The Alchemist's New Love: A Poem

(Originally published in L’Intrigue, the Wild Magnolia of Literature,Vol. 7, Iss. 1, Winter/Spring 2003)

 

In his cell of dead-word offerings,

the near-mad, wretched alchemist,

on the Secret Life’s desperate quest,

hopes to push-pin Truth’s wispy, whispering winglets

to the cracked corkboard of his lamentable, cocooning ego.

 

Rack-backed tables plunge their leafy innards

(note-scribblings/rabid-eared compost-ready revelations)

to the cobbled moldy stones as the pale hieroglyphics

of decaded prison wanderings, cabinet meanderings,

and window pains waltz with self-retribution’s pale guest

in the dark light of a geriatric moon’s weakened beams.

 

The once-young alchemist/soul-seeking madman of the spider’s eye

and mystic news

toils in prayer and treacle preparations,

forsaking the rude remarks of dusty/false-reflecting plate-things.

His blade (unused/archaic since the vegetables grew too limp to peel or eat)

speaks poetry to the warped boards of longing and longs for a taste of death.

 

His hands turned claws in cellars damp,

his eyes crippled and warring from too-poor waxy light,

he begs the angels give him Truth—

 

(Let Me make of dirt a diamond/Let Me seek of black its hidden lily hue.)

 

Not a word from Them.

 

For years a silence/for offerings no thanks—

his knees a-knocked from kneeling;

his heart cordwood from weeping;

the door hermetic from locking;

his neighbors denied a raised eye or whispered wondering;

his back a cornered-kitten arching;

his hope forgotten apples with the harvester heading home.

 

Once, in desperation, he turned his prayers to pleas for accident—

a quick transcendence/unsubtle/not worthy of a mother’s obligated weeping.

A bid to freedom through new chains and (perhaps) blood-pain.

 

Not a word from Them, even then.

 

Word-woven with his rhythmic/chattered chronicling,

a stairclimb for ink was necessity each week.

His hooves, unfit for Sunday shoes,

dragged his knotted, protesting bulk

up the rain-rusted stairway to the shop of sundry things and office fare

that roofed his cornered plot of prayer.

 

Stale-breath wheezing, he looked upon a new-landed lass of butterfly delicacy.

In her innocence she could not guess at his disfigurement or mock at his disease.

She asked nothing outside of payment,

yet spoke with ease of the truth-be-knowns for which he’d sold his days.

 

The counter—sunk to sublime chrysalis beauty

with the desperately enticing and ultimately un-sellable—

became the canvas for the claw-and-wingtip dance of love’s unlabored breath.

Through the Wolf and Wicca hours of the sun’s sleep they gazed and spoke,

though he left abruptly at the first hint of light,

sure it would give his grotesque shape away.

 

For days he thought of her—

candles idle/books unthumbed/ink unused.

Were it not for the brainblanket haze of his new madness

he would have determined to soak the walls with it—

bottle after bottle in shaman-etching cave-howls

so that he might go back and back and back.

 

Instead, he sewed a courting suit from the fine brocaded drapery

of his newly disemboweled altars.

In a bland light, his eyes watering in the creative work

of pin-pricks and old-stove smokery,

he heard a chant—at first faint/then loud,

a Sunday singing of forever’d moments.

 

His Love! She had sought him out! (But how? no matter, no matter!)

 

(but how…)

 

He rose and raised his hand to the door,

melodies chorusing in the unused chambers of his heart,

singing of Harvest moons and unspoiled casks of wine.

 

It was Them— Envious of his loving, Truth’s spoiled changelings came—

the crazed beast-loves of mad Dionysus,

singing songs to Antony’s asped wife lost on the edge of the woods.

In mutton-dress and lamb’s robes Truth’s sullen angels

ill-winged and sneering perched upon his world.

 

“I beg you, leave me be!” the alchemist cried out.

“Will you not give me even a year to know an hour’s love in my mostly misspent life?

I am done with cellared dreams and mountain aspirations.

I will not be a meal for the truth-beast’s belly, finding fit to call it Divine—

Mock me in silence, as you always have, but let me be for now!”

 

Not a word from Them, baring teeth to start the Feast.

 

On the morning next, the shop girl/butterfly awoke to bad light,

a rain without cleansing, a breeze with no breath.

Limping past the counter (though her leg/thin wing knew no trauma),

she evaded possibilities in a late-autumn cellar

of rack-backed book-tables and poor candles,

sure she’d heard Truth whispering  “Come”  from beneath the plank-cracks

and dank halls

where she’d once again awoken to find a new love lost.