Loss

Lifting springtime winds invigorate humanly motions in gradation
and the returned sun, its presence once again noticed, lords longer every new day.

But even autumn leaves were first summer;
the bare, wintered limbs are ever the hard, stiff bones within all seasons.

Ex Tempore XLI
M.M. — 26-Feb-2013

Words for a Picture X

Shedding flakes of light,
coursing and careering,
—thrashing:

the night-mare that slips through the breach.

Swift shifting life,
untempered, untamed
—perfected.

Self-perpetuating now, the creator once beast.

M.M. — 17-Feb-2013

A Boy to a Girl

It started with a whirl of your hair, a tilt of your head;
It started slow and timid—then fell in like lead.
I hadn't believed in love because love hadn't believed in me,
But now every time I look at you thunder is my heartbeat.

And yet I am so afraid of this,
Of what would happen with one kiss.
The armour I have forged, I have worn for so long;
The walls I have built, have stood so strong.

It's true what they say—about the little things:
I know, without even knowing, your favourite ring,
How you got that scar, why you laugh at the word "stool".
These things are important, because they are you.

When I think about you I feel fire—
A fire, a heat, the clenching of desire;
And the turbulent sea, and a release.
It's the upheaval of war, the prosperity in peace.

You have impressed on me like a winter daydream,
And linger in my mind like an old summer theme.
I feel like I have been here before,
Lost with you, walking some hidden shore.

But could you just be a wicked dream?
Or are you really all that you seem?
As near to perfection as I could ever know,
That piece that's been missing to make me whole.

I am just a lonely boy writing words on a page
For a girl he first saw dancing on a stage.
But I wonder, will I ever show you my lines?
The most precious things I could give, these verses of mine.

I have waited for this half my life.
Now my quiet heart sings loud and burns bright.
Here at last—I finally know.
I am choosing to dive into the deep and follow the glow.

Poem XXXIII
M.M. —  Feb-2013

Ask yourself...

Ask yourself, at this very moment: Are you happy? And I do not mean if you are happy today, or have been happy recently. I mean, are you happy with the state of your life? Are you content with the person you are? With what you have achieved or desire to accomplish? Sometimes it is necessary to ask these things of yourself. These questions that matter. The questions that scare you. The questions that will change you. You learn many valuable things from facing that which you most fear, that which is all undressed, naked and bare. No frivolities, no shy-aways, no mask in the resplendent masquerade – just unsettling and cathartic truth. One question with a thousand answers; one answer for a thousand questions.

Prelude to "Yr Wyddfa"

For Joel Thomas Martin, friend and stouthearted companion

I rise with the morning sun and it greets me
with young dawn's sky-full gift of audacity.
A gift gathered from the coasts, islands
and hills that surround my sleepy northern home.
And as I look to the south: a journey back in time
to learn what time really means.

For what is older than the oceans that could swallow whole
the nations that men kill for,
and the mountains that move in inches and whose age is million-year?

Even in the southerly distance these mountains lord over me,
though their right to dominion is only accorded
in virtue of the dust of which we are both composed—
the dust that gives breath to air, heat to fire and motion to sea.

So let us go, then, my Friend, and ascend that peak,
to trudge through the yester-night snow and face the primal fear upon the slopes;
to find those ancient tarns, where in one Caledfwlch rests
and across which perhaps the portal to Afallon awaits two intrepid enough to seek it out.

And, at the top of the world,
we shall gaze and marvel at the Dragon's land that has been here before us
and which will be here long after we are dust, air, fire and sea.

Poem XXXII
M.M. — Apr-, Dec-2012; Feb-2013

What Follows...

It is time for a change
Time to leave behind the past
And make new memories
New hopes, new desires
New horizons and new fires to excite you

When and how you step are unimportant
Only that you step
What and if are for another day
Leave them by the wayside along your way

Trust in what you know
It shall guide you through
Life goes on and on
Burning on like the sun

What follows after the end of this line is up to you

Ex Tempore XL
M.M. —  07-Feb-2013