Alchemisland

Touring the Congo hoping to taxonomize heretofore undescried monsters

Malarial swamps ninemilesround, foetid waters a dino reputedly haunts

Contagious agues with which Galen’s muse cannot contend

Place of rending, of stinging taxing tendency, a place of enemies

The home of Mokele Mbembe, or so the cryptozoologist’s say

If it existed before the 1800s we don’t have records

Suspected to have persisted since primeval times

How it subsisted when comets lit the world on fire

Presently, that answer eludes alabaster Science

Setting out from Paris France, I’m with a creationist pastor

A bearded madman who used haul crab pots in Alaska

We’ve all read cover to cover Heuvelmans and Shuker

Nugent and Fawcett, the terrain sounded awful

Took months to get dockets and travel papers in order

Seems pointless keeping things lawful

When soon we will enter a walled jungle

Where greater men have fumbled, succumbing

To tugging underbrush and sword-mushed bloodsuckers

It’s now or never, hardly prime you can tell I’m near expired

But I’m passionate and inspired and sometimes that’s half of it

The travel is bad, the sleep is bad, the landscape is damaging

But we are happy to have reached the land of our planning

Reposed like champions before the green hell’s imposing mouth

Packs slung on our backs, folded canvas, tent flaps, teabags

Inside, it’s like I’ve spiked my cider with acid

Ichor-backed spiders lying in wait in the corner of bird-chaining webs.