Alchemisland

Death Brief Visitor

We who survive you do so begrudgingly, we the unsmiling Like a triumph spining along the road Lumps in throats blown noses Family read words they wrote, tears spatter coats Words more beautiful than merits so doleful a day, their voices did not break But rang out in elation and sang to broken hearts Music…

alchemisland

27th Jun 2024

Filí my pockets

alchemisland, death, expression, grief, loss, mourning, neuralchemy, poem, poetry, sorrow

Funeral of a Friend

Fearless grief fleeing and spending me in company Tears falling fleet as frontliners, sheeting down to blot my collar My wife’s hand on my back lending succour Colour-bereft black column watching a bike wheel conjure white smoke as at a Pope’s election Directing my quill, tears salt my cheek in pink streaks You have arrived…

alchemisland

27th Jun 2024

Filí my pockets

alchemisland, death, funeral, grief, mortality, neuralchemy, poem, poetry, sorrow

Saint Barbara

On Irish army banners sitting open-breasted upon a cannon There among them, necks angled toward besieged Casale Strides Headless Barbara Patron saint of armaments Miner protector, labourers misadventurous Death pursues ardently Workers whom Undoing threatens in duty’s discharge All arrows them targeting hedgehog her targe Her headsman-held hair forms a red taj. Queen of forking,…

alchemisland

27th Jun 2024

Filí my pockets

alchemisland, angels, armaments, hagiography, neuralchemy, poem, poetry, saint, saint Barbara, soldiers, war

Bloomsday

By choice A lifetime reading Ulysses Still utterly clueless, please James Joyce Dim ayenbite of inwyt, we are dimwits To your deft pen, limn rift trip a dram sipper Nora bottom red be a slipper, Barnacle farty arse Stitched up like a Kipper His secrets, sutured fissure gone with the name of Jack the Ripper…

alchemisland

16th Jun 2024

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alchemisland, blooms day, bloomsday, creative writing, dublin, dubliners, ireland, irish, james joyce, joyce, leopold bloom, molly bloom, neuralchemy, nora barnacle, poem, poet, poetry, stephen daedalus, ulysses, writing

Chronicles of the Dusk Ages IV – Last Charge of the Ferrathian Glyders

They told no one their name that was not of their tribe It was I who slyly bribed their scribe, he saw I was not a rival but a learned man He could not speak it but took pen in hand and wrote it there on the animal-candied margin banding his annals Ferrathians of the…

alchemisland

15th Jun 2024

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alchemisland, apocalypse, armaments, battle, dystopia, fantasy, final war, future, futuristic, imagination, legend, military, monsters, myth, neuralchemy, poem, poet, poetry, postapocalyptic, ragnarok, sci fi, science fantasy, science fiction, technology, violence, war, warfare