The peppercorn, his
gnarled body and dark
skin, flaking - as
though it blistered

beneath an unforgiving,
unhallowed s(u)n,
watched.
Surveying a personal,

sovereign nation, a
landscape rivalling
Belgium; defeating
Luxemburg - only

dreaming a lost, cindered
vision. The earth's
wound, gaping, un-
healed rot, a

pallid putrefaction a
haematite vermillion,
was the result of
epochs.

In his domain,
docile and contemplative,
scorned the alder;
'my immortality,

is a true rebirth:
everything burns,
everything returns.'
Secretly, an isolated

covert thought, a
desolation, on the
environmental scale -
my brothers share my

blood, though our
appearance is markedly
polarised. They shun,
they do not accept

and I remain in limbo.
He saw them take
the arsenic, laced
flour - and viewed

their ravenous destruction
of the potent feast,
their potmarked
lips, moved with the

force of a politicians
apologetic libel. He
was the man, in the
rear of the squalid pub;

at home, in the shadows.