Alchemisland

Loss

I remember how much half-smiling teachers loathed your interruptions I remember eruptions of laughter every time you spoke I remember buying weed from you, smoking it in the lane There are more good times than I now can remember in the haze of days We spent blazing in what seemed like hazy endless summers, pondering…

alchemisland

27th Jun 2024

Filí my pockets

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

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