Alchemisland

Three men in a lighthouse

Two are never seen again

Last left with visage unmoving

Fixture of Bedlam’s rooms, in the mask of Agamemnon

His words host myriad venoms, he speaks for a shekel

Or a respectable speckle of inebriate in his vessel

Whilst he speaks, he speaks as a man possessed

A frightful vision, his paling countenance visited

By recent horror of old memories, eyes whiten

Like an alchemical operation, or bleached water in a basin

He is at first self effacing but soon turns serious

The delirious tale returns to him like an unwanted boomerang

He looks to the last fingers in his cup and, offering thanks, banks it

Of the three, one was Manx raised on the planks of his father’s schooner

One hailed from Manchester, no sooner could he walk was a crewman

A sailor in woman’s womb, humming tomb of sustenance where

Inchoate life dreams its heights

Its details, strifes, trifles, its stripes, eventual wipe

He was there inside thinking about knotting twine

Hempen hawsers and slack sail lines

He was on the sloop john b and many other jaunty vessels suchlike, fell in with messers

Searched a while for a whale all white and the life grail of one Ahab, leviathan pale

Whose name only they in heaven present at creation do know, hosts of ships all kinds

Had he served upon, he was well regarded, hard working and beliked for kindness

He referred to others as our kid affectionately, his father owned a fish stall at a market

But this job, hawking and hauling and marking the tides with a ship’s tattoo, he was marked for it

In the dark he would often sit with his kit spread out on his lap

Upon armchair’s arm, girdling an empty dish a single scarlet striation marking soup’s zenith

A tomato broth nice and hot will see you rise tomorrow faster, he’d say

Because you’ll wake to find it sprinting out your arsehole, another would tease.

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Ah the lighthouse lads, a better batch you couldn’t hope to pass

Not one among them bad, a perfect catch 

Sad then to announce their unlikely ends

What happened to them is unknown

The scene investigated without precedent

It has left us scratching our heads

We don’t know is this for police or priests

I myself evinced an evil seed

Was their end the end of some dark deed

In the name of a star seeded creed, indeed

It benefits not to dwell on suchlike

We know this: two men disappeared overnight

Each in role well experienced, field veteran

Always tasks were done by the book, to the letter

Yet the book on the lectern this night goes unchecked

We read each nights’ entries, discerning nothing abnormal

It seemed they were aware of approaching storm

This is not some lurid paperback

We cannot blame the apporting of portals

Mirages and paranormal abnormalities cannot be countenanced

In full accounting, evidence is mounting, amounting to an anecdote

We suspect that a freak wave arose, sweeping one away

Another dove in afterwards, the third came with rope

But alas the swaying winds here are posture breaking

And two men were thus taken away

But the scene is eerie nonetheless

A table set for tea, a redolent canteen

Steam still coming off the tea

Not a hair, not a screen, out of place in the whole place

No evidence of a scene, but one imagines screaming

One images the seething, ceaseless sea

Bursting in through the doors, unseemly

Claiming two of the three

Thence like flotsam, like wreck debris

Widdershinsed by the sea.