Alchemisland

The poetry is not within the midden of the city

In the middle of it, sitting, swill sifting for slim pittance.

The poetry is in the pity

The rhyme is the affair, but thinly filmed. The giving will.

I dream in ropes, of gibbet hills. Of rent doublets, gibbous appendages

Jealous husbands driven around the bend by improvable looks

“Too much sugar being leant out.” I could not for Lent lose your looks

Books are easily vented with a single breath of your venturing heart.

Limbful and thin it starts

We shared grinning a despair-bringing thimble, swearing never to part.

The brittle lime hint in what little air pierces my lair

Is the scent you unerringly apply, unsparingly, to your callow neck.

No gallows would have the neck to stretch you out, Calamine pale;

In powerful negatives, through frontier sepia, you seem to reach out

And see me.

I am too abstemious to end up pleased.

After all, it is uncouth, even unseemly

To wear so openly, with untricked sleeves

One’s object of appeal.