Love's Dead Dream Poem by Michael Ó Domhnaill

The dry and pinpointed memory

of used up smooth voiced desire

drags me from my shroud of leaden sleep

to coerce 'me'- (languidly slit with a wire) .


My circular self: 'It' watches over itself.

The rasping slumlord of congealed decay;

Must kill 'it' soon, learn deceit games, make murder deft.

May killing Will will itself to death- Here 'I' lay:


Inky black seed caught in trembling soil.

Shifty grains of 'supposed to have occurred',

Perpetuate these fractured cores, destiny in the loin.

By rain by threat by blunt blow, dormant torture cured.


Love's dead dream floating out in tidal taste,

The sting of sea brine in uncrying dry eye,

Soothed by undertow, a wound in sleep layed waste.

The waking vision of Opaque pain- drowned...buried I lie.