Author: A. D. Lance

Ache (On its Attrition of Dreaming)

In foreign lands, I keep you close,
O’er temperance and blight.
Where; cross-stretched, the bedrock host 
Rest as stricken acolytes.
We dare not scan the firmament,
Where that bow breaks.
But chthonic eyes in dull cement
Well-host that stalwart ache.

Ache: the mortar bond 
Between dream and form.
A yoke, a waltz adorned
        — In possibility,
And a present too worn.
Marvels stemmed upon a tethered kite
Write home in Tomis exile.
Desperate muses keep a tight-leashed flight
Hooked on a lover’s smile.

Old Man Proteus, in flits to fantasia. 
Even there you are, clinging through Arcadia. 
In waking, synapses dart as tendrils
Stunted, roots into aggregate fills.

What soil is left for new green born,
That stands bold from that waltz adorned?
There, in sewn erratic keep,
Wanted haven in the bowels of sleep

Hollowed (A Beautiful Undoing)

So weiß wie Schnee, 
So rot wie Blut, 
So schwarz wie Ebenholz.

Amid the fractured nights and looped stimming,
Still bound within this pale emulsion realm.
The blinds cut up the days to faint trimmings,
And safe banality commands the helm.

But lo, as fickle sleep reclaims its own,
A trace of you gives rise to glories past.
My voice contours this air of monotone,
But yours — a harbinger of ruin cast.

While here I lay, and here I fall,
Your burning form pervading all.
And by some fell-goddess decree,
Old reveries consuming me:

Pursued by tempest of all tempests held
In carmine lips — in poise — in madness, all. 
Prosaic stacks of concrete shy, repelled,
Here by, mosaic eyes, in pencilled scrawls.

Delays and haze, to life immediate,
Your lick of fire to their incessant stone. 
The thread held taut in place, so delicate,
By talons black as ink and stark as bone.

As passion claims, life grants mundane,
These hollow follies wax and wane.
Office stacks choke in stunted rage,
Too damp, too grey, to burn the page.

In each morning’s sharp air sterility,
My tender aches temper this treadmill life.
Yearning to melt in plush fertility,
From dullard peace, to your unyielding strife.

Though distant is this voice from cherished hearts,
Untouched, unbound by this — my desp’rate strain.
Fated to yearn — to rend this shell apart: 
Wounded enough to love, and love again.

Devour’d by you, or to be slowly bled?
At least Salomé craved the Baptist’s head.

July

From two — by sleight of hand — to three.
From softness into shame
(Or, any other game).
Safety warms you, where it scalds me.

No court, nor grudge, could spit ‘guilty’
My time and touch: steadfast! 
Am I to blame in that
A bosom ends philosophy?

Life for one; eyes for two — or three. 
Till this fever yields tame
(This tedious old game).
Were legs — like nightshade — laid for me? 

For what you’re due, ‘I do’ seems free,
Where I’m owed naught from lust.
That want seems too much fuss
To lose a stalwart bride-to-be.

A wand’ring eye’s offence to thee,
My sweet-tooth set to rot. 
Should this cleansing from thought
Mark love’s impossibility?

Spiral (Around the Bacchante)

I’ve seen the certainties of man,
Vitruvian-spread on a rack of cyan.
Magenta prose and powdered verse,
Absorbed violently in cold rehearse.

Kabuki bearers 
And grinning anarchs,
Shake high-octane 
To the machine rasp.

Eclipse eyes: 
The maker’s mark,
Spiral absent
From the First, the Last.

And we are swaying, 
Swaying to whatever fills
That margin space 
And searing stills.

Till gravity lays bare 
The here and now,
Cling unto that unspoken vow:

“This time,
Surely this time.
Forever.”

A.D. Lance is an Edinburgh-based poet. Educated in Theology and Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, he blends Romantic lyricism with a modern disquiet, drawing influence from figures like Byron, Baudelaire, and Philip Larkin—who once wrote, “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.” Lance’s poetry echoes that sentiment: tracing the contours of chronic pain, stagnation, and thwarted desire with a voice that is both bruised and formal, restrained and ornate. Irony and longing are his poetry’s meat and wine—nourishing a body of work where beauty is the end of peace. He’s also a musician for the alt-rock band AXIS.