Alchemisland

Youth is some too rich fool’s walled estate

A ruined view.

The groomed stones I raked fluted for calm

Having completed the task of their taming

I kick back to placeless safety; that natural madness

Which becomes a meadow and undoes a man.

For you I pollute the ring-hued arches of my fastness

I let wild pigs and wordwise pigeons with letterheavy legs manage

The space. I give advantage to what will ruin, that waste abounds

And colour-shading asphyxiators transfix the ground, unto wickedness.

On Earth I am cursed to make increasingly worse

Facsimiles of Milton’s mirthless pit, the flaying place, which pits

The screaming future of unsutured bleeding

Against its beaming, ignorant seeds.

Left to season

Upon uncurt spits

Of iron-hankered cedar

In grizzly misery

The splitting murdered are turned to mould hives;

Eyes too frequently rolled, which crows excised

Cold-pinioned birds, cloaked in Magdalene furs, most unlocal types

Brilliantly ferried skyward.