Alchemisland

Though I, like Edward Carson, preached and prayed

That they would together stay, the frayed skins

I intended to employ in the beginnings of a joint

Refused to appoint themselves gracefully, lick-anointed

Like anthrax letters to all the badly behaved boys in Texas.

She cat stretches a cataleptic’s spine

Inducing a crack with falling rock chime;

Her feline shadow’s bridge touching

New town and the old village,

Missed my house by a smidge.

No one cares and it’s fine, such is

Life. They that die by famine die

By inches.

Maybe it was just the weed

But she had me in stitches, wheezing

Like a gas victim come slick-nostrilled winter’s bleatless season.

Before a roaring fire of abnormal heat

Peat-ushered, my feet blushed heat-dusted

My detective fingers enter the situation’s anonymous meat;

On cultist’s legs, my carsick head is altogether too easily led.

Karst limestone my bedrock, crying-fed.