‘INNER DOMINION’

LORD DERMOND

‘INNER DOMINION’

LORD DERMOND

2004

Black Stout

the cliff quickens

to thin indifference,

a jagged savagery

falters skin,

stale air craves

the wind –

a tomb roam

perhaps

stutter tongue

hunger

the dead hung

dry to reason

torn vile

lets this reduction

utter....

Constriction dithers

for a way.

+ + + + +

Shimmer gill cinctures,

my heart’s a landfill

despatched to some benign

milemark – riversend.

Float and go lighted

to the distant swill

glistening into vision

trim difference of nil

w/out a trend in balance.

Reft of thy eyes

estranged in palpable

rose leaves,

pale to such divinity

my curtains flay the image

to cool stares,

the passing tapestries

called to seed

‘gainst firmament

and tempestuous semblance

to englory her being –

praises of a dim cloud

craving raiment,

strokes in crimson

dreams the rim

shaking moon

and disappearance

selves arose.

+ + + + +

The new position

is exciting and inter-

resting, as mentioned;

but Calculus is still

killing my spirit,

and the blue office

walls are draining

my royalty.

I’m an accomplished no

thing, and I can’t believe

I’m coming to this...

again, here feeding

the machines of old

distemper or familiar

routine... It all beckons

for a cold grey sleep,

the ritual haunting

of dreams laid to rest.

+ + + + +

I cannot help quell

this strange sense of waiting for something,

this weird little promise

that never delivers.

I’m tired of missing the moment

striving into the nothing of it all.

Maybe the moment doesn’t exist

since the ritual perceiving

(as well as the realization itself)

causes it not to be....

nothing other than waiting

again.

I’m tired of poems,

which is why these aren’t–

merely the hurts and hiddens

of a war hungry bastard

who has the will to wield,

to inflict his insistence

upon the pure and innocent...

My spirit is spent

so what good is the rest?

I can’t believe I’ve bothered

for a thin minute.

+ + + + +

A sad necessity it is

to come out of retirement,

all memoirs and epitaphs

parched up in a baroom–

everything was ready for bed;

but not another stretch

into the flowered field,

not another dawn

on the whitened shoreline.

The rest we could’ve faked

until the winds threw

sand into our eyes.

Lughnasadh

through a window

now removed,

the one last thing

from without–

it’s been discontinued

as the oak flings

a ragged battle star,

shattering the glass

that hides within.

+ + + + +

Dominion windfall

the songstress carries

my burden, this dis-

ease somewhere above,

high over the trees

in a cloudless clearing–

my protector a cool degree

in the shadow.

+ + + + +

Codeine memory

and existence is purged

of its swift insistencies

and churn;

the eyes burn in artificial light

and the air is alone,

a prayer to no one--

bones craving removal,

this hymn in the cathedral

of stone.

Cloak of stability,

a crack of light

riles the refuge of sleep

w/ the ocean beneath me

this sovereign night.

+ + + + +

Sad marrow,

a sullen husk

looking for a way

to not, the blood

minute a knot

of nothing

really, a spare...

This does not

compute.

The synergy

of indifference

and unwilling

will–

I’ve done it all

much better

before,

but does not

care

this does

not.

Sticky note prophecies–

this is half-hearted

an attempt, half a heart

a partial bit left, soul...

I was never ready

for any of this which

leaves me to wonder,

“Why uproot and leave

the summerlands,

this time... Why

couldn’t I remove

all of myself”?

+ + + + +

Poetry seems like a foreign

land, an incomprehensible

slush anymore–

and I feel like dumb angel

trying to reassemble his smile

long after all of the reasons

for light are forgotten.

+ + + + +

Unimaginable currents,

the languor of a life sought-after

and the air massing over

rich ground, this jeweled sill...

nothing is there but the thickness

of an unobtainable harmony.