Alchemisland

I prescribe myself

I longed to describe myself

But this scribe often finds

That rite denied. Incapable

Our mythmaking eyes

Of lifting the I’s impenetrable shine.

She moved around my room like a jilter up the aisle

Slow, as if time might lengthen abidingly

A book without staples

My hooking pages come away

Like traumatised tellers from hostage situations

Just as the murderer is named, shamed and caged

Rare to act your age, an age of acting

In the fled stables

I discovered their left behind reins

A discoloured icon of a piss-gullet saint.