Alchemisland

Nowadays admitting you’re a poet’s like

Telling someone you were IRA back in the day

A dirty secret whose telling betrays altogether too much of the true shape,

Or that you had a teenage girlfriend back, quote, when the going was good,

People look at you strangely, as well they should;

The poet like bowyer and thatcher is an anachronism.

The way my wrists crack, like lightly dropped vases, or the same shackled,

Surely a wisdom sign, some signifier that I am not mistaken;

It is a signal fire asking for aid, not a pagan burning on a stake

For the worship of a mud-caked, bloodhungry graven face.

Who can summon what, exactly? More warmth in the damp cave.

A wind slightly less flaying.

I want to make beautiful things, string together sequences which

Draw from readers deep sighs of longing, but that’s now how wishes

Work, the witches knew my name before I offered it

A ceremony celebrating the fatal union of made opposites

Drops of blood cause the hitherto inert glyph to change

As if lit by strange Ifrit flames, breath from Hades came

And made the embers to blaze again.