Alchemisland

Limn I like a land-liking siren, to the prince of deceit, who lies

Sweetly. The opium of his perjury leeched their turgid souls.

Hymns to He whose scrying circles

Circumscribed jacinth be ivory

Which exert in crying at absurd mortal triumph

And oddly preserve observed light

Shine frighteningly, like trialled witches deemed guilty of posterior kisses.

Mysterious green altar behind a leaf screen, near a fissure, as wished.

The whippy, near-wasp swish of the birch switch

A heifer docile as exalted, crowned in a fine circlet, goes

Heaven-shown meat, meet necessary quotients;

Bleeding, meting out showers of poetry. New metre.

Flowers like higher life’s protean hours left as votives.

So His graven shelf became beleaguered with tokens in His season.

Poems madman-making, placed to show rightful devotion

To He of capturing gaze, encounter with whom creation provokes.

His name’s every citation widens the dimension of his brazier’s flame

His blood becomes the inkwell, that I would ink well, thinking in spells.

In frantic spells, long tracts I can barely read back, full of misspellings

And such pennings one must redact before scheduling.

Open-toed Apollo claims, I am told in lifted dreams

That all which raises him to conversation

Is golded with like praising and fame

I find myself scolded, time and again

You must loathe gain and scorn the very adoration you court

That, when it arrives, you actively despise and scorn its form

Caprice reigns and Nature’s face in one scabid, its head horned

Its forming maw inescapable.

Loves He the wet leaf

Inked scrolls, gilt throats

Flattery, to be extolled, cattishly fattened!

Apollo, busy in substitutions and guises

Rules a hid heaven.