Alchemisland

Still hot on his measured breath and belch

He fought to quell the waking before it reached his legs.

Cheap cider’s stench cordite-acrid. At length

He drew up and stretched like a pauper’s penny

Rose and before long threw up. His life become a black hole

Such that might interest Hawking and Penrose.

Whenever he tried to write, pen met paper awkwardly or drove through

The pad or a sound bodiless but persistent hounded his inquisitiveness

Or he was plagued by visitors who hoped to uplift what was plainly

An hereditary distemper which abjured decency’s attempts.

Enough embers of himself gathered he to fill a cup,

Chipper despite a hangover that’d bench another,

Then slowly supped at hair of pup, until the nausea was up.

He had been unshy pouring out last night’s libations

Nor the previous night was he furtive measuring out

The own-brand gin he acerbically determined a splurge.

In red biro beside his columns of earnings

The true returns determining

Whether he would continue urchin, or be ermined;

Periwinkled by fortune’s burrs,

Never again to bare brrringly gelid night fortressless.