Alchemisland

To quilt mourning feelings he drinks all morning and day, to scant reprieve.

Until, ‘twixt lycan and labrador, dusk of day, he ill became.

Old sick stains on his wipe away sleeve top

Fret not, it’s invisible beneath his polkadot livery

Feeling liver-y

Greening pallor, sweat gleaming

Swaying though still

Steaming from the swill, believing it’s his will

That day’s first alcy sale at the Aldi till, everyday

In stained sweats making sense of his suddenly-striking ceiling

Living in the difference between

Conceiving a lie before its need, like a conniver

And that lie’s needed belief

Needed relief, which cheap whiskey fails curseasing, he takes from weed

Fingers smoke greened, he is an old forge where arms were weaned

The wrinkling animals he ingests

Smell distinctly of Benson and Hedges cigarettes

Lear’s vent rears the storm

Truth oft takes jester’s form and japes.

Hand to Bible, least inside his own mind, he loses whatever he tries

But in never trying nothing is lost; nothing vouched incurs no cost

Even sure-fire horses find ways to die when he bets on their arrival

How clowning became his profession

A mystery pondered by all who meet him

For he was the rodent-pleasing Piper’s opposite by every stripe

Children never followed him in eager lines

Neither out of town nor to the patio tiles.

His painted smile failed, or didn’t try

To hide his pained frown, no joy that resigned face feigned

Pale him

Even without his whorishly excessive layering of greasy albinomaking paint

From receding crown his dyed, dying hair sprouted

In gorse-coarse tufts, to Gathian ceiling height.