulting dearly, nearly tearing

Buries deep wild anxiety risen in him thinking on his lies

Demise at righteous sword of that lord whom his pawing betrays

Kneeling to rope, he Exhorder piper pays willing, as had Gawain’s foe

Curls flaxen flopping mobbing shoulders, no older than twenty and life-plenty veins hefty with prized ichor

Bred for knighthood, bled in wild wood having slain many Viking foes

Launcelot pearlescent, in style pleasant and impressive in action

In stiles, his lance slots between rivals’ plates

His every arrow a shieldbreaking killshot

In half-day melees in which goodly men are slain, gasping for air in clareted pauldrons

He never sips from wineskin at baldric, or stops to wipe vision-eclipsing blood

Whips around muddied, huzzahs derision as fatherly blade jokes with those of its children

Choking leaves open-throated, summoning blood lunulae upon blemishless breastplates

Dismaying death, cowardly paved by faith it must said, Launcelot dreads only head’s contents heard by comrades

Snake dressed in angel’s livery, he slithers and takes slim slivers given 

Fetches a king’s slippers, likes delivering the best news a runner brings himself

Singing in a window like a dawn thing, plucking lute pleasantly

Pheasant-feathered tallcap like a gentleman’s hennin hemmed with gem-lined mesh

Fist-sized ferrousine ruby drawn from a bore to the world’s adamantine core chest-decking, fine decoration reckoned

Delighting light-trysting omphalos toward which eyes light

Attentions drawing greedy magpies, moths haunting ghostbrights in nightwoods

Fissure in the wall he sits, lit stripling light dappling motlied hauberk

Slim, cushion-cosied benches line either wall

Deep embrasure filing to a narrow point

Unlit brazier overhead, as if to say no light dwells with this one

Compels his candled lover to him

He sings spells with what even then was archaic grammar

Speaking blasphemous, treasonous things, undercutting God’s reason

Gods who wielded hammers and freezing goddesses who charmed Abbotts using glamours

Such Christless ignomies Camelot had ne’re suffered, but she was woman and he was lover

In oven-heat of that crenelle, red-capped lady doffs respectfully from the step

Prince of swords, scar king, smothered in foulsmelling unguent norn-applied

Starved of glory having all glory save another’s

He rose to fall far

Hitched satanic star which scars whichever ditch it carves falling

Bright in temperament wise beyond years

For knights’ time rarely abounds

They affronted often by death’s pallid fontanelle

Here in a friend-ringed hall misdeed chortles

Balls of traitor’s feet, plots gaining traction, rope shortening

Abactors amongst cattle, wolves amongst sheep, corn axe-foreshortened

Heels whose treaching makes planks to squeak, as if signalling treachery.

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