Alchemisland

I’m like Ian Fleming

People presume I’m less than

But military record is impressive

Bond works expressive of accomplished missions

Stricken from the files, redacted

Now that I’m old and fat, famished for adventure

I’m too old to vanish, got a family, a flat

A summer gaff out in Hastings, pree that

Like it was 1066 and a housecarl just cut your horse in half

With a poleaxe a man’s height plus a half, blood bath

To sap the flesh of ageing, wearing a shower cap

Out of the house, ever had stress like that?

007 licence to send to heaven

Not a lemming I don’t follow

Said a deaf man after convo

Still have the money I got for my confo

My boots are muddy, my crops aren’t dusted

But if they find them I’m busted

Smoke up five blunts, gaff looked like it was gassed in a mustard attack

Acrid miasm makes me hack, strain with coughing my forebent back

It takes four men to restrain me, doctors cannot locate my pain

Or constrain the writhings of my once-thriving brain

Arriving at the conclusion that I have been spiritually invaded

Overtaken and taken over, that exorcism saved my bacon

I need a vacation, three weeks alone near bee-loud clover

Thinking everything over, this ain’t over, I know it

I go down the road and back, afraid to travel far

This land does not promise safe passage

I need a laugh and two lozenges

I need a doctor to free me, I’m a hostage in bondage

Whole holiday spent in the hotel lobby

I need some new knowledge, come and shock me

Lead me out from the forest that lost me

I have no philosophy, save kindness and mercy

I return your energy, your fault if it’s murky

My smile is more like a smirk, my life is one great work

I will not be Turner but heads will turn to my verse

When the world is burning, in all the universe

I could not find a use for my wretched verbs

I had hurt enough, lapping at the lip

Spilling over, dripping, from the side of my cup

Lip cut leaves a red smudge where I indulged

Papal wallet bulges with paid indulgence, fullness

Of body and vacuity of spirit, needing a long pilgrimage

No shoes but sixty cigarettes, in a horsehair vest

And vestments only an obsessive would be measured for

I test my mettle, four days in the forge fires

My life’s crucible, I will turn to ash or be denied

I will blaze like a forest fire none can deny

Even if you believe climate change is a lie

Flame wall high as the sky, like a pillar of Roman triumph

Raised at Gaul’s razing, I will singe and strip back

I will attack as fire does, blind to innocents

Replicating instantly, tiger eye bright 

Rising as from knighthood dispelling night

Spell my name right, dub me a fighter

Slight not my enemies but describe them mightily

That my great deeds would not be taken lightly

Lessened to trifles by time’s passage, to spite ye

I smite the houses of your gods, fog their lineage

That none might be recalled, reneging on covenants

I am here by providence, I find evidence of prophecy in the proverbs

Essene secrets occulted into the teachings of Jesus, who kneels

When force can convene meaningfully, breaking the dream dam

Undoing all the damage I have done, leaving behind seven wonders

That those who unlost wander might stay a while to ponder

What is beyond the firmament and its thunders, over the wild green yonder

Planet haunted by nameless ancestors, sun-obsessed architects

Burying noble dead in cyst graves, kissing a stone’s face

Bracing for moss’ touch, a lust beyond needs must

Hunched in thickets praying awaiting wisdom, here days

Wasting away like a teenager’s rage approaching eighteen