Alchemisland

Giving up the goat

Going cold turkey

No more going up the road to the grow house

Route undecided on account of all the mines and sidewinders

Seeking life spools to unwind, my blood pools like spilled cider

Confused, waking up to mystery wounds, in Padre Pio’s school

For gifted youths, dispelling illusions 

Melding into the booth through the wall, meddling with it all

Astral high ups, so high I can’t recall the length of the fall

They drum me on, the hum and thrum of the crowd in anticipation

Hum drum hoi polloi know they hight me scum but mum’s the word

When they need something gum numbing, treat a rat like a practice dummy

In a video game training section, you’ll learn parry and backstab today

Signed my name Jack Grey at the bottom of the page

Car windscreen got more notes than a Necrophagist guitar solo

I’ve not been in the necropolis for ages, toppling wobbling as I waft the sage

Can’t act my age, when I decide to stay I go ape it’s all Primal Rage

Three wishes begged of three witches, switches fate’s traintracks

Back elastic like taken to task on the rack, tortures exacting

Extracting names this black-clad crack team, crack where one keeps ice cream

In the Ballinteer flat, gaps in my teeth, gaps in my career, my eager called zeal

Green weed colour of ground coffee with lots of creamer

Dreamer on the queen size, I let the queen drive, sit in the sidecar drinking tenants

I’m selling more bags than a back to school pop up shop

Sitting in the lock up with a shotgun, crops get my pockets stuffed

Stuff in my pockets no red rockets, type a tough guy might want

To calm him after a boxing bout, two tokes put him out

I’m like a bloke with a rifle reloading, rifling through a powder satchel

No distractions, no need to imagine this is the actual set to maximum

Floating like battle flotsam after Actium through life, acting kind

Even though it’s only hatred inside, tiger stripes behind sheep white

Wolf shows up in his best disguise, smile all guile and miming nice

Came in defiance and spite of you, fuck the line you drew

Line forming behind me, taking samples from the free wine

What I’m a custodian of tonight get you fifty years plus five

Pounds and ounces I pound them out in trap houses

Lap of my trousers like a mouse trailing flour danced an hour

Kilograms, I keep a mauser on me in case a cat pounces

Amounts of cancer-causing grout equal to amount of shit I spout

Unequal to amount of cash I count, comes in light I head out

Taking heads off, catch you in the headlights, you smell petrol

Once I’ve got you that’s it, crocodilian deathroll, Sobek successful

Blessing the septic tank of the Nile, denial not just a river

Debasement not just a place where deliveries are hidden

Only a scant sliver of light cuts through that manmade night

Never frightened, find the heightened living exciting

Breakdown not just what happens to packages

Self control, ego management nothing going according to plan

Feel like I’m vanishing, vanquished the best of myself, rest is anguish

No petals left on the stem, plant left to languish, flowers in the attic

Disco in a panic at my petrol scents, moth back like a death’s head

Silencing lambs in the backshed, shedding my plastic mask exhaling after

Going at myself savagely, trying to commit self battery

G H B, leave the Scrabble to ye, threatened me with three years in Gorey

Left the place gory, I never kick up less than a storm, my scornful form

Feared, all I hold dear run clear when my warp spasm nears, basil

Ground that’s not what I have around but the resemblance is uncanny

If you’re a soft boy good for mammies I put that in a bag handy

Slang it to you for a wage packet, hacking up you can’t hack it

Hatchet in my jacket, protective like an eagle with eggs hatching

My hatchlings are early to snatching, bring stolen bags back to me

Too young to get done for battery, steel chair to the spine leave you Bactrian.