Alchemisland

The power of my voice

If it is so

Why then when I recount these tales to myself

Lo even as they are written they are read, by me alone

In another’s voice

As for an audience thrown and projected

My plaudits alone

The product of rejection is a ravenous hunger

Cravings as steel-circulated Cain must feel for torture’s relief

Danger cannot be eliminated

But we can, and so easily

So why take a risk, why go anywhere

Slit wrists, the Sligo writ

This couch more pleasing to me than an unrenowned God’s house

I loathe and love the sea

Since childhood, I have dreamt of drowning

Trapped beneath some raft

From below, I perceive only a stark, black rectangle

Impeding my passage

I cannot breathe and no matter what action I take

However drastic

I cannot break through the suffocating plastic

I know I am not going to make it but the mind lies, makes its fakes

To sustain you

Even until the bitter end eyes bulging like a helmetless astronaut’s

His colleagues jettisoned him on account of his treachery

For his undue interest in that strange moist dew

Which coats the gelid spaces this far from any sun’s face.

Broken shells

The sighs inside

Escaped with the scythe’s incision

Along Christ’s side

Oil blue puddletop visions of gas-huffing saints.