Alchemisland

Winter fades, Spring yet evades

A much needed string change

A much needed property for sale

Neither city-situated nor confined to wild dales

We offered, they took it, here come happy days

I hated the work but I loved the pay

I feared the worst and loved that pain

I was close to tight pyjamas and pills on a tray

A sense of freedom I find hard to explain

An overwhelming delight, impossible to constrain

No more than a wild gale in tantrum can be tamed

No more than the vile possessors can pave

Every green way, despite their grizzly trade

Despite every grim betrayal, hope makes it loping way

Haggard and trenchbent up some ropeless, plan-slaying slope

A brittle rope bridge sways but it holds

Long enough for us to make our way

Across, crosses affixed to our backs like monkeys

All of our money and monthlies slung in a trunk

Blood-shod, drunk with fatigue

We wanted Cametigue but the owner flunked

We offered their asking but they got greedy, wanted up

Wanted us to ask how high when they shouted jump

I have no patience anymore, save for mayhem and time indoors

The stain of old murder, immortal on the floor

A kitchen corner where we spent time cavorting

Two serpents, two whores, indulging in more lines than ordnance

Survey maps, best laid plans, let her down gently softly as a flowery bap

A flight of bats across vast mapless tracts

The taut line goes slack, the flying ace eats flak

Everything’s eventual, friend, and that is that

How quickly things change

Quick as a windwhipped page parades from contents to index

Quick as a rage erupts it subsides

Quick as eager, jealous eyes at something nice

A sudden sense of new lands in view

A sudden, welcome sense of something new

Floors clean, they’ve never known a muddy boot

Rafters that’ve heard a few

Hooers but none as cute as you

The wanted call came early, like a juvenile delinquent on curfew

Or a premature ejaculator when she produces the second boob

When it’s easy it’s easy, smooth as silk, smooth as overlubed

Catching up with the future, a sea breeze as we ride our jetski

Into something better, something better for me

You have to give up to get it, to get west you go east

Everyone asking questions, feels like I’m being debriefed

It was brief but for a second there I was dead and doomed, like the great barrier reef

I gave up weed, my kief I loved so well, my happiness’ sole key

I was walking the streets in the sleet

Every joy and passion passing and fleet

Now all the box is full of toys, joy that’s supermassive melts my bleakness

I’m walking on sunshine, like Apollo bought me new sneakers

I’m hearing angel voices, like Gabriel leant me his speakers

Happiness is for the seekers, it falls into laps like a lapwing shot

But you can’t be overeager, you can’t spite what you’ve got

That’s the difference between have and have not

Appreciating what’s already there, warts and all, corn and rot

It rocked and rocked and rocked, the wind a great boxer socked

Our delicate cradle, that’s what we were afraid of

Having to settle, having to take the soup; that cursed ladle and associated label

We wanted to settle for something less

We wanted to get what we were able

Not what we had saved for, only what was available

But we sailed through times sable, out we made it

Just like my mother and her saints prayed for

Two of you, a third place at table, who is it laid for?

Did you see how that lad is playing on lane four?

First of many strikes, pins falling like idols before a missile strike

Aoife and Mike out seeing gaffs, on the proverbial bike a while

Considering going further out, well and truly in the wilds

We could but exhale our bile, see these vile

Houses and say we liked them, in deep denial

Not just a river in Egypt, that’s not our script

We ripped it up into little bits

Let it dandruff our shoulders, like confetti onto wedding fits

Sealed like loverlips, a light so strong we run for cover

A smothering golden colour, all darkness is plundered

A sense of lightness, like before you go under

A muggy sense of potential, air charged before the thunder

My mother must have done a hundred rosaries

We had seriously scaled back, buying only groceries

Make the most of it, it’ll come good like I told you

We dipped more than a toe, it wasn’t for show

This wasn’t us just going through the motions

Now my skin prickles, my blood fast flowing

This past day we bid on, and went sale agreed, on a green place in Wicklow

And not before time, my melancholy lantern so deeply stowed

Started showing, its infectious, malefic glow

Like when Balor’s eye is fully open

I felt low, I sensed the fading glow of my candle, its wick lowered

I would see others happy and could but glower

Feeling delight in my darkest hour was without my power.