Poem VII - "I am not who I am" [Back catalogue]

I am not who I am.

Locked in 21-year corridors,
Left to peep through narrow keyholes
To espy fleeting moments of fantasy
And my Darkness.

Left and right the walls,
Night-black, polished onyx,
Flaunt portraits
Of horrific romances:

How lovely they all are.

But reach to touch them as I may
And they fade behind more locked doors
Of these twilit corridors.

I am not who I am.

M.M. — October MMIX; edited December MMXI

Poem VI - "Solely and supreme I held thee" [Back catalogue]

Solely and supreme I held thee
On sparkling, serene seas
Of yesteryears and forgotten lore;
The burnings of the heart and its roar—
But I have lost sight: my woeful pleas.

For what I have known of love
And the flights of splendid doves
Has been dashed by Time
And its reign; and the bitter clime
Of fate cast by the Above.

Now I tremble in sight of thy countenance,
And to give double mine own essence
Would be no great a price to pay if once again
Grace would resurrect and stay this pain.—
But alas! the pall is still and absolute the consequence.

M.M. — Februarius MMIX; edited December MMXI

Poem VIII - Esoteric Art [Back catalogue]

Words and thoughts: I shall bend and mould to my Will.
The cryptic and hidden: I shall prise wide and imbibe;

And deep inside I recognise and affirm the plurality of men I am and can be.
To set free and let wail the manifestations and fantasies that swell within me.

To kiss the snake and embrace the world,
Plunge into bliss and the million folds
Of love and time—into all things that are mine—

Whilst up above the stellar host will know no equal to their own light
Other than my radiating and emanating, illuminating orb burning so bright.

Without fear I am, with potent Will at my very core;
Without constraint my consciousness shall ever soar:
From inflamed Venus to belligerent Mars;
From aureoled Helios to Selene up in stars.

I wish to live unabashed and fully,
Be at once Dionysian and Apollonian—truly;
Unlashed, able to evolve and thrive,
To explore the labyrinth of my questioning mind—
And what infinite wonders may I there find?

Thus to cradle the Pillars of Creation
And witness the Universal cessation.

M.M. — October MMIX; amended Februarius MMX; edited, title revised December MMXI

Poem XII - "And so the world" [Back catalogue]

[Published in Forward Poetry's (formerly Forward Press) Poetry Rivals' Collection 2010 - Whispers Of The Mind on 30 November 2010.]


Influenced in no small part by T. S. Eliot.

And so the world continues its languid dissolution,
and the hum hum, drums and wails drown all out;
whilst creeping along his bleary path, head-wingèd,
comes Hypnos and in train his progeny—

What whimpers will I give when Thánatos comes for me?—

Creeps:

the scent of ancient forests where hoary wizards roam in wisdom—
In his hollow-hillock covered in moss and lichen lives the hermit:

I am the one-man screaming, arms in upward fury, lambasting the silent sky;
the spectator, miserable and magnificent, spying happiness from corners.

But what if that reflection of sunlight on that tin could bring me
back to those carefree days in places long gone?
Back to relive—to relieve!—reword words not said
but meant!—so dearly

...meant....

His back: so bent!

I tarry here; tire of this place.
What lies beyond where the stars pine
and
—'bove?
—below?
—before?
—behind?
my mind?

Would that I could...

could just....

Take a moment!,
ye hurried masses;
take but one single moment!
And—

Behold:
A vista:

An afternoon of a dying sun
dispersing its golden sea of remains—
Azure sky and a painter's clouds.
What a marvel to see
(to be able to just see!)
the neo-Gothic tower and spire
Posturing Proudly, timelessly,
defying their makers
and all manacled man alike.

What will break my adamantine shackles!
I wish to handle my hollow universe!
And dare!—yes, dare!
Ha-hah!
I will dare!
and!...

Palsy: fell-come, my dear friend:
Do you too feel the heavy weight on my chest?
My heart tender is severely constricted!
and restricted!
My how restrained and pained I feel!
Damn It!:
It is merciless!
Damn This!:
This lace!

But do I still not wander?:
in secret fantasies of love
and in secret fantasies of life?

In these precious
reverie-memories;
sham remembrances:

Garden lights—
outside a modern Danish summerhouse
—under variegated twilight.

Childhood innocence in a sheltered school-world
Oh and all the little things that are for me
All the small and touchable things
All the things with noises
And flashing lights
My things
Mine

A horroromance with
my Lady of evenfall-breed,
enswathed in sepulchral ruched satin;
and a dead-of-night tryst:
We together hurrying away
to oblivion
in an ebon landau
drawn by daemon equine—
all the while flitting with ease
between lucidity
and lunacy;
between the ethereal

and idioreal:

So I ride as passenger;
the country-dark night-chill
—erstwhile besieger:
I dismiss apathetically
its clamouring for the world—
and it
now forgotten.

So I ride;
onwards!
on byways;
onwards!
on highways;
onwards!
on my ways.

So I:

I, ensconced in a seat that stokes warmth—
Come, dream!; come, sleep!

I, observing the unlit country in awe—
Come, mind!; come, psyche!

I, immersed In the Nightside Eclipse—
Come, memory!; come, reverie!

(Two glinting eyes: unshut;
two pricked ears: censorless;
but a smirk
and silence kept.)

M.M. — Februarius-Aprilis MMX

Sonnet I - "For is my heart a vessel daring sea?" [Back catalogue]

Posted some years ago; presented here with cosmetic changes.

For is my heart a vessel daring sea?
Dare tempest, thunderstorm, and trident's quake?
Alack! yet mine is sheltered by no lee,
But rather shipwrecked, beached—denial's wake!
My lute, a-tuned so fervidly, doth dote
On thee; thou, crown'd for prime seraphic grace.
I strive toward thy heart despite thy moat,
Toward that thorny rose done up in lace.
And those who confidently try compare
To Beauty's host, but folly they will find.
As sure doth night aways with any glare,
In like course souls of ours will duly bind.
So onward, seaman! Love for none will wait!
Forever onward—nothing left to fate!

M.M. — October MMVI; final line revised December MMXI

Song II - A Love Song Macabre [Back catalogue]

Oh deathly Cassandra, come
For you I have shunned the sun

Rise from your fathomless dream
So we may haunt the lands unseen

To wander twilight arcades
And nocturnal promenades

Take my hand and I will show
Secrets only devils know

Oh my cold Cassandra, come
For their hollow love lies undone

How your obsidian tresses stir me
Razor-spiked like kraken sea

I could gaze forever into your eyes
Serpentine, lambent like fireflies

All at once you stupefy me
Daze and deaden so easily

Oh impish Cassandra, come
Hearken to words once unsung

I have armed 'gainst frivolous light
Flaunt now your eclipsing might

Unleash 'pon my entranced heart
Shadows of your blackened Art:

The evernight of your worldview
The diffidence you eschew

M.M. — Martius-Maius MMX; edited December MMXI

Words for a Picture VI

To be read alongside 127 by Mecuro B. Cotto (MecuroBCotto).

[Excerpt from an unfinished work:]

Why            is it
            when        the
      mirror                     shatters
and            I
                        try
            to    rearrange
      the                        shards
      does the reflection remain the same?

M.M. — December MMXI

Prose III [Back catalogue]

The Revelation of Lyrus Maskivian, the Deathless Prince, General of the Askkalan Armies (Ch. IV, § xxiii); recovered from the ruins of the Black Citadel in the year —.

In the riotous swathe I cut through the centuries, I sought always to unite the exudations of the beauty of love and war. And I succeeded. Though lesser men—men who dare not utter my name even now—have called me a madman, a butcher, all the permutations of malevolence, the very awe and terror that will perfuse through them once they know the true magnificence of what I have reached will at last and forever stain history with the quintessence of this grand conception, of this Art Revealed. The weak-willed worms cannot even begin the attempt of opening their insignificant minds to imbibe this most secret and enrapturing knowledge. Mountains of life-despoiled bodies I have piled, nightmarish landscapes I have trodden, entire nations I have burnt to ashes and one woman I have loved to the extreme; all to learn that in reeling horror and burning love there lie things that are crystal reflections of each other. They are, quite simply, the manifestations of what repels ordinary men and what ordinary men feign and pretend to understand. They reside at the threshold between sanity and madness, where very few are able to remain wilfully. They are the warmth that radiates within when one encases and seals his heart for just one other, never again for it to be unlocked. They are the purest art, revealed to an individual only during the very rarest of experiences, experiences of masterful devilry and uncompromising adoration, experiences that I have dared, in my audacity, to live.

M.M. — Ianuarius MMX

Poem XIV - "To the North" [Back catalogue]

To the North—
where blizzards beat
where white death hides

To the North—
where a nightsun eerily shines
where I dream of shadowed luminescence

To the North—
where mile-upon-mile is glacier and snowy plain
where ice kingdoms are unmoved and eternal

To the North—
where truth lies at the end of the world
where I walk aimless and fated

To the North—
where coldness wraps round me
where numbness seals me inside my mind

To the North—
where I lunge into the unknown nothingness
where I seek the something my heart craves

To the North—
where solitude is a congenial audience
where the gelid wind cuts open my distended self

To the North—
where I conquer all and in-between
where to languish is to be vitalised

To the North—
where silence is song and symphony of soul
where I begin where I will end

M.M. — Junius MMX

Experimental I

Written extemporaneously when somewhat intoxicated by alcohol at 3 a.m. on 10 December 2011.

What are the lines when extracted from the mind?
What are lines?
when hidden sometime in summertime,
when lines were one time of a mind unlike that now mine—
signs of a time when mind was kind,
kind like the lines that seep through all the time,
that seep through my mind, clocking away aligned with time;
and the spine of mine that heightens with every line that my mind, though unkind, writes,
line by line by line by line.

M.M. — December MMXI

Ex Tempore XI - Lights seen from Bangor Pier, a night-scene

Conceived and extracted on the evening of the 9th of December 2011.

Here, there and everywhere an incandescence dots the nightscape.
Some are clustered together; some pattern; some shift or drift;
some dim for a moment, disturbed by life not their own;
and each lonesome light: some punctuate and comfort country-roads, illuminating the way
for the Passenger who dismissed the world's clamouring;
others, the most solitary of all—strivers alone in the inescapable darkness,
the heart of a hermit
or the beacon beckoning the disattending soul into a dream-memory.
But at her height the mistress Moon dominates; full, vitreous and extra-real in the cloud-scarce sky.
The scene is hers, and the lights: I am merely the wanderer and welcome witness who strayed here.

M.M. — December MMXI

The bliss of experiencing [Back catalogue]

I have previously remarked on the merits of putting spontaneous thoughts, or epiphanies, into written word. Here I attempt, briefly, to describe and explain one such revelation; specifically, a thought on the nature of experience.

It is without doubt that many before me have expounded and many more after me will expound a theory of experience. This may well have been and be a broader philosophical endeavour or a narrower psychological one. What I have come to believe is more in line with a transcendent perspective. Concisely, it is this: though what we call experience can (quite cogently) be defined in psycho-physical terms—i.e., with the help of cognitive neuroscience and like disciplines—no amount of description of the nature of experience or its aetiology can ever be equatable to the experience of experience.

Perhaps this at first sounds odd, but it is in fact curiously intuitive. An example will serve well to elucidate this "non-equation": Take the idea that experience (or consciousness) is the grand result of a high-functioning, highly evolutionarily developed, highly complex neurocortical system, where the impressions of something called reality are realised, in some unknown way, by interwoven psychophysiological processes. By all accounts, a reasonable explanation, albeit one that is still underdeveloped. Nevertheless, it says nothing of the experience of experiencing: one may know all there is to know about the mind but never, by this, know the intrinsic value of listening to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" for the very first time.

I now know that experiences are of the highest order; they are never to be trivialised. Thus the revelation of my epiphany: how glorious it is to have the quality of experience as part of our existence. All the more so do the ambience of warm, golden autumn sunsets, the reveries of cosmic explorations and the matchless pleasures inherent in love dwell in me in a regard indescribable.

M.M. — Februarius MMX

Epyllion I - Felnah consoles the forlorn Sókan [Fragment of a possible larger work – Back catalogue]

"Come, dear warrior, Son of the Light,

What ails you so? Gone is Hixen's Blight,
And all world rejoices at your valiant deeds!
Do you not walk as hero? No other's feet
Shall ever tread where you met plight."

So said Felnah, ascended from Her Nether Realm.
Replied Sókan, lifting his weary head, removing his helm:

"O Goddess, Guardian of Those Who Slumber,
You speak no lie: all the enemy I have left asunder.
The righteous have triumphed and the benighted earth
Shall be as it was—all will welcome again hope and mirth.
But Agánn has fallen! and I feel heavy and sombre."

The Lady of Shadows took pity upon hearing this,
And told Sókan of the fate of Agánn, comrade now missed:

"The indomitable Agánn: loyal friend, warrior bold;
His brand will be ever sheathed, his body ever cold.
But pine not for him: he now sleeps the Blissful Sleep,
Dreams the Eternal Dream, and reposes where I keep.
There he will be when on you death begins its hold."

This uplifted the battle-worn Sókan and assuaged his grief
As he watched Felnah depart, soundless, like master thief.

M.M. — Februarius MMX

Words for a Picture V

To be read alongside Opheliac by alberich.

[Excerpt from an unfinished work:]

How calm the ocean deep—
navigating blind, seeing all there is to see
amidst the darkness;
                        whilst above the storm rages and writhes [...]

M.M. — December MMXI

Prose II [Back catalogue]

Bearing down on him was what seemed a merciless rage, an unrelenting assault: The sun was at its highest point and, so, seated upon its haughty throne, artfully unleashing what it had unleashed for countless aeons. The rays speared into his back and pounded like angry, animate monoliths.

How long had he been walking the dunes of the desert? How long had he seen nothing but these ancient sands that had Time and Death as their only companions? It may as well have been an eternity—an eternity of stifling heat and incessant burning. There was but to trudge on, and hope he would soon come to the end of his journey.

But Hope was nowhere to be seen; Hope was gone; Hope had left the desert long ago. The faithful keeper of the sands was not Hope but Her. And She was always there, had always been there. Always watching and glaring and abhorring. She was like the sun: implacable and single-minded. And now She was studying him, sneering all the while. Only a bit longer had she needed to wait before it was too late for him.

But it had already begun. The creeping corners had started to close in. There in the distance the tapestries had began to melt away and drip into mammoth drains. All imperial aspects were shattering in the wake of incomprehensible galleons. And what of the warm beds of carefree lovers? Apostolic and apathetic.

These things were spinning about in his head; he heard them from every direction.

She was upon him.

M.M. — October MMIX

Poem XI - Sleeping with Dragons [Back catalogue]

Inspired to an extent by Gojira's "Where Dragons Dwell".

Once, I saw a dragon

With a lucent snow-white mane
And a glinting diamond eye;

To my balcony window it came
Where it sang a soft lullaby.

I drifted into darkness and dream
And soared away with the old beast

To lands of crystal and seas untame,
Where the sleeping dragons lie.

In the creatures' den we did alight
And I climbed atop a small crag and beheld:

Wingèd forms, some black as night,
Others that with divers colours could meld.

The most majestic of them stood before me,
Ancient and colossal like primæval tree.

Embraced by its span, by its might,
No more wondrous a thing ever me held.

This company of legends, this mythic throng:
As one they spoke—

But did not speak, rather, chorused a song
Of soporific note.

The diamond-eyed dragon then coiled round, acting as lee,
And I lay beside its breast, warmed by its hidden fiery heat.

I desired to remain, no matter however long;
But, forced, I awoke.

Once, I saw a dragon.

M.M. — Februarius MMX

Song I - "Hurry now, Sister" [Back catalogue]

Hurry now, Sister
The spiteful morning sun awakes
The weight of the sky's grey eyes
Grows heavy upon our crowns
Left for plunder are all the dark roses
We had gathered for our gardens

The day waxes, scorching our bodies
Your wilting hand will not impede
Its wrathful trumpeting
Night, who had hid us away
Has left us to be consumed
The tears we shed scar our cheeks

Sleep now, Sister
Our ruin dances complete
Watch the sovereign vaunt
Where are the stars that lit our forest paths?
They have been outshone
Where is Death? He comes with hand outstretched

M.M. — Maius MMX; edited September MMX, December MMXI

Aubade I - "To sweep away, You and I" [Incomplete?; Back catalogue]

To sweep away, You and I,
      and blaze across the morning sky;
To greet the dawning light
      and bask in searing rays abright.
The slumb'ring earth will grow small
      as we draw near that City's wall,
Engirding the Realm of Sunrise-Dream,
      where sights unseen doth fully stream.
It shall be You and I who open the gates
      to sate desires that never abate.
Lo! the spires and moving monuments
      made of glister and blinding elements.
It is in this Citadel we shall linger,
      tasting bliss with our fingers;
Ambling 'twixt immense colonnades,
      in halls with floors of many gems made.
So clasp fast my hand and we shall flit
      skywards to our rightful throne to sit.
Together abreast, away we will be taken—
      close thine eyes: the Sun awakens.

M.M. — November-December MMIX; Aprilis-Maius MMX

Poem XIII - "She was a song" [Back catalogue]

She was a song—

That took me on Her dulcet wings,
Away from this tiresome earth,
To places within and outwith myself:

      Dreamy distant deserts of the primal
            and
      Kilometre-high metropolises of the emotionally edified.


She was the setting Sun—

With Her I lived in the
                                    moments:
Each infinitesimal of the Greatest Falling,
The diurnal monologue only we cared to listen to.

      With Her I would expend the triumphant golden day,
            and then
      Search out the obsidian monuments and ancient tarns in arcane night.


She was the secret of the silent Snake—

Brimming with Wonders undelved;
The delirium of Imperium;
The spring from which my bewilderment drank.

      Her kiss had the impetus of comets,
            and
      In Her cavernous Mind darkly wraithlike Ideas fluttered and darted.

M.M. — Aprilis MMX

Poem X - "She reclines on the divan" [Back catalogue]

Largely written in a hypnagogic stupor induced by Karl Sanders' "Preliminary Purification Before the Calling of Inanna" and preferably to be read alongside.


She reclines on the divan,
Hand propping up her head.

Sounds become deep, abyssal.
The image of the world diminishes to a blur.

She stares but does not see.
Her eyes are heavy—burdensome.

I study her face: expression swept away;
Infinity slowly expanding within her.

The drums' beat resounds and vibrates
Through dead weight—lulling, swinging.

Who she is—masked—is not who she is.
I can see her—now: as she tumbles through time.

They whisper, hiss, chorus in the encroaching dark.
The Egyptian flute mesmerising and haunting.

Her eyes close—the end of the world.
The sounds rise to symphonies.
She is released and becomes
Master and Wanderer.

In this moment I fall in love with her

—all of her

—forever.

M.M. — Ianuarius MMX

Prose IV [Fragment of a possible larger work; Back catalogue]

There was a pause—a perfect silence. Then:

"I wish to see galaxies.... I want to go out, up there, and leap across light years—as one leaps from stone to stone across a brook—to be able to see the variegated emissions of nebulæ and the terrible seconds of the last throes of moribund, billion-year stars.... What I would give to drift into the jet-streams of distant pulsars—just so I could feel their dance...."

Elizabeth uttered no words: her mind was stretched and her eyes, lost—she listened.

"Sometimes, when I'm alone, I hold imagined planets before me; and I am impossibly astronomical in size and consequence.... And then sometimes I fall...crushed...with strange overwhelming sorrow and...ravening longing. Tears have come to my eyes when I've realised...when I understand...that I will never, ever really see these things. The universe will always be but an intangible delight bound to my mind and its eye, resident to my transient dreams and...recurring reveries."

Even farther away and nearer than she had ever been before, Elizabeth suddenly, inexplicably, felt warm—replete with a sensation of which she could not make sense. This she had never experienced before. But still she kept her silence, said nothing.

Nothing—just this feeling deepening and branching everywhere in her, blasting her a million times slowly pulsing, marathon swells. Nothing—she simply held him closer, firming her embrace with arms and hands that she would've noticed were trembling were they not wrapped round his torso as they lay together in deferent darkness. Nothing—except her immediately knowing, with sublime clarity, that she never wanted to let him go; that love was no longer a confused concept, but now an absolute with pinions imperially outspread, revealed to her in this moment of silent searing.

M.M. — Aprilis MMX

Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr. - "The Iron Gate"

Where is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?

Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,

Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting

In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,


Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting,

Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,
Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,

Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought?



Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him,--

Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;

In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem,

Oft have I met him from my earliest day:

In my old Aesop, toiling with his bundle,--
His load of sticks,-- politely asking Death,

Who comes when called for,-- would he lug or trundle

His fagot for him?-- he was scant of breath.



And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"--

Has he not stamped the image on my soul,
In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher

Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl?



Yes, long, indeed, I've known him at a distance,

And now my lifted door-latch shows him here;
I take his shrivelled hand without resistance,
And find him smiling as his step draws near.



What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us,

Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's prime;
Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he leaves us,

The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time!

Altars once flaming, still with incense fragrant,

Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep,

Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less vagrant,
Life's flow less noisy, but the stream how deep!



Still as the silver cord gets worn and slender,

Its lightened task-work tugs with lessening strain,

Hands get more helpful, voices, grown more tender,

Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain.



Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,
Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past,
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers

That warm its creeping life-blood till the last.



Dear to its heart is every loving token
That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold,
Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken,
Its labors ended and its story told.



Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices,
For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh,

And through the chorus of its jocund voices
Throbs the sharp note of misery's hopeless cry.

As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying
From some far orb I track our watery sphere,

Home of the struggling, suffering, doubting, dying,

The silvered globule seems a glistening tear.



But Nature lends her mirror of illusion

To win from saddening scenes our age-dimmed eyes,

And misty day-dreams blend in sweet confusion
The wintry landscape and the summer skies.



So when the iron portal shuts behind us,

And life forgets us in its noise and whirl,

Visions that shunned the glaring noonday find us,

And glimmering starlight shows the gates of pearl.



I come not here your morning hour to sadden,

A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff,--
I, who have never deemed it sin to gladden

This vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh.

If word of mine another's gloom has brightened,

Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came;

If hand of mine another's task has lightened,
It felt the guidance that it dares not claim.

But, O my gentle sisters, O my brothers,

These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of toil's release;
These feebler pulses bid me leave to others
The tasks once welcome; evening asks for peace.



Time claims his tribute; silence now golden;

Let me not vex the too long suffering lyre;

Though to your love untiring still beholden,
The curfew tells me-- cover up the fire.



And now with grateful smile and accents cheerful,

And warmer heart than look or word can tell,
In simplest phrase-- these traitorous eyes are tearful--

Thanks, Brothers, Sisters,-- Children,-- and farewell!

Ex Tempore X - An effusion written mid-night

As the world slept and I stood outside under the great spanning vault of the midnight-sky, I took little more than a moment and watched above me the fast moving clouds travel from one far-off distance to another. From time to time I caught a glimpse of the stars obscured by these hurrying clouds; they, more than ever before, seemed to twinkle at and for me, seemed to gaze back as I gazed at them. And though I was distracted by the grating voice of men in the night—yelling, crying, muddling the moment—still I felt filled with reverence—for the stars, clouds and sky—and still I felt that I was beyond myself, distant and yet irremovable from the place where I stood. What is it that one who stood on the earth, solitary and afraid, could be taken like that—willingly!—could open himself unabashedly, precipitously!, and seemingly so naturally, to a realisation, to a state of being and mind unlike any experienced before...? At that point I felt... I knew... that all was right and would be right. At that point the truth of possibility and joy of an unknown future came to me....

M.M. — November MMXI

Prose I [Back catalogue]

For the sake of organisation I will be progressively (and in no particular order) moving my earlier works onto this blog. I begin with "Prose I".

She stood there, her smooth right hand raised and pressing ever so lightly against the wall-long, wall-high window, as if it would shatter by her delicate, wilful touch. Beyond, the midnight city skyline glittered with a universe of lights, each seemingly a tragicomedy of a life. Her thoughtful emerald eyes panned across this illuminated metropolis, peaked by stately high-rises, and she remarked to herself something indistinct.

Hers was a beauty that commanded respect and did not exude a mundane lust. Though made-up, it was quite unnecessary; her lightly rouged cheeks, darkly shadowed, mascaraed eyes and thulian pink lips were merely embellished out of convention. Indeed, her deeply black, backless evening gown, which accentuated her lithesome figure, appeared to wear her. She knew that she was attractive, but regarded it as nothing more than an accident and hardly thought much else of it.

She turned round, gracefully, and studied the body on the floor, eyes penetrating and meaningful.

M.M. — Februarius MMIX

Ex Tempore IX

Bare-bodied and naked Man before the height of the blazing Sun:
Would His skin sear, His flesh be burnt away and set aflame; would He disintegrate to nothingness?
Or would the solar wind unblind Him, allowing Him to see where He came from;
would He drift towards the corona and surface of the Sun and be returned to begin anew?

M.M. — November MMXI

Ex Tempore VIII - Romantic lines written on a storm

It was only when I sought to listen to the storm that I witnessed
the wild dancing of rain in front of insipid street-light,
that I marvelled at its rapid pummelling of the paved and asphalted roads.
I heard the voices of the wind given word through the enlivened and agitated trees;
I braved the emotion of the gales that burgeoned to such a wrathfulness!
...which then suddenly subsided to a lull that belied their terrible might.
It was only at this moment that on my skin I felt the bite of chill for the very first time;
only by seeing the vapour of my breath did I then really know that I lived—that I lived!—
and for a while was released from the bondage of a world that forgot....
When I listened I was subsumed into the rhythms around me, which have raged for aeons.

M.M. — November MMXI

Ex Tempore VII

For G.

For the music I cannot draw
For the pictures I cannot write
For the sounds I wish I saw
There are those that I might

For the places of which I dream
For the tastes I hope to breathe
For the things I really mean
May rhyme and reason never leave

For the love I long ago lost
For that which did not come
For the paths that did not cross
There is still little and some

For the goals still unreached
For the struggles not yet won
For the walls that sometimes breach
Tomorrow will see a new sun

For the many occasions I reminisce
For what are now but memories
For all the days that I miss
There is still much for me to see

For age that creeps and creeps
For the time that slips away
For mountains now too steep
There will be stories to recount and lay

For the mistakes that I made
For the regret that burns
For the words I mislaid
I can and will always learn

For the fear that restrains
For when around me there are none
For the times ruled by pain
It is I who will overcome

For all this and more
For what will come and what came before
There is me, there is you
And this is all we ever need know

M.M. — November MMXI

Ballad I - Lyrus [Incomplete?]

Openly in the bloody vein of Dani Filth.

Prince of Darkness?
Father of Lies?
Great Dragon?
All honours bestowed upon me;
But I would just as soon
Be called Saviour,
For what they fear in my eyes
They dare not harness
In themselves.
I have simply taken the first step,
Willingly,
Down the spiral stair...
Down into the fucking Pit....

I.

Enters Darkness birthing her fatal young,
Assailing the earth and leaving all hung;
In a time already retching before came time,
When the world was held in a miasmic clime;
When wretched things and uncaged dæmons conspired,
Watching budding maleficence stand tall and aspire.

And floundering through the mire: a hapless wretch,
Cast out from a now-forgotten city-state
For crimes that would turn pale the most insatiate;
But of how he came to be none would speak so openly.

And so he wended his way into the welcoming wilderness,
With nothing less than a vengeful mind as company;
Swearing to never meet his eternal rest
Until he alone was Lord
And all praised his name, either sweetly or meekly.

He sought immortality,
To learn the word of the arcane,
To bed with evil and whatever devilry he could sustain.
Blood-magick, necromancy, invocation and blackest witchery:
Aught and all he would gorge on, with glee in his now saurian eyes.

Over marshland and moor, growing sour by the hour,
In ruin and citadel, he sought and scoured,
And in forlorn recesses of forests suspiring gloom;
Till he came upon a mountain cove,
Where he took refuge from thunder and rain,
And to contemplate the world's inevitable doom.

That tempestuous night he arose into a dream
Limited to the most aberrant and deviant of themes;
Wherein a nameless thing came careening t'ward him,
Speaking in multitudinous voice and yet so clear—
The doting father and nurturing mother,
Who knew his augured time was treacherously near.

II.

None more waywardly errant
Than this Black Knight born of night,
A never-Galahad,
With proclivities for the savage and mad.

His name was corrosive to the ears of men, yet slick;
On the tongues he severed it rolled sticky, thick:
Lyrus Maskivian.
He left necks of timid doves wrung and rent,
Throats of those he had run through,
Who never knew what their spent lives had meant.

Possessed of a mind now so inverted and perverted,
Tenanted by abhorrent conceptions he so viciously asserted.

All manner of fiends drew to him,
Swearing their allegiance
And unswerving obedience—
The bellicose soldiery of Askkalan;
Acclaiming their "Deathless Prince",
In whom they saw godhead evinced.

For what must have been centuries, he did burn on,
Blighting every kingdom that fell under his shadowy gaze;
Never a hint of remorse for his humanity so long forgone—
Ever more so were those darkling days.

III.

And by his side, steeped in allure,
Stood steadfast as eternal consort
Kaliandra, so impish and demure,
Whom to Lyrus's foul play had become inured.
But in truth they were more alike,
Down to the firestorms and lightening strikes
(That did more than just distort)
'Midst which both found more than a morbid comfort.

She was a fell-spoken, wide-eyed lynx
Smitten by this time-conquering Prince.
This débutante quickly tore across high society
When Lyrus first catalysed her latent insanity.

A raven that stole his cindered heart:
Was it the dusk in her eyes,
Or her razor-hot thighs,
That he would partner her to his felon art?

And she would say no more than this:
"I give you my serpentine kiss,
That you may persist and never desist;
To purloin from the Sun all his day
As I reign in your night as the Moon,
Lest we let it all slip and drip away."

IV.

Lyrus now enthralled
He palled the world that he abhorred,
Leaving little more than a cursory eulogy in his wake;
He all fury and carefree when the quietus came to take.

Sitting upon a throne of bone he espied a storm,
Amassing itself as he misdid:
How much more would he extend?
Till he became exalted in lore?
Till all saw his maw distend
And rend apart the last
Bastion of a restrictive past?

His thoughts weaving terror into tapestry,
Conjuring plans and further tragedy
(To satisfy his ever refining depravity);
And Kaliandra—the ice, the sting:
Her bifurcate tongue urging him on,
Whispering silky, sibilant songs

And more....

How auspicious everything now stands:
That I may snuff all hindrance in my way
By the deft heft of my crooked left hand,
Ushering in the coming end of days.

M.M. — November-December MMX; Februarius-Aprilis, Iunius, September, November MMXI

Poem XXII - Ode to Night

For the night I write these lines,
a homage to the cold and to the dark;
the night,
wherein I have found solace and secret,
and a stillness that soothes a raking inner-voice.

In the distance
of the vast nightscape:
there resides mystery and a thousandfold ending to a single life.
In the distance rolls the deep movement of sound,
the gradual approach of a rumbling and turbulent
darkling dream—

...forlorn on a beach, touched by the chill before a coming storm
gathering itself in the heavy leaden sky...

Here I have watched many times the silent dance of shadows:
nebulous reflections of joys and failings from the past,
phantasmagoric sequences of future on black canvas.
I have conversed with them long, been overwhelmed by them,
have become a wraith and been taken aloft with them.
No more have they told me and taught me
than all of what I already know
—yet do not wish to know:
In night, truth is denizen.

Deeply ensconced
I have clasped strange thoughts and ideas seemingly not my own;
I have been taken to places so far, yet which lie but a reverie away.

Bereft of light and its lively life
I have come to apprehend
the life in light,
as that that lives disconcertingly in the grotesque incandescence of streetlight;
and that in the stars up above:
Those darling diamonds,
colossal spheres of undying fire
that span infinity
of space and of mind
—and yet how simply they stud the great vault of night.

Fear,
have I not come face to gaunt and grisly face
with you?
Love,
have I not endlessly been assailed by you,
and riven?
Here, where the ugly and the beautiful discard their masks.

Oh, here...
here are wondrous world-scenes:
though I have known them only in word and through the cadence of song,
here, in the night, they are raised
to fullest vigour,
brought to the fore at a heady pace;
they are glimpses that escape from fantasy, the progeny of dream.

By the night these words are uplifted,
held and enwrapt,
then cast into the evening wind;
thrust to the stony faces of glaring derelict edifices
and to the dreary dead woodland
hidden in the corner of my mind.

To the night I remain ever commended;
in the night, ever lost.

M.M. — Aprilis–Junius, Augustus–September, November MMXI

Ex Tempore VI

the moment I can longer day-dream of running through vast, ageless forests
the moment the undying stars and immeasurably distant and unknown worlds do not enthrall me
the moment I do not ache for the great Sun's fall or rejoice for its triumphant rising
then I will know that I have died, that I no longer draw my breath from the mystery in air
then I will know that my mind has withered, that my light has fizzled out, that I am dust and bone
then I will know love, life and beauty were true
then I will know everything I wanted and needed to know

M.M. — November MMXI

Study of a Woman

"Study of a Woman: The emotion of Beauty (or the shell of it) experienced"

or

"On beholding a certain uncommonly handsome woman, widely known, yet here unnamed; a study of her, and the concomitant emotions thereupon felt"

[Written ex tempore one night.]

Why do these feelings come when I see you?—you, who are someone, a woman, who I say is uncharacteristic of womankind in your allure and classic features. (But are you Beautiful? does what I feel allow for this qualification, this aesthetic valuation? or is this sham as you are a stranger to me and I to you?)

But I do not know you.

Few amongst your sisters have I found and do I find to be like you: with your looks, of your looks (but the question tears: is it just appearance?).

But I do not know you—And you do not know me.

I see you, but from a world-distance away. And because of this great thing I see you as you are framed as portrait—are you hung as yourself? is this really you?—and I view you with the invisible disconnection acting as voyeuristic mask. Do I see you? would your face and looks and features and the yearning and the enchantment wash away were I to place my cold hand on what I wish to be a warm face?

But I do not know you—And you do not know me.

Why do these feelings come when I see you?—could it be that I long for someone like you?: whose sweet visage (that drives poets and master artists to madness!) touches and stirs something that is at my very core: whose character and personality (which I only know vicariously) evokes the greatest unassuageable and poignant affection and amorousness in me.

You dizzying woman; you high woman; you all-woman; you woman's woman; you: Woman. But!: woman-but-not-woman; instead,

Self!

Outwith Me and my Self—You Are a Self in all your glory, and this makes your splendour, and your mystery, resound within me as esoteric symphony upon a cavern-domed crystal lake! Surely then you are Beautiful! and so let my yearning and burning tax me on, for it whets Beauty—yours—to pierce me with such sublimity and rose-thorn proficiency!

Why do I feel this way?: because what is also engendered with all this, but diademed and laureate:

Love

—the capacity (the capacity) to Love!

And so I now look at you, E——, and I have, at the last, resolved why these feelings rise when I behold you:

I do not know you—will never know you—nor you me; but within me there is an inexplicable, ineffable Will to Love,
a will to love you, you whom I do not know—
(I could love you: how inimitable that is!)—

and so these feelings come because I, ready, wait for the one whom
with fullest measure
I Will Love.

M.M. — Aprilis MMX; edited Iulius MMX, Februarius MMXI

Hymn I

Glory unto Thee
Who dreamest eternally
In the darkest Abyss,
Where only the Few darest
Trespass and tread into.

Thou art the Nameless;
Thou art the Formless;
Thou art the Hidden Torch;
Great Bringer of Light.

Without mine eyes
Yet wide-eyed do I behold Thee,
Father of Illumination,
With coruscating sword in hand
Slashing away Fear from my Path.

I, freed from all Resistance, transcend
Into Thy garden of proscribed Love
And stand in awe before Thee,
Mother of Truth, Destroyer of Lies;
Gravid with Chaos in Thy womb.

M.M. — Martius MMX; Junius MMXI

Words for a Picture IV

To be read alongside 67954 by aleksandra88.

Although the paragon of carnality and great conqueror,
and even now seemingly held highest in all her splendour;
still she waited for bliss in just a kiss,
or for the Sun to fall on her just the same.

M.M. — November MMXI

Poem XXI - "When Beauty came"

When Beauty came
she precipitated the sack of city and soul.
When she descended from her throne
she stepped upon our paper-hearts.

When Beauty came from the sea
he flooded us in his titillating nausea;
the sight of him threw us into delirium
and a ravening bloodlust overcame reason.

Man devoured man, and woman too.
In a great display of ecstasy
our world turned murderous fantasy,
and ravaged lay the love we slew.

When Beauty came to me
I dared to caress her alabaster face,
only to be caught in his fatal embrace;
and down I did fall to the hard earth.

When Beauty came,
none were left the same.
We would have given our all
but Beauty only came to steal our souls.

M.M. — Februarius MMX; Aprilis, September, November MMXI

Words for a Picture III

To be read alongside 654573433 by aleksandra88.

[Excerpt from an unfinished work:]

For many a faded autumn did this stately Penelope wait,
    though pining in heart, wasting in body, dimming in mind.
Was it not She who attended, till insipid day grew late,
    that point that consorted with the sea, both so unkind?

M.M. — November MMXI

Words for a Picture II

To be read alongside Solar Passage by Greg Martin (sirgerg).

The face of the god.

M.M. — September MMXI

Poem XX - Gothic

In the midst of night, out on the moor,
shadows were stirring at my coming.

There, caught in the restless mourning wind,
the moon illumined all with its leering lidless eye.
With trepidation engendered and a weakness coming over me,

                        I set forth further into the dark.

Along my way I met, coldly, fiends of my past and present,
their hands lunging towards my neck; they were numberless,
        a ruthless swarm merciless in their onslaught.

But only one would I truly see:
              her cloaked spectre in the moonlit gloom, flitting within the mist.

Once upon a fadeless time I had her;
                                    she was rapt by the lavish love in which we lived.

    But our eldritch flame burnt too fiercely and we lost ourselves in the giddying decadence,
                                                 lost to time and its tendrils that took everything
                                                 slowly away.

Here in the wasteland
               nothing seemed truer, more honest and forthright,
than the bereavement I felt—
        than the dreariness pervading the heath and my soul.

M.M. — November MMX; Februarius, Maius–Iunius, September MMXI

Ex Tempore V / Aubade III

Lines written in an effusion aboard an early-morning train travelling from Glasgow to Carlisle on 15th September; "fulfilled and refined" after the experience.

I see a great fire!, there, to the east.
An amber-red glow with a latent immensity is slowly ascending.
The kingdom of deep, dark night is but a remnant,
its trace nearly subsumed in the fire and growing azure of the sky.

But now, before me: the mists rise over the pastures and rolling hills, and about the cold, silent trees.
Streams and creeks themselves seem to rise with the mist.
How thick it is, the incandescent lights of man shining so weakly within it.
—They come not even close to matching the fire's likeness!

In the distance: the kindling fire grows ever mightier!
And the clouds: they hail the coming of the imperial thing;
they are filled with an orange and red and—colour indescribable!, the very colour of Creation!

Is this Beauty?
Is that great fire and ancient thing also in me?

Here in this carriage do I feel the morning-chill outside that must eventually die?—in the greatest of births!
—the most fiery and most awful of advents!

The dull gold stretches now,
flung across the appearing firmament by the streaming clouds.
Surely this light is the herald of wonder—of all life—
recalling the earliest of days—earliest time—
when its rays struck the young earth and all those things that crawled or swam, which are long gone.
Those things rose in consequence of this fire that is now all-consuming and inexorable....

And at last!—the blinding rays break through the mist and clouds
and in triumph they parade!, displaying themselves so admirably.
The sky, the earth, the denizens below: they are now truly awakened.

At last! the Orb of eternal power, that I dare grasp and fit in my hand, begins its reign.
The Fire! the Light!—fierce, bright, beautiful!

Majesty Sun!, You are risen!

M.M. — September MMXI; edited September-October MMXI

Song IV

Inspired by the style of A. A. Nemtheanga of Primordial.

Know that I have always chosen well
Neither glory of Heaven nor savage fury of Hell
I have made my home on every welcoming shore
Broken bread with holy men
And lain with the most loving whore

Tell me what love can teach that hate cannot
Tell me that the wonder in life is absent in death

You see me as the serpent-fiend
Sporting his forked tongue of malignity
You say that my words taste of such acridity
But I see a decaying world so lost
The man-child blindly wanders, so lost

So give me the day
And I shall show you the darkest night
Give me my peace
And watch my war flaunt its terrible might

Though I know not where it is I will be lead
Come step on this broken path that I tread
Watch with me the setting of an ageless sun
The rising of the moon, under which I run

I hail the majestic unknown
And I will go, I will go
I will go even knowing that I must go alone

M.M. — Augustus-September MMXI

Words for a Picture I

To be read alongside 57921 by aleksandra88.

Her elegant clasping that feigns an intention barely impedes the emanation of her fantasy:
Her thoughts are uncaged; her reverie seeps through, into the world.

M.M. — September MMXI

"Death Mask" to be published

I received word today that "Death Mask" (Poem XVI; reprinted below) has been accepted for publication. Once again it will be within a Forward Poetry anthology: Forward Poetry Regionals 2011 - A World Of Verse. This follows my submission of the work in early July to the publishing company's 2011 Regionals Collections competition.

This competition is the same in which "Epyllion I" was submitted and subsequently published last year.

The publication date is 30 November 2011.


Poem XVI - Death Mask

A portrait perfectly moribund,
long had she left the sun;
the fever now sets her face,
her flame has lost its pace.

Sweat bedews her wan skin,
tears telling of future that has been.
As fingers gnaw at a noxious bed,
nothing more will ever be said.

She hears murmurs by the bedside
from those who had mollified and lied:
their hollow words becoming more indistinct,
the dimming of lights growing succinct.

The matters that raked or reminisced
are remnant flurries, and both missed.
Her weakening grasp to her blares,
resounding loud in the thickening air.

There had been a girl with such a laugh,
whose voice is now wine in a leaking carafe.
And a soft, scented hand will not caress,
will not run fingers through youthful tress.

And a boy: there had been a boy, and love;
she had once loved (dare she think thereof?).
But his smile heightens what is already sown—
this is the most she has ever felt so alone.

Convivial in melancholy's gainful time,
doom is wielding its hand, committing its crime;
cascading like the pain in her muted cries,
like the fear etching itself about her eyes.

Black draperies accent the intent with such candour,
though the panting of thought is so much grander.
The nothings in the room impress unavoidably:
the stark last things that she will ever see.

At last the gaunt gentleman has returned
with his look of apathy—and concern.
Or is it the lady of the impending storm
regarding between the flitting forms?

And what is that behind the door,
skulking now along the floor?
She is tightly grasped in its scheme;
it has burrowed deep in her bitter dream.

It comes close—creeping, creaking—
as she turns her head, speaking:
"I think it is time for us to go.
What is next? I wish to know."

When morning came, and dawn sung,
she was gone with a breath—the deed, done.
Nothing was left but the cold, vacant shell;
nothing but the mask Death had moulded so well.

M.M. — September-November MMX

Ex Tempore IV - Upon entering into dream from waking state

Extracted under the auspices of Mikael Fyrek's "There Was a Sudden Silence", "We Will Never Be Here Again", "Bathing in a River of Discordant Music", "All That Ever Shall Come to Pass" and "Between Nothingness and Eternity" whilst gazing at twilight through the window of an unlit bedroom.


Where now to wander?
Where now does this go?
Nowhere and everywhere; here and beyond.
Where else if not here?
and yet now here again,
       in this place—
                     the sweeping-over delight,
like a chill,
                           of my recurring returns.

M.M. — Iulius MMXI

Ex Tempore III

"TWIN ATTACKS TODAY IN THE... WE STAND STRONG AGAINST THIS..."

stifling heated breath of all these vocal–docile-kind in here—
Come, dearest;
come and dance with me in the street, under the dim lamplight,
with but the pitter-patter of the pouring rain as the rhythm to step to.
...
—say nothing to them; let us live for once, at last, the two of us.

M.M. — Iunius MMXI

Dramatic Fragment I - Lyzethras contemplates love

Nighttime, roofed by a cloudless sky. Lyzethras is sat on a rock by a pool of water. He is lost in thought when, noticing its reflection in the water, begins to address the Moon academically.

LYZETHRAS:
Love is quiet conversations that while away the night till the stars, listening attentively, bed and stirring light begrudges an end.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
Love is quiet conversations that probe deep crystal lakes in sequestered jewel-graven night.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
Love is entrancement by idiosyncrasies and distinctive motion.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
Love is all the world turned a-blur whilst gazing into twin orbs of star-fire—caverns of breathtaking dream....

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
(Standing; more ardently:) Love is realisation of the discreteness and absolute of mind of another.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
Love is heroic symphony, hailed by resounding chorus: thundering and rampant within.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
Love is gradual withdrawing of the veil of mystery: proceeding along an untrodden path, punctuated by little wonders.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
Love is elevation—edification—rising beyond mundane gratification.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

LYZETHRAS:
(Pause, then solemnly and profoundly:) Love is the impetus of comets.

THE MOON:

(Silence.)

Lyzethras ceases this one-sided confabulation, relents and returns to his thoughts. 

M.M. — Februarius-Martius MMX; Maius-Iunius MMXI

Poem XIX - Fallen Star

Ja komet król - a duch się we mnie wichrzy
jak pył pustyni w zwiewną piramidę -
ja piorun burz - a od grobowca cichszy
mogił swych kryję trupiość i ochydę.


Left to wither on this sea
Coloured a fatal mercury
Cast down from high above
What have they done to me?

I dared a glimpse far too long
Dreamt too well to that song
The face and voice of the Sun
So scorned by wingèd throng

Now my back is raw and burnt
Sovereignty imparted: a lesson learnt
From spire to ire I have fallen
And naught but ignominy have I earned

Where evernight holds I now dwell
Where resounds the fell death knell
In cavern and pit, by lake and river
My abode and realm, my eternal Hell

I once stood upon peaks and lofty heights
Whence I gained my defiant sight
Espied love of self and untempered potential
But now I wonder at but rock and stalagmite

Though better to rule here than serve in Heaven
Under the auspices of a tempestuous leaven
Brooding madly on new designs and signs
As six aspires, becoming greater than seven

I am the first great deviant
The admonished miscreant
Fated to strive against my lot
Ever unsettled this rebel malcontent

My light-blinded peers now me revile
They who flung me into bleak exile
And, then, when I turned back for a final glance
I saw my stolen glory, fronted by their smiles

But their triumph is premature
Their victory far from sure
From the deep I shall ascend
Right and might to meet my cure

Forth I extend my brand and arm
A gift for them worse than harm
They shall see before they reel
The enticing sway of my charm

Up I will soar with vengeance in train
Upon a mare of night with fiery mane
Leading the bellicose apostate host
My kith and kin will see the welkin stained

But when I once again see the Sun
When God is slain and my war is won
When I exalt my stars above His throne
Will then, at last, my pent tears run?

M.M. — November MMIX; Ianuarius-Martius, Maius MMXI

Pieces (I)

I have attempted with these verses ("pieces") to impart as directly, succinctly and naturally as possible certain experiences, concepts and phenomena—both the seemingly mundane and the veritably awe-inspiring—that I, that we all, come in contact with on a regular basis during the moments of life. They are structured in a simple manner, but (as I hope the reader will agree) exude a full measure of meaning and are poignantly personal. The titles are modelled on the titles of the movements of Gustav Holst's "The Planets".

"Fragrance, The Enervator"*

Caught in the waft of her wake;

inside I collapse, fallen to rapture and unhinging desire.

"Time, The Reaver"ª

Once-befores and wish-I-hads have come, stung and gone,

only to be missed in old age and in the summer of life.

"Beauty, The Majestic"

Quiver – reach and grasp without reach and grasp – fearless release in the ultimate subsumption:

all as the future runs wild in the mind and primordial light careers through time.

"Fear, The Constrictor"

Behind the nameless face; after the day, after the night; within the aspirant idea—

when within the self the ascending star is met by the only sin: a stifling shadow: restriction's shade.

M.M. — *December MMX; ªAprilis MMXI; Aprilis-Maius MMXI

Ex Tempore II

Spurred by Borknagar's "My Domain".

Sat at the top of the grassy hill
when night had descended

Sat at the top
when time and motion suspended

Panning wide: sprinkled stars twinkled, and the Way streamed across and flourished
Nourished by a loss that seemed to stay, crinkling a marred and wrinkled guide: spanning

his mind from spiral arm to spiral arm, to
when Kepler first distended

Then,
when upwards, yet outwards, I ascended

 M.M. — Martius MMX

Prose VI

She is sleeping—collapsed on her front, pillow-nestled head turned rightward at me; her naked back, with every beautiful breath in and out, rhythmically rising and falling....

A voyaging barque braves the midnight sea, prow dashing perilous waves with resolve. Below deck, loaded hammocks, filled bunks and filled berths, and occupied cabins stir. Above, the busy watch half-mindedly attend to this and that in the forbidding dark. One gapes in horror and disbelief at the Lady in White as she mouths something soundlessly and mournfully before throwing herself over the gunwale....

And her flaxen hair—tamed Medusan locks, winding like rivulets hidden deep within magical, forgotten forests—is made lustrous by the morning sun shining through the open casement window. In comes a breeze with a scent of the not-so-distant sea, mingling with the remaining intoxication of her fragrance....

The oaken hall is decked with fire and lit by its primal light. Here itinerant rogues and knights-errant come and go, some leaving their mark on this festive world of carnival mirth, others passing on with little more than silence as their word. Bards from the murkiest recesses of far-off lands recount tales tall and true. And the gypsy women dancing and gyrating like that warming fire; bodies painted in turquoise and jade, in glyphs and tribal tattoos....

With my keen, wandering eyes I run along the smoothness and corporeality of her skin. Her frame engenders a curious wonderment: its contour; its essence as the shell encasing an enigma, containing nebular machinery. The serenity settled on her quieted face—a lively conduit heretofore—belies the structure and interlacement within wrought by æons. My hand shifts momentarily; fingers eager to stroke her heavy drapery lids, to lift the infinite veil....

Here in this glen I have come to die. Amongst rock and root, and the verdancy, I will wait for my skin to wither and cake with ageless time. The moon will regale me with eternity in her nightly flourish; the sun will caress and bestow glimpses of my origin and terminal repose. The sage earth will tell me the secrets I long ago forgot whilst I watch my blood seep out of my cumbersome body, draining into the ground: a draught as summative recompense. And finally, when I am but bone and sinew, near the banks of a river that streams my ebbing life I shall lie atop a bed of moss, the warm air blanketing me. No more than this; all to let slip....

She stirs—an ever so simple thing, of hers alone.... I rouse her, and rekindle the dream.

M.M. — Aprilis, September MMX; Februarius-Martius MMXI

Metapoem II - Eight Dream Sequences of a September

The cityscape before me stood graven and desolate at sundown;
then: a blinding flash and concrete turned full of stars and alien jet black.

I turned away and looked through the window blinds
and under twilight I saw Her there, as I had known Her, ever as before.

At the shoulder I turned her around and she, beaming, smiled up at me.
I held her close, clasped her hand, and we were as one as we danced supplely.

A black shadowy form—anthropomorphic—rushed towards me, jabbing me in swift succession.
The façade of familiarity or kinship in the first instant soon faded and terror permeated all through me.

Awake I seemed yet I could not move—could not move!
Screaming in silence, I put all the force I could focus into just twitching my foot.

"[—do you think I am a whore? [—]"
"A whore? No, you are not a whore—] A whore is pure self-indulgence—]"

He came as if from nowhere and caught us unawares, assailing first him then me.
I pierced his throat sidelong—hesitant thrusts at first—and his eyes turned saurian, green.

Three loud raps and I arose frightful in a sodden daze;
but no one was there at the door to hold accountable, to welcome me back.

M.M. — September MMX

Poetry Rivals' Collection 2010 - Whispers of the Mind

Last September I mentioned that "Poem XII - And so the world" was going to be published by Forward Poetry (formerly Forward Press) in late November.

I've finally(!) received a copy of Poetry Rivals' Collection 2010 - Whispers of the Mind, shown below. (I have to admit, though, the typo in the poem's title is somewhat annoying.)

Click on images for higher resolution

Ex Tempore I

and from the heart's last pattering
came a fluttering
and a sputtering
from the mouth that was but a stuttering

there in the dark
gasped a flicker, rioted a spark
where laboured screeches of the horned lark
grew faint—desperate to leave its mark

quivering for but a while
love and hate misstepped in file
and were swallowed whole, wholly reviled
by men, who thought them too mild

just as dawning suns stood
tall they were shortly trampled under foot
by romping sons—just because they could
but did they ever wonder that they knew they would?

I had been there as well, the growing mould
on my skin telling it all, but it had already rolled
up; and then I was left alone and cold
my pulse struggled a word, but slowed

M.M. — Ianuarius et Februarius MMXI

Poem XVIII - Where are you?

Where are you?
What, at this moment, do you do?
Do you think of me?
Do you think of me as I do of you?
Are your dreams also filled with the same things you wish were true?
How does the sky above appear to you?
Does it speak to you of love, or make you cry?
Perhaps it seeks to make you sigh?
It takes me away, that much I can say,
To places where I can wonder, as I often do of your face:
Moments that can tear me asunder.
And the fear, through the years, has not been quite absent;
But always present, even if at times out of mind, is regret,
My closest friend who lets me never forget;
Who, true-blue, will make all this a tale without end,
Subsisting gratuitously—or maybe graciously?
Is it I who insists on this? Do I wish it to continue?
Because it has been you?
Will always be you?
I would much like that I knew for certain,
That the haze raised, this heavy curtain before me.

M.M. — September MMX; Februarius MMXI