Alchemisland

Climbstherigging Murphy out of Portrush must be part-monkey

Announcing from the nest he climbed the loss of sight of land, full blue

Climes, environs named after Cancer the crab like my dad

I wasn’t raised badly but wanted badly out of that pad

First chance I had signed my name to a ship’s roll and ditched

Sails pitched we tailed bitchwinds East and were pushed withershins

We wintered places the sun never went away, ever rays hazy lazy bays

Golden sand beaches, tobacco treats rolled on bronze thighs, wives

Of thriving spice merchants

Good times like good lives must end

Our hold hefty by the time we left

Scents wafting through grated vents

Had men salivating

No one wanted to go but nobody protested, embarkation

More sense than rebelling and being left alone, surrounded by swells

With birdclothes shells and sweltering temperatures.

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I never tire hearing tales told by old adventurers

Of fending off Mexican pirates, of going to Ireland and meeting the Irish

Hearing their plight; Albion mighty would the Irish race excise

Less in England’s decrying, uncrying eyes

That ursine-outlined Emerald Island; home I hight it, land divided

Much beloved be God Almighty!

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On open ocean, mapless tracts in constant motion

So long from land, fractured from habit

One must work actively not to snap, to grasp sanity

And not go mad, chat even if the chat is drab

Better playing cards with someone tiresome

Than providing fine dining for crabs tonight.

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Loneliness magnified by silence’s length

Sheer violence, ceaseless internecine conflict between the trees

Orbs of leaves nearest treetops seizure with interspecieal grappling

Stamping hoof earthshaking

Something massive tramping passing by; a shambler; a mass

Birds without discernible form squawk a tenebrous chorus

Where lacking canopy left porous portions the warden moon’s tallow light

Could shine, giving sight to sounds surrounding and hounding us

We see a hunter bounding thunderously after prey

Thereof seeing neither hide nor hair

When finally ensnared

Unable to sustain racing pace, we hear scared bleating, flesh tearing

Insect swarms enginning, apporting legion at heat of bleeding

A frenzy of passion feeding

Competing species take time to scream, glad another is eaten

Everyone is eventually defeated by that deletion, not this evening

The jungle smashes faces by way of greeting

We have nothing like this back in Royal Meath

I have comfortably existed in higher heats but this sun beats you

A doomy, endless summer, cracked lips cease almost to be

Dune dry the skin, the feet like those in a sarcophagus

Coughing just to keep the mouth occupied

A million flies, a million types, winged plagues invading with agued blades

In place of noses, by day terrible but by night utterly unbearable

We tear at our hair and our clothes, we swipe the air like blind men

Harangued by harpies before Jason’s men felt compelled to help

We sport sweaty, pus-throbbing welts, surely our mettle is tested

Times the temperature climbs so high as to arrest us entirely

We cannot strive but to lie quietly in our beds, heads shaded

Praying the heat which repeats near Satan abates; when it goes away

We break from allday bunks, muggy and cranky from hunger

Each day the struggle for the body to obey the mind is tougher

The going comes rougher, the suffering redoubles

Yet, we are kept rapt and ere swept to abandon’s capture

By wonders to right and left, the lost Empires

Kept now by vines and primates, rocks cleft

By creatures who left this world to no weeping, aeons before Eden

All that is left of the primeval here dwells, a landscape bereft

Of man’s hand; it is a green endless, each step therein duress to men

It is a realm of testing, where only the madly possessed linger

The fringes, where the fruits are clothed with finger-rotting prickers

Fish swim this river which upstream somewhere that makes men quiver

Poxies which attack livers, killer prawns, acid-spitters

Blistering winds and skin-stripping minnows in the wake of boats

A gargantuan antient dispatches deep-rooted plants

In this habitat since before Atlantis harnessed the fatal magic

Which saw it taken, drank by the vast, gelid Atlantic

Speed ill-befitting so large a beast, a leading pace

Making its way; snakes with amazing blazes and toxin-dripping faces

Pendent from branches bending at their weight

Fights between weasel and squeezing serpent

The pugil of survival

We spy a bloated, flyblown okapi caught in reeds beside rapids

Our longest oars reach, we retch as foetid flesh sloughs

As aboard the vessel it is wrenched at length, a waste of strength

Along the length of the okapi’s back a gruesome slash

Populated by rot-tumescent maggots; despite pleas from management

The famished crew managed to prepare and ravish it

Leaving only empty dishes

The next morning, they were openly wishing they had not opened kitchens

They swore they would eat only fish until they saw British flag and fixture

A mixture of ailments belabour the crew, the sweating lurgies

The toe-curling diseases hosted by fleas which revert man to creature

One of our number vomits until his empty stomach summons only

Thin clumps of treestump-coloured bile

Erosive heat repeating at each day’s peak, blistering zenith

We saw the witching hour’s full quotient of stars

A gallery of unguarded, gaudy, ungrated, ungainly flames

In the cold void of outer space, the turned face of grace

Our vessel encountered a frigate out of Limerick

Lit up like a heretical Bishop in times Medieval

We work tiring fifteen hour shifts, working thriftily to drive the ship

It must be continuously piloted, repaired by wrights, righted when slent.