Alchemisland

I have spent much time reading, entreating with the deceased for rare anecdote

I despoil their codices whilst wearing their robes and golden things

It is not always easy, the poorhouse is ever needy for feeding

Nothing is ever as it seems, we are not forging paths but leadlings

Things on leashes, never to be unleashed underneath the sunspecies

Hard times before and hard times again, such as make men

Such as move my pen, in utterance of them

Independent of my life’s surplus of venom, I indent on vellum

Intent on telling

In my hardest times, my only friend the almoner

His generosity my sole alimony, whole calendar

I spend without a roof to live under

Outside in the elements, sleeping like an animal

Ample time to reflect my squander, dub me scoundrel

Still clad in my old glad rags swanning about the town, relics of old decency

My head upheld such that my nose was a sharkfin on the ocean of the air

Ebon depths of reliquary planet, wanted oubliette

Handsome span of my root-entangled cavern, open casement of my third eye the only lantern

The only light left in the world comes from a book bonfire, ignited texts howl into the night

The names of ones like friends though we had never met them, fire’s venom upon the leather

The melting binding which held the works together, the ash and dust of books forbidden

Too dangerous to be hidden or confined to a midden, for their crimes they are consigned

To hissing flames yellow as piss

To enter, one must mangle oneself, angling as would a charging Pachycephalosaur.