In almhouses eleemosynary citizens
Rome’s crooked coughing denizens
Requiring medicines and proclamations against sin’s promulgation
Herded beyond the gates lined with faces faithful
Caseful of philtres slick with glaucous admix
Thick mixture fixture in fixing, herbs melted.
On sweet-smelling ward walls images of eversmiling Paracelsus, reborn in Blake
Patients intaking mind-erasing potions in large quotient, floating as on silken oceans
Bedside lockers choked with votives, egg-stained lilies wilting pilfered from roadsides
Rigid stilts erring, crooking like a crozier’s query, like a building melting o’er centuries.
Sentries at Selene’s zenith exploring night wards, folding towels, placing them in drawers
A wind that seems to winnow wiggling its way to blow inside though no windows are voted open
Open coats seen to flap, bed curtains moon dappled apple coloured rippling like chains rattled
Ward matron her maw gaping in amazement, in disbelief, at least proof of powers latent
Beheld most blatant.
Eden Eve disempowered serpents girdling bowers
Ivorytower hand patient’s half-cleared plate lets fall pusillanimously
Scattering mashed potatoes over the place, splatting animatedly
Proceeding zetetically, she arch sceptic dons her thinking hennin
Get your head screwed on, hen, she prays venom for enemy’s end
Her frightened psyche bids her eyes lidded, psychai are flying.
Undergoing willing sparagmos for the cult of which I am member
Nightly praying to ink-drinking Cadmus for pragmatic expression
I am spread out, wholly lessened
Dragged screaming, undressed, teeming like an iron-touching demon seethes
Tethered to braying beasts until dismembered
Cracks appearing as on tearfully struck mirrors along distending armpits
Alas the ancient alabaster relaxes back to scree, blood spraying out, man’s debris
Briefly fountaining claret-drowned geyser abounding like lace axehead
Bodies floundering, drowning in themselves, shedding cells.
Constant carcrash, particles diminutive ambushing smashing
Claudication of limbs, finally vindicated as in Dionysian hymns
Brought closer Him by suffering, my hinges snap like thumbtacked cartilage
My back cracks sickly, head sinks dead bereft of inklings
Viscous pink mixture sicks thickly from my mouth and sticks there, fissuring out
Fixture of sick death, picture of fearlessly taken final breaths
Shedding metaphysical dualism, tool of my body rejewelled at cruel amputation
Horses angrily ambulating, peregrinating in opposite directions like natural antipodes
Antidote to all my living woes, all hurt my throat throws and all hurt my flesh knows since birth turned nothing
Something better.
Alchemisland 
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