Alchemisland

The strained fabric keeping society chained started to undo

The most lasting work of the first and final Artist fades then splits, unglued

The printed page wilts, then decays.

What does fun do that force couldn’t?

Old and awkward cousins, estranged decades but mates in the manger

The squawking crows recognised something was coming, fled danger

Cold black reckoning eyes, like the Aztec mirror by John Dee’s bedside.

Fools taken for fools, one way to force-stop pollution

Weeks since a proper ablution, most

Emaciated ghouls, tattered disease hosts like rag-clothed maypoles

Looking upon their play-a-day children as strangers

Skin strange stretched faded grey pink like brain shades

Sky full of projected saviours

Who parade across yon ocean-painted stage

Milk splat clouds in every engaging, enraging shape

Flaying gales and glacier hail

But no geese came this way, as if sensing our derailment

No game dares despite the most generous bait

Enough in that snare to save a child

But a slow hare’ll last me a good while

My face forgot smiling

Guided by a stomach hosting only bile and bitten gravel

Toward ice and guile and unflappable eyes: voiceless, viceless, miserly.

Survival’s price is the souring of Time,

Nightmares, the worst available, with gleeful foxtrot arrived

From sable gulch to perch shoulder-height, untamed with cradling wings

Like gulls only more kingly in stature

And more reptilian in aspect, scabrous and vile, shrilly singing

Soon you will die.