Alchemisland

I always said

I’d have kids

With the right person

Of course

One receives

No such certainties

All good things

Are leased

Are courtesies

Something in me surfaces when I see her

My brushed desire cedar height from seed at her teasing sea’s seething

Other ways await

By my fleeting cursive; by the lancet sharp of my pate’s underside.

Other routes and paths to fate

I’ll design my route, ratify to truth my fantasized.

Something other than ambulate time and fleshed voice will be my wake

I will fill no womb. I will build no cots

I shall fear not the smallest cough

I shall not see one learn the walk of future escapades

I shall be consumed, and so end my name

So I must write in ichor, flame, derangement and whip-scrape

Upon the unmailed parts of the artless universe’s flank.

I will walk the plank, if only to prove I can manage anger and panic

To vanish is bliss.

To be vanquished is merely to learn a different language

Rest, with a twist.

Wake me loudly when this unsound flesh finally gives

With whiskey, sandwiches, and shouting, balladed lips

Before I am cowed by my brisk grave.

I would be remembered for all my wrist gave.

Send me out there combed, shaved

“Better than he looked in a donkey’s age.”

Have me not shamed, all grease-streaked dishevelled and unduly pale.

At wailing time wail away, pray upon images of interceding saints

But today is not that day, ‘twas but sleep, again.

It seems impossible goodnesses await

Those for which I prayed

I pray you unbrief unbrief unbrief unbrief unbrief

I daren’t say I daren’t say

Else I swat to quieted steam this queenly mirage shape.