Alchemisland

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Death rasps

Cerecloth wrapping

Graveclothes rotting

Grave’s face blotted with ivy, plot

Shockingly messy, anonymous headstone

Eponymous anonymous, unknown soldier lost tommy

Lost standard in a Germanic forest, disastrous conquest

Nothing civil beyond the Rhine, fifty forts therealong

Flickering televisions, blue light bath

Like a sheep dip in lightning

Spitting rain and spectral mist

Obscures vision, hints missed

A tree splits at storm’s trining, sawing fire alights its reduced heights

Dancing away night’s black matte, in its glare nothing else mattered

I smiled like a glue-doped hatter, exactly how long I spent glancing

I could not tell you that, I was captured by it, in rapture

I was no longer my pilot, my spirit had been pirated

Someone changed the words on my papyrus

In my Iris nestles a fragmentary image from old Ireland.