Alchemisland

Tapping cards, keep it coming touch wood I’m tapping bark

Tapping a black biro on a desk shelling hard bars into a spiralbound jotter

Saying goodbye with no regards, love in my heart despite the shotgun

Nudging my spine’s bottom rungs

As the priest droned on about sacral duty, of love

A series of false starts, dreams of being a star, some kind of rarefied artist

No restarts, top prize the target every time

Go for the big kahuna if you’re bothering to try

Give it everything, willing to die

In reality most won’t try so you win by leaving the line

I think back and if I say I was happy I’d be lying, but that’s the mind

It always Summer in rewind

Trying to produce new prose

Recalling my appalling teenage years

Popping spots in the mirror in the hall

Screaming at one or both parents, for nothing at all

A rage in my pips, manifested in zits

Which no placation could constrain once inflamed

I was in my room cutting the sleeves off my clothes

Scarring parts of my arm so that I looked experienced

Each day I was hitting new lows

Thirsty but 

Seeing stars in ungraspable rows

I couldn’t play guitar or hold a note

All my mates played in bands, or turned their hand

To art, hit a few pots and pans but I could never manage

It even though I had the talent, repetitive failure patterns

But I’m back and closer to balance

Four months sober and I could still write poems

But they’re better after I’ve smoked the better part of five bones

Used nurse whiskey sours in grimy, slimy dives

Used drink six nights outta five

Now it’s a miracle if I’m in jeans after nine

My parents are amazing and kind

They taught me every lesson, sculpted me

But they didn’t understand that I was trying to find my fire, what would define me

They are stuck in the past, Leaving Cert’s all that, results mean

Everything, the world is mean

That I’d reach ten and my pate would meet the ceiling

Now I’m older, different seasons

I look back to try reasoning with my past tactlessness

Eyes like they’re bleeding from weed greed, cut me I’m a greenbleeder

Born leader, I’ve got litres to feed the next sin eater I meet

Feared in every casino for my coffer-cleaning winning streaks

Like the Millionaire Winner and his audience plant with a coughing brief

There’s always more, make sure you turn overleaf

I smoked a huge bong with ground weed and all the keef

Big intake, go back to that most visited day, like a postcard keepsake

A moment in stasis I can replay, clear 4K, as if it was today

I can do everything but unbreak it

Today it’s so vivid I wonder if my shit’s laced

Even if, upon investigation, it is and I’m tased for the count, it’s too late

Everything changes, nothing is ever the same, the niceness and the vileness

Mere cycles and phases

Time is the true fire to phase us

And we are its loam, complacent as the pyre grows higher

We face the unknown with a candle’s bravery

In all the many countless miles of empty space, we are unbloodied, unbowed

Took two hits, barely a taste, now I’m encased in green chains

Breathing more like wheezing, grinding my teeth

Mouth drier than a brought to water won’t drink steed’s

Now it’s scenic drives

Balletic movements since I was deified.