Alchemisland

Pumpkins on the porch 

Kids in the front

Tortured corpses full of holes

Stuffed in the oven

Smell of rotten something

A slumped form

A lump struggling inside a burlap sack

Treat or treat you ask 

Having tapped my glass

Asked I give answer 

I am the darkness the cancer 

The black eyed shark dancer 

In stillhot bloodtides 

Violent ideas 

Diarrhoea inducing candy 

Suckers sour enough to bring tears 

Soaked in antifreeze and bleach

Razors in sucky sweets to slit your cheeks 

Human hides tanned, slashed like prices 

At the sale for closing down 

Bodies as many as rice grains 

In China, beneath the lawn 

Blood stains in the back lane 

Chains once rattling now stilled 

The cattle killed, that ilk whose death 

Thrills me, releasing me for one sublime instance

From relentless want

I seek repentance 

An independent priest hears my plea 

On my knees I shared tales 

Black evenings branches of trees like 

Witches scheming with pitched fingers 

Malingering my cleaver undoing all innocence 

I leave a scene and don’t linger long they can’t finger me because I’m robed in fog 

Dogs are useless, I am half beast myself

I beat myself half to death 

A cell cannot hold me 

The throne is lonely 

I will not go 

On cold flagstones in prayerful repose 

Stones hard as forgiving 

I have a bitter illness 

I am unwilling to do the right thing 

Even if it kills me, God my witness 

Down to the business of killing

Now I am become death, said Cillian 

I know what he meant, soul obsidian 

I unearth my master, worms slither in 

And out of his sightless sockets.