MORE, BY
LORD DERMOND
E-mail the author
MORE, BY
LORD DERMOND
E-mail the author
i
So this is it, dear friends
my last failing stab
at love and acceptance--
the screaming of false teeth
with hearts unwilling
disinherit this afternoon
as the created choir
bells and rebels,
overturning the senseless squall
in propensities
of immortal form.
To you, I raise this toast
ii
Today, you're invited
to the beautiful freak-show,
turn it on and drop
into yourself--
a fluorescent angel
out of heart
flowering regent tenderness
in the abandoned fall.
Shards of sorrow
meet beneath the shadow
parted with vows;
so beat your wings
into my lovely wounds
as you recall
in my eyes
torches of torment
casting tongues into the sea,
alluring no one.
iii
Eyes, unbegotten
all repentance
undressing the sun.
I vomit my fortune
on the orphan barge
staring into a cloud,
sea wreathes surrendering
in child cries,
a godless masquerade
denuding my tiny
bouquet.
Drifts in death,
my handless God!
the weltering sun
is drowned...
iv
Gather, 0 beloved dead
gainst the wind,
a season of rosaries
and severed heads;
I wish for them all
to live
in their brittle skins.
Orderly eyes recreate
the beloved stars on the hem
of her dress
walking in bodies
of light,
the bloody jimson rose
hangs in dying slices
as you have forgotten,
as you have
forgotten me.
v
111-consumed voices hustle
in fossilized souvenirs
within my forever memory--
postcards of junk;
what made this a dream
worth preserving?
Stuck in place,
crowned syndicates of dawn
twist time's arthritic hand
sadly rushing in shifting commissions
of mind, the light persuasion
of autumn's stale haze,
as I extract with murdered eyes
an old browning photograph,
a sad movie
of dried blood
and drowned lives,
this rotten dawn winds
the lost sentence
of its chime.
vi
Pictures:
Veils of heaven's breath
fall hard upon her--
the world has shit-canned
her only soul.
Shed this vision
like so much dead
skin.
Useless.
Violate, punish!
Again her light rising
as a crow sucks her soul
in the parched meadow.
Heart over head
hands in shallow waters,
babyland heaven pulling down
in two pink hinges
the vast quantities of blood
needed to learn
all of life's loving lessons.
vii
Arise! The husk of night is blown
And a star is hurled upon us,
Dreaming of dawn's hand to turn
The sky, creating its blowing rose.
How blest is the paradise to come!
Alive in the aureate sun, liquid
In the mortal winds like music;
We dance like shadows on the water.
viii
The barebreated sky sounds
a triumphal voice, calling
for my surrender--
I trip on deathspetals,
some virgin girl's ear
shivering in the distant music,
dancing in cold circles
a brow of frozen lilies,
and little things to defend
with shy laughter...
0 splendid vestments
abased in vagrant memory,
the marching tune grows low;
the trees study their shadows
as I covet the reflection,
unhooking the expression
of senses and self.
ix
Lake-lapped intonations
in legions of blue,
enveloping elegance
disappearing selves
fadeless sinks shore
silver-lipped fish
finishing themselves off
in the nothing real.
x
The warm white sunlight
on my exposed shoulder,
a sprig of acacia poking holes
in the sun-dried alluvium,
the endless and heroic fable
of a gently shushing brook,
and my f ather's Garcia y Vega
cigar band on my ring finger...
Until it lasted.
xi
The house is dead,
a graveyard of empty hates
and puckered tragedies,
lives half-lived
in one artless religion.
Love's falsity returns
in baleful glory,
shadowing faithlessly
the violent chiming,
past remaining past,
as my tidal eyes remind
of the grotesque joys
of a convict
disposed of--
archangelic ministries
spilling my heart
like wine.
Father, pray for rn e.
xii
I stand, half-buried
on silver sands--
the old grey bitch
heaving feebly
maiden medusian moods
grown tired of jest.
Unconsoled, light leaks
in a hidden tune;
I would withdraw
in magnificent fates
and exquisite intimacies
beyond my own
echoing ear,
this suffering spate.
xiii
Gutless,
or so I've been told--
you've broken my heart
but not my will...
This spirit of mine
is something unstudied
inexorable and white,
alive in solemn permanence.
The song of life exhales
in autunin's cool parlance--
a moment's ornament
stealing the sky
through a tear.
xiv
Finished before the beginning,
intractable intensities
have reduced me to smoke.
Ash-- denied and dried
in the forgotten wind,
too much is lost;
unrecoverable, unflowering.
The dead nettle browns
and there is nothing
to affirm or sustain--
accept this saving pain.
The sun is dust covered
and memory chilled, simple
as my soul stumbles
dumbly from the ruins,
slain and tainted
with hatred,
never to outlive the tears
afflicting my vision,
expiring my senses.
Without love, nothing matters--
and I'm nothing, never to
outlive the shame.
xv
The poem: my words
dead in the mouth
reaching no one.
The stone: my place
stuck in the mud
growing roses.
xvi
As the sun shines,
so does your warm love
light every dark corner
of my eyes
made old and dry
from the pain
and pale smokes
of death,
expired in a useless
refrain.
My whole life spent
in your breath,
my tongue upon
the cool green
waves
with invisible hands
running like warm medicine
through my veins.
xvii
A raging glory apprehended
and translated for the masses
like some victorious god
from a constellated lyre--
old skin made of stone,
as they claim and proclaim
self-promoting words
that pale the new universe
with dead prophetic sighs--
I have seen it all before
too long suffering,
the enflamed lip obscuring
my face.
xviii
Flat shadows hash-out
blackest laughter
over the sky's raised expression
as I recline
into the godforsaken clay,
draperies of escape
blousing the absence
of my own echoing soul
resounding to infinity.
The truth is over there.
xix
We meet upon the sands
And part upon the sea...
Please, a quick prayer
For all the broken angels
Who've married the blade.
Sister Ann dancing
On a string of pearls,
The ocean in her loving
Green eyes, so alive
As I hang and twirl
On a velvet cabletow.
just let me die here,
And it still won't mean
Anything.
xx
Incorrigible,
an existence with
I fill nothingness,
violated spinals
of selves disintegrate,
vocables not left
heart and soul
without substance;
my criterion spirit
is toothed
to a cadaver.
xxi
Airs of glass painted radiance,
afloat with vigilant shadows
in the fresh exhalation
of evening light;
the golden reeds'
tangled spirits arose
from the ash
to dust the sky,
as my chanting heart
reddened in vein,
the flushed rust of
autumn's untamed fire,
sings in rapturous repose:
The immortal aspect inscribed
a scarlet infinity-- a chalice
of unburdened bloodred
rose.
xxii
Lachrymal,
discolored nuptials
nearly transparent,
the unloved crucible
has been veiled.
The rings still exist
furiously weeping
doses of parental
collapse, overturning
turning over silent
infinities-- myself
unheard, drowsing
in tomorrow's suit.
xxiii
0 valorous corpse
centered on infinite
powders into being
to kill nothing,
loving the ruptures
never to leave
this body--
dreaming conscience
a something essential
inexpressible;
I watch with eyes
the fire
spit eloquent faces
joined hands
old membranes
into the breasted care
of an imperishable
child, cursed
by man.
xxiv
Vodka skies,
the arsenic of my lamenting
skeletons from other lives
having lost their skins
by dint of telling lies,
seeding the coffin
with an illusion
that shrouds me.
Eyes without ideas
reviling the unknown,
and the face
a necessary human
calling to form.
ange de sublimite.
xxv
My conscience is cool
to the touch.
I will rarely enter this place
preferring to remain homeless
with a classical passion--
the ropes are tarred
and curtains smother
the air lagging butane
expiring my Aegean coil
on hideous black stones
beneath a silver foil
of dispossessed stars.
My heart bleeds black,
pinched in exhalation,
engrafting the thirst
of descending blue--
beating apparitions
to the sky.
xxvi
The eyeless door
eternal entrance,
I pass out
and into the mirror
beyond my own skull,
the veneered forehead
thrusting violently,
the succulent touch
of these red leaves
is perennial
and has just finished
dying, a new wing dreams
of chested elegance
latitudinal ecstasy.
xxvii
In the old grove
where we drowsed
shadow to shadow
in the colorless quality
of air, I came to believe
in what I'd become--
a child in each hand
father long dead
as I search for his meditating eyes,
all nerves uprooted
beneath my unclouded crown.
So, how do I remain?
The spent char upon my trail,
some lightless evidence
of the burning essence
revealing what is undone.
xxviii
Waters of almandine
alive on the ideal stone,
I watch as you grieve...
I conspire to help,
but fall. So I suffer
to express what has fallen
from me, this shoeless plot
shined with saliva
and infinite misgivings
as the mouth of insanity
curls around me
and I spill dependently
in a single line of solitude's
insatiable beholding.
xxix
Mother, you remain...
I am here to hear you
in the silence.
The rich host of time,
eternal bread
and Palm Sunday wine
blesses our sweet silence,
my open capillaries
ripening to light
engraved eternally
beyond the ancestral hiss,
as the famine darkness
dissolves on my lips.
xxx
Bottled up-- my harsh limit
has stepped beyond its bound
and the moon is amazed
by my happiness,
the immortal filament
laying her burns
into my shallow wounds.
Will I wear it through?
Death will not be like this,
waiting for the sun
to bleed through,
the fine blue-stained
cotton of the moment
oppressing us.
xxxi
A four-fold curing rose:
I'm a failed life,
a poem without words
a missing suicide--
dead husband
lost father
regrettable son,
an ugly sin
vile blight
unhealing wound
unending night,
dumped on your door
for instructions
as not to obscure
the glory of yours.
Sober.
xxxii
Fatherless in a sense,
the pen is broken
as I kneel in the devil's head.
Still becoming, the endless ache
waits for me,
my obedient demeanor
is lost on words--
this exquisite evening tea
pours over me
in repeated intimacies
as I toss the lyric napkin
that folds over itself
into an unlit bin.
xxxiii
My finger bleeds
a flowering dynast,
an infection
of misunderstood love
that dissolves the blood
of substantives
and offered up affections--
I suck the impassioned flow
until the form is transparent,
until I no longer care
and leave it alone.
xxxiv
Tonight, I dismount the muse
and break my heart
open on the rusted horizon,
leaving behind scarred infancies
and grief, the sun at my back,
unobstructed as the grasses hum
a prayer for the living ear.
I call out solemnly to nothing,
riding the edge of my only soul
bare of breast and bone
in the dead but immortal air;
I speak to you...
xxxv
The prodigal (always passing)
has stung blood upon you
with a pure frontal dub,
plumes and sheeted wings
slipping out of the curtained
prayer, blind from birth
to the mortal rub
and virgin in the tendered
grace of pure saltless air.
Love has lost its tongue.
LORD DERMOND
selected for the Encore Books poetry book, Poets @
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