Alchemisland

I.

Strong, vain men I can silence with one withering look

No truck me with jamb-hung onions and planks depicting suffering Jesus

In the damp, cloying darkness of a moon-bathed dungeon

Forth crawls She dry-mouthed, affixed on destruction

Spiderlike she climbs ceiling-height

Spite-exuding she weaves false light illusions in childrens’ rooms

She is the whisperer in the ears of shooter and fighter alike

She assures a strike, she plots the course of an arrow’s flight

Her grasp of old magicks and arcane powers indeed is mighty

Her lithe form shifting like fidgeting fire, unfixed

The liar’s utmost prize, a glory of function

The unctuous hunter anxious to be blooded

Seeking her vein-caged unguent

Going to those lesser parts of old glorious London

Terrible flooding there of late

Of all cruel, winged predators, She the Christ Denier hights best

II.

Festooned with pretty fixtures, that ribboned chest

Rings divested from the clinging fingers of the westward-facing dead

Jewel-affixed her crowned head

Many cattle heads, many slitneck hens

Blood slick the steps to her private hell

Her breast plentiful the prize of many prying, obsessive eyes

She welcomed them, those married men and their watchful wives;

Her scandalously lifted hems put paid to them before a while

The leal in their adage will offer prayers to the dying

They, too old and frail, to swing the judging cudgel

Must drag away the broken corpses, their faces frozen in puzzlement

Sent here to be trained in a tasteful lady’s ways and graces

Now they are chained

Still, they hope and pray

This is some jape

Part of the whole operation of election

Blood mine bestowing protection

They cannot face that I am crazy and deranged

That I wore a plain mask to hide my scathing face from detection

Too late now

Without escape’s hope; my gaze to theirs trained – following them,

Like hungry dogs do a wagon train.