Ouroboros (Of Shame, Screens and Want)

“For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” (Romans 7:19)

To marinate with you,
I soak myself in sin.
Kaleidoscopic pink seeps through 
My Sodom Apple skin.

Digital vomit — all,
This city’s lowly claim.
Where who am I to have the gall
To take an angel’s name?

They buck as blinds do breathe,
In screens escorting off
This cocoon shape — to flay and reave 
In ouroboros love.

This mute routine until 
I melt with you in sin. 
For guilt from this is guilt I’m still 
Here, set to fall again.

Panic (A Sonnet)

Stricken, I drain the sky in sharp inhales,
The pulse drum rising fast — nerves fly full mast.
Alight, as bare soles over rusted nails, 
As blackened joys relight the wasted past.

The gasp between crescendo and applause,
In hours, as years, I feel the world sigh. 
From desp’rate noise to all-pervading pause,
That guides the sealing edges of the sky.

Above the broken chorus ever sung:
“Hold dear, hold tight, the life inside the rot!”
I mould a mattress to an iron lung,
And to my loins, a dull constrictor knot.
Here, find me where the quiet lies won’t sting:
If I conquered this room, I would be king!

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.