Alchemisland

Therapist handed me a new angle  New thing being thankful I won’t be wrangled By dangling carrots  I’m beneath a lamppost  Blinkered horses before sable chariots  Passing soul-laden, away to chaos unchanging Argued forward by paddycapped overseers Zealing crops, like dealers mopping up their own drug stock Cross but no charring  Prince Charming with acid…

I keep squeaky clean  Try taking it easy  But I’m easily wound up Like analogue toys beneath Christmas trees in 1953 Find myself seated seething  Inside on another fine evening   Sky: fire, highest, heathen, amethysts leaking In the painterly gloom of a creaking hull I bring to account the full dullness Of my weak-bulb life…

I don’t leak easily, sleek supertanker teasing steel brassiere I’m no ill-made beaker-tankard, contents escaping eagerly My blood harder acquired than booze during prohibition When parched far from a speakeasy or poitín still once on every hill. Unlike giving butter all evening out of fridge, Gilding the small bed of the bread slice, I do not…

Warped floorboards of once lordly manor, courtly manners Old banners old families, armour suits rattling at passing phantoms Glances, hints of spirits on the landing chalked up to flights of gin fancy By gentlekin of quaint habit, a monk in a stained habit this house inhabits Stained glass depicting a knight in plain tabard, scabbard…

Breathing harder seeming this season, it is the cold and that alone I feel cold and something in the throat, I groan and know not why I will survive I will survive, I will bud in Spring, return alive From the three day cave where my corpse climbed I awake to life, straining at the…