Sealand Empire

Pull up the rug,

the asphalt veneer,

and burrow down

to the cornermost fold,

where under the creaking

gibbet bough an empire

was born; its armies stolen

through gullies and gutters,

pavement-crack fissure streams

that weep and rankle and

surge with the tide.

This suppurative mask

of a land slipping under;

these parquet precincts

stowed to the brim, where

sovereign bells ring to the

lyre-strung thrum of an ancient rain:

wired dispatches from a

pariah state, dissident

memories that muster

bedraggled mudlark bones;

the chorus swell song of the drowned.

February 2014