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