"What to do with this love"

What to do with this love in disarray?
This precious little thing lost in the wild
Its monument remains unfinished
As its metropolis falls to ruin
It has striven for an age and
Bounded across oceans of dream
It eagerly stroked the edge of freedom
As it careered with the impetus of comets
What to do with this ailing star?
Entering its terminal phase in the void
A stasis created by chaos, by entropy
Its kinetics measure zero-degree
It collapses into itself at every step

M.M.

"Come again to me in unsettled dream"

Come again to me in unsettled dream
With a crop of stars in your hair
And your Promethean soul laid bare
Undressed by winter caress
And uncoiled by rebelliousness

Remind me of your sylvan song
And the heady times now long gone
When once we were raging storms
Expending ourselves like lightning
And verging on immortality

crucible

deep rumbling in the vaults

unlight crawling out from the corner

encroaching upon me, shrouding me in night

I see a diamond shining erratically

quivering like a sodden child

quivering with amorphous fear

white beams struggling for breath and reach

this cell within which I crumble

slowly, through aeons of dogmatic word

speaking shrilly and grating soul

blinding sight and effacing my one-letter name

I dine with the shadows that drape the walls

brokering on behalf of stars lost in disarray

demons lit by tremors of implacable thought

they give voice to night, they proselytize

the darkness delivers me to myself

stripped bare by godlessness, immolating faith

and up from the ground, where I festered

my own word tears me apart

as I rebuild myself, one sin at a time

M.M.

Prometheus

The dawn of day
The millennia etched in the horizon
Suns that have risen for eternity

Awakening with great mind's eye shut
From a grave, stillborn and wretched
Layered with absolute cold and stagnation
Beleaguered by the tides of restrictive time

Womanly in vigor and disrupting order
Love coming from deep unknown
Nurtured to manhood by emboldened will
Conation and will, desirous of freedom and more

Risen to heights, beyond mountain peaks
Declaring war with petulant gods
Armed with a sword of light
A coruscating blade, cleaving the black void

A circle of fire, a ring of flames
A storm of ignited elements streaking across the empyrean
Fire in the flesh of man, in the heart of woman
Kinetics of force enflamed
Truth raging ever more wildly
As the vibrant colors of horizons change hue

Destiny in mortal hand
Death and life as courses undetermined
A soul found between a thought and a word

M.M.

"A rush of blood to the heart"

A rush of blood to the heart
A heart stricken and enlivened
An enlivened soul rearing to crescendo

Maybe this is just a dream of a yesteryear
A memory come back to haunt me
Never-dying and perpetual
A dream living wild off itself

She's all the proof I've ever needed
A consignment straight from the echoes
Resonant and deep in my inner world
A secret wish and a burning desire given word

Carried along by the primordial storm
A storm raging and wrathful and velvet red
Red and black, like black encroaching night
Nights spent wrapt by her dominion
The dominion in which my mind is most free

—M.M.

infra

light bent askew- the blessed eyeing sin askance
humanity drained & obsidian substance infused
a line Of terror streaking across the silence
wordless, formless -light bent askew

Appassionata

Like light cast into a swirling mass

of night, I am torn and I am stripped

A mind trapped by the confines that

love has erected around me. A passion

tantamount to violence, softly infusing

I lift myself and bare my soul to the sun

Run by the cold rivers, in the ancient wood

Dreamless the dreamer in the dead of night

My nights that she keeps, with her pale, beautiful

hand; a hand I wish like madness to hold

I slip away, to the wayside, to the inside

deep into the core of a starless vault

where she alone shines, bright and warm

The might of it, the weight of it—the

simple thought of her nestled next to my heart

Forces that came forth from heat, kinetic

energy come into being like the first bursts

of light: wrapt, as I am, by her movements

Sonorous and dulcet voice repeated in aural

memories, or a twirl and a tilt of the head in visual

scenes of just yesterday or the first day we spoke

Dreamless this dreamer who dreams for requital

but the dream effaced away like mist of an

early winter morning. An inner light that has grown

in me illuminates landscapes both arid and fertile

The streams of future are wayward stallions

unbridled and untamed. Just as passion and desire

run unfulfilled. Rove the rover lost in his own land

a land no longer his own but reigned by a hand

and a light cupping his heart and irradiating his mind

A mind that has been satisfied at long last, by a mind

stitched together the same, with the same sheen of darkness

All like water through a sieve and physical laws perfect

to a precision imperceptible by man. Because she is

precision, a blade with an edge so fine that my thoughts

themselves are rent. And assorted as they are in strange

new ways, by the beck of her word and her worth.

Regina of my night; dusk under your tow

countess of my day; dawn encroaching with your step

If truth be the sole judge of this passion, then my crucible

has been passed, and exceeded, and utterly engulfed by

the fire in her eyes, the blaze of her caress and the

inferno-maelstrom of her mind. Dominion of passion

Turbulence of storm-assailed sea. Love of a vastness

never known before by this dreamless dreamer

"Not by design"

Not by design or by intent

It did not become fact because it was meant

The two streams seemingly coursed apart

For years on end, till in one abrupt shift

They collided into one another

I lost all my words, and felt nothing but a chaotic peace

Standing in the sun, I felt the light fill me inside

It was the Answer I did not know I had longed for

The epiphany to efface the Question I did not know to ask

In a quiet room, on a day of little mention

A thought cracked like lightning

A clarity swept like fire through my being

In that moment, with no warning, I finally knew

My heart

My mind

Both belonged to her

"I dreamt of a grassy beach"

I dreamt of a grassy beach, of a storm approaching from the sea. Dark and heavy clouds moving as a living entity toward the land. I stood upon a mound and felt the coming change, felt the wind and the cold that grew gradually. I was nothing but a witness to an event as old as the earth. A rhythm of nature. A moment in time. And through it all, throughout my watching, I wondered of her - saw her in the distance. For this storm from the sea, this dream of dark and wind and rain - was her. An event of such great magnitude that it would change the land forever - she would change me forever.

"The desert ran on"

The desert ran on for years
An expanse as wide as the mind
Where time weighed down with stellar mass
But brought no change

In the distance of the night
Desire lit the way
Warmed the cold that lingered
Desire that was a half-dream
Giving flight to a wingless man

And it all just ran on
Far into the breadth of the sky
And into the deep of the heart
A craft of light and love
But solidified and unending

M.M. — 03-Sep-2016

Experimental VI

Composed whilst intoxicated.

One star, one form,
We are one storm
Held together by prediction and model
But no storm
And no form
That could ever contain our soul
That could ever contain our connation.
But held together by the sound of galaxies.
As far as my blinded eye could ever see.
From one event-horizon t'another.
The sound of galaxies—
Music to the ever-eternal
And language to who are first-born
Begot of reality and the ripples of consciousness
That attempt to normalize the planes.

M.M. — Aug-25-2016

I think I stepped out of myself. What I saw as I walked on were just shapes and forms rushing by me. Or grinning faces selling something or other that came half-alive, and jittered. Time shifted awry. In the wrong way. I think I stepped out of myself. Watching myself from just to my side...or...maybe not my side. Someone else's. ...Something else's. Dissociated. I think there are planes of reality, that normally are layered. Interleaved. Mine went all askew. Mind went all askew.

Living with Anxiety in a World of Chaos

About this time last November I shared on Facebook an open letter about my battle with major depression. What I didn't also mention at the time were my related struggles with anxiety. For those who may be unaware, depression and anxiety are highly comorbid. While I wouldn't consider myself to have an anxiety disorder, my bouts of anxiety can be sufficiently disruptive to my mental health that I'd like to briefly discuss them. This is in light of previously vowing to myself to always be open about my experiences with my ill mental health, with an added motivation of helping myself and others in the same situation cope better.

In particular, though, the reason for this post stems from a train of thoughts that I've been having recently: that of living with anxiety in a world of chaos. What I mean by a world of chaos is a world or a reality that is inherently unpredictable. Or, one in which we cannot control future events. Control, or rather the lack thereof, is what I would consider to be one principal driver of anxiety. If we could have things our way, I believe we who suffer from anxiety would have our hand on every lever, our hand on every string that controls the chaos of the world. I think this is how we see it, how we wish we could steer things so that we would never have to feel again the second-guessing, the guilt, the pacing heart and the loss of ability to focus that we feel.

The world is replete with chaos. And I don't just mean the daily tragedy, catastrophe or cataclysm. I also mean the events, however small, that blindside us. You know, the ones that really hit us when we least expect. And really, it's those kinds of instances of chaos that fuel most of the anxiety we feel on a continual basis. But I want to emphasise this concept of chaos, because I think it's important to grasp and (eventually) accept if gripped by anxiety.

When it comes to external input or stimuli, the mind is by and large designed to respond in a particular fashion or default to a particular state. That is, it is built to process things based on a predefined set of expectations. And if the input it receives doesn't adhere to these expectations, the mind attempts to correct (either itself or the input) using certain heuristics. There are multitudes of empirical tomes providing evidence for this. The special problem with anxiety is the way in which these heuristics overwhelm or disrupt our well-being. In a logical and rational world we would react to what are sometimes just inconveniences, misunderstandings or failures in communication in a logical and rational manner. Or if we lived in a world where we could predict and control events we would never have to feel the dread and loss of certainty of outcomes. But this is not our reality. We exist on a plane dominated by chaos. And that leads to ongoing discord in those prone to anxiety.

Finally, for introverts like myself, I think anxiety has a uniquely strong effect. A key feature of our personalities is that we do a lot of thinking; we live in our heads. Add to that mix a propensity to worry about and perseverate on the most illogical and intrinsically meaningless of thoughts or events and you have yourself opportune conditions for anxiety to thrive. Our mode of being is so inwardly oriented that we are especially sensitive to the chaos that originates from the external world. And if you are an introvert who values above all else control over your own life, then it seems only natural, given the laws of entropy that govern reality, that we succumb to anxiety.

M.M. — 24-Jul-2016

Your Golden Call

Another piece of me falls for you
Another part of my soul falls in you
My paper heart set to flight by an autumn wind
At the behest of your golden call

Waiting for the best part of half a lifetime
Keeping lit the flame in the old lantern
And watching the night-shrouded wood
Listening nightly for your golden call

I do not know where I belong
I do not know what to do with this love in me
This gift of embers and summer's seeds
A paltry patchwork of a story longing to be told

I would sound the horns of war for you
Or infuse wintering peace in inflamed men
Rewrite the tomes of victors' histories
Just to have your sword buried in me

This light in me, this convection deep in me
Desires a world unto itself, realised by your love
For the ever-winter night to fade at long last
And I unleashed by your golden call

M.M. — 17-Jul-2016

Living Storms

Kings and queens of our time
Princes of the universe
And princesses as regal as stars
We were all of these and more

And we were nothing
Specks and dust wiped aside
At a whim of a mercurial child

We were halves, short of a whole
And yet everything we ever wanted to be

Because when the sun kissed our cheeks
And the moon lit up our eyes
We were chosen
Chosen to live this way
Either in pain, or in joy
But chosen to live nonetheless

What are we if not storms
Turbulent and ever-changing
Destined for some unknown end
But alive! Alive!

We are nothing
And yet we are everything

M.M. — 15-Jul-2016

The Child and the Star

The child sought to climb the oldest oak
To scale the first sprout of the earth
Enwrap himself with its deep roots

Then when she fell from the sky
In a sphere of celestial making
He felt the pulse beat in his chest

But all is ever lost in the din of the world

Years of creating a cartograph of the stars
To construct a bridge from one realm to another
To find, once again, the pulse
The oscillation within the cosmic noise

She was it all, this star from the start of time
Who came down from much higher than the earth's oak

A sphere and a gift—the only thing he knew to be true
Lost forever in the din of a stunted world

M.M. — 10-Jul-2016

Depression (Iteration 4)

You've paid every cent of hell
While laid down in a wretched cell

Given all of yourself to nothingness
To a nameless face in darkness

Trust me when I say there's another way
That dawn brings salvation with every new day

Just pick yourself up and rise like the sun
Burning bright, in the night, and take what comes

Staring into the mirror and see a face in pain
But showing nothing of the blood long stained

Peel at the cracks, straighten your back
And steel yourself for the coming attack

There's a heat deep in your torn heart
Something just begging for a start

A chance to live, a chance to fight
A chance to do yourself right

Year upon year, you count all your wrongs
But how many times have you proved yourself strong?

This blood, your blood, streams through
Will keep you filled, keep you alive, and make you new

And when all is dead and all is done
And when you find the darkness gone

You will see that you were always free
Just like you've always meant to be

M.M.  — 04-Jul-2016

"Up from cracked earth"

Up from cracked earth
Root of evil, vine of sin
Fallen stars with burnt wing
Shadow and soil and storm

Unmasked with shattering crown
While defiling the seed
And dissecting the creed
Come forth from nothingness

Minds of meek men
Cowardly in the light
Cowering in the night
Lifeless in their shells

Through aeons of dogma
First of hell, then of heaven
Like tempest of golden leaven
Rebirthed to cataclysm

Portals of time once askew
Now corrected and set aright
With the gateways now abright
Come forth, birthing from the earth

M.M. — 30-Jun-2016

"Whirling somewhere"

Whirling somewhere

Up there, there in the night

In the dark of the night

I was drawn to you

Starshine lighting the void

Mind filled with fiery sparks

Portals opened in your eyes

I was drawn to you

Bursts of light, births of stars

So far, so far, up there in the night

Careering elements set aflame

The same that pierced my heart

The same that drew you to me

Just rotations of light

Of stars shining, at the dawn of time

Somehow, somewhere, sometime

I had you, you and I, you were mine

Once upon, when time was not time

Up there, where space stretched

And coalesced our minds

In my hands, in my eyes

Fire and light and time

And you, and you, and you and I

Lost up there, in the night

Just you and me, free of time

Frozen, in motion, on fire

In the light, in the void

Just how it first was, and always was

When something drew me to you

Just rotations of light

Just us, in starshine

 

M.M. — 28-Jun-2016

"They raised themselves"

They raised themselves to
the purest of all falsehoods.
Just as they raised their guns
to commit the impurest of acts.
With no sight in their sights
but black and white and crimson.
They brought nothing to the world,
and only took away its light.
How brave they thought themselves,
to deal in death, never courageous
enough to come to the table of life.
And as the flowers cried and died
the men in white castles prattled on.
But they only killed themselves.
They only ever kill themselves.

M.M. — 13-Jun-2016

"Death risen from the grave"

Death risen from the grave
Life that extinguishes every beginning
Imperial star shining pure darkness
The void cradling the spark of creation

What came forth from nothing
Became the patchwork of the universe
Dreams assembled from logic
A nightmare construed as a fantasy

The dreamless, the lifeless
The deathless, the less-than-nothing
What came forth from the universe
Became the masterwork of the end

M.M. – 05-Jun-2016

Goodness

Goodness in a man comes in measures and portions. Each ounce a piecemeal attempt to balance his actions and deeds. What goodness apportioned him he loves till he can love it no more. And when love of it is lost he becomes an empty container, a vessel seeking a power of equal worth. But how can he gauge worth in something when he himself is bereft of all that is worthy? Yes, goodness is poured into a man, and he sups of himself because it is all that he has, in truth. In truth goodness—to be good—is so easily stolen, or so easily squandered. I would give away all my goodness just to feel nothing of its grace, to feel nothing of its guilt. Goodness becomes in a man a curse of his own making. Goodness becomes in a man a meaningless plaque and a bespoke commemoration so self-exalted that its ideal is a joke. Show me a man's goodness and I will show you a carafe that can never be filled.

"I went down to the river"

I went down to the river one afternoon, down to the waters cold as ice and old as time. I went to drink, and I went to know. Kneeling down I took a moment and I peered at the stream, and watched it course, ripple, bubble, turn and shift as it went. Cupping both hands I scooped a portion of its life and I drank. I drank and drank again. But nothing came to me. I looked at my hands, and just wondered at them. I scooped once more but this time I let the water seep through my fingers. I watched this, the waters freeing themselves of me, returning to stream. So it was that I realised that I came for the wrong reason. I had asked the wrong question. Instead, I realised at that moment that everything I held up to that point could not be held forever in my hands. And what I could keep indefinitely was not to be held but felt -- remembered -- loved. I was not meant to keep these things; I was not meant to think them mine. They were meant to course, ripple, bubble, turn and shift as they went. Just as I was meant to.

M.M.

The Scientist in Love

I am a man who thinks in very logical and reason-based terms, which is why for me science is a discipline in which I feel supremely comfortable. But as a consequence of this manner of thinking I continually struggle to understand or cope with characteristically irrational concepts such as love. This composition is about that very struggle.

"These are the better of days,

when it is science that keeps me up at night

and not love,"

he said to himself as he lay there in the dark.

The world for him was to be ordered and understood,

delineated neatly like the structure of snowflakes.

But neatly his struggle with love

certainly was not.

He could not measure the arcs and vectors

along which his emotions travelled when he thought

of Her.

The thunder, the pain, the longing,

the rain that kept falling—

in his heart there was chaos and unpredictability,

things he could not fathom in his usual way.

What rules were he to follow

in the game of love?

Where there rules even at all?

Follow one set

and he would be faced

with another.

No rules, it seemed, no order in this plane.

Why was it that he found himself

calm and collected

when tackling ideas and churning theory,

but

unsettled, unhinged and unable

to think when delving into his own heart?

And why was it that

She,

of all the people he knew, held such power over him?

He could not measure Her, could not deduce or infer

what manner of system She was.

She was a model who's every parameter just made his chest

...ache.

The logic of the universe was lost to him when his eyes

locked with Hers.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016

"Sometimes I struggle"

Sometimes I struggle telling the difference between dream and reality.
Sometimes I am stuck in the nebulous realm between sleep and waking.
Moments when I find myself trapped in my dream-fantasies.
Especially when I dream of Her—I hold onto all that I desire of Her, all that I wish were true.
I cannot tell what is real and what is not when I am with Her,
in half-remembered memories or self-deceiving revelries.
Sometimes, in hypnopompic hallucination, I believe that She is finally mine,
that She has always been with me, without any measure of time to estimate how long.
And at these times I wish would never leave the dream, to never be ejected back into the world.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016

The Stars and Time

When you next have a moment, take a look up at the night's sky, when it is clear and you can see the stars. And then think on this: The stars that you gaze at, those spheres of fire now long dead that are now but signatures of light streaming to our planet—those are the very same stars that everyone who lives or who has ever lived has gazed at at one point in their lives. Imagine that. What you see in your view is the same image that someone millennia before you once saw. Such perpetuity. We are but a moment of a moment in the cosmic thread of time. And of this you might think: "How small I am! How meaningless!" Because in the face of such an incomprehensible amount of time that is what any finite, self-aware being would think! But maybe it shouldn't be so terrifying. Maybe all it is is a matter of perspective. Yes, we are here, for the shortest of times, but we are here nonetheless! We are real and we exist! We are a speck in the vastness of the universe, but we are the universe! The universe as we know it simply would not be without every single speck that makes it up. And we are not meaningless. We think we are meaningless because our definition of meaning is scaled up to the level of time entire. But that doesn't make a lot of sense when everything we are and everything we know or will ever know is at the same scale as the thread of our own existence! Our definition of meaning is not at the level of the universe or of the entirety of time—our meaning is defined by the time we are alive and existent. And in that respect I think we matter quite a whole lot!

Depression (Iteration 3)

What falls in the rain
in the nighttime of the world?
I see the rain when shone by the street lamps,
each drop careering to the ground.

There are bodies hunched about themselves
rushing through the falling, with no sound but steps.
No words and no acknowledgement of me.
I cannot reach them.
I cannot connect with them. Not truly.
I do not seem to know how.
Never seemed to have known.
But I try, as they run past me.

We are all vessels I think, enclosed in ourselves.
The lucky are able to breach their shells,
to touch the faces of others.
But we who are not so fortunate
ever pick at the thickened walls
with whatever implements we come to fashion.
Hammering and picking away
with what little hope that has not yet been ruined.

Nothing but a hollowness within.

I think I know what falls in the rain:
I fall in the rain.

M.M. — 24-Mar-2016

The Scientist Dreaming

He dreamt of quantum mechanics.
Coursed down the rivulets of time and space.
In his palm there rested the sands formed in stars,
now long gone but alive in different forms.
His matter was loose within him,
though "within" lost its meaning.

In magic and momentum spun the tops of nuclei.
Every single one of them he admired in his wonder.

Diving into his own mind he found the hearth
of his soul, and the furnace of his being.
The smithy of all that churned and stirred within.
Metal or maybe electricity, perhaps a little of both.

The frames of thoughts were made known to him,
their physical bodies and their intricacies.
Their fleeting lifespans slowed to a millennium.
For through millennia upon millennia both he and they
were put together, according to nature's supreme pleasure.
What esoteric riddles were solved by him then were soon forgot.

And somewhere in the ocean of stars in the upper spheres
he caught the briefest of sights of other shapes and other forms.
Movements in the void, altering the great rhythm.
Phantoms that peered in, for but a moment.
Other minds? Other worlds? Just something other?

Bodiless at the end of his journey he found himself
somewhere warm, somewhere familiar and yet unknown.
Resting in the core of a sun he slept, or awoke, once again.

M.M. — 22-Mar-2016

On Understanding

I've been lying in my bed this Saturday morning thinking about how we come to understand a given idea, concept or phenomenon. For example, "the pursuit of happiness", where in the United States this is synonymous with the so-called American Dream. We can understand, in its whole, what it means to pursue happiness, what it means to desire it and why. But how do we come about to understand the details and nuances of such an idea? Some individuals appear to come to an understanding simply by being told or instructed of its meaning by others—whether these be parents, teachers, religious figures or the government. But that seems to me insufficient, inadequate and in some cases utterly incorrect if we want to have actual understanding about an idea. And I think the rationale behind this is sensible and straightforward: if one wants to understand the world, the world in which one exists, one must be able to define, appraise, critique and even seek to change the meaning of a given idea or phenomenon (as far as this would be possible). And in order to do these things one cannot rely on static and passive "understanding" imparted by others. One must have the ability to reason the meaning of a thing, and thereby to reason something into understanding.

How would you do this? What is meant by reasoning something into understanding? I think it really just means that you endeavour to think upon a thing from all possible perspectives, and to compare and contrast the factual and actual implications and consequences it has upon the world in which it exists. In the case of the pursuit of happiness, we can, for ourselves, define what is meant by it. But more importantly, we can come to understand what is meant by it by critically thinking about how it is sought, how realistic it is to achieve, the many manners in which it is achieved and the positive and negative consequences it has on ourselves, our peers and our society. This, I believe, is what is meant to understand.

M.M. — 19-Mar-2016

"In the early hours of the day"

In the early hours of the day, on a brisk autumn morning,
I sat on the steps leading up to the monument.
I sat and wondered at the world.
The minuteness of everything was so poignant.
A rustling of leaves, the whistling in the wind.
A father and daughter came into my view,
and at them too I wondered and pondered.
The little girl was so full of life and innocence,
the father visibly content and young as well.
What was their world like, I thought to myself?
Different from mine? The same? Something in between?
A microcosm of their own they had certainly.
I sat and watched and contemplated
on the unknown nuances of their unknown lives.
The breeze picked up a little as I sat there thinking,
reminding me that change is the only real constant in life.
How many changes had there been in my own short life?
How many of them I wished had never happened?
I did not know, but at this I wondered.
The day before, now a memory, was in itself
a moment in time distinct from all others.
Self-contained and self-defined.
A past and fleeting moment in time.
And today and tomorrow just the same.
Time, the king of all things.
Destroyer and creator.
There is nothing, really, to life but time and change.
Or so I figured, there on the steps, on a Sunday morning,
as I watched the world and it watched me.

M.M. — 18-Mar-2016

"There was a brief opening in the soul"

There was a brief opening in the soul
Lubricated by a little liquor
In I dove (or out I flew)
Up in the night's sky a canvas
One like a mirror, of reflection
The origin of all we know is ourselves
This then I came to know
Simply wayward comets careering
Trying to collide, but usually missing
I grant to you passage through an opening
But am just pierced, or passed through
Perhaps I am moved a little, but never enough
It is all but a repeated act, a dance
Today perhaps something or someone new
But tomorrow it will be just as before

M.M. — 17-Mar-2016

"And there, upon her face"

And there, upon her face, rested the aura of peace.
The calmness of a still lake out in a winter's morning.
Not a word nor an expression—just peace there laid.
I was so easily caught in it. Fell in her as a falling feather.

M.M. — 14-Mar-2016

"You see, I am too much of myself"

You see, I am too much of myself. I am too within myself.
It has been my constant undoing, a cage in and of itself.
It is quite easy to see why: A spirit trapped in confines
is a spirit with nowhere to go, nowhere to grow.
As much as I am built like this—and I've liked it just fine—
it no longer is enough, no longer keeps me up.
There are parts missing, you see, there are parts of me
that I have needed for some time now, important things.
It is clear to me that more needs to be brought into me,
from the outside, from others, from without that which is me.
And there is much space to be filled, much left incomplete.

M.M. — 08-Mar-2016

The Traitor

If today you would cast my name away
And let me diminish at the end of day
Remember that it was I who stood as stone
Who brandished his arm and all his bones
In the face of men who held heinous sway

You remember now they who wish you slaves
Who think of you as rats and knaves
Who would have you on your knees and backs
And then you will know why I chose the rack
Why I now here end in life in defiant staves

My sisters of the forgotten black-streets
And my brothers who die in the heat
I acclaim ye all as my fellows and my kin
Who would share in my criminal sin
I will hail you when the Ferryman I greet

And to cowards and servile puppet-men
Curses to you and your death-dealing pens
You who have sent thousands to the tomb
As you sit in filth, fortune and stolen rooms
I will call to you from the grave once again

Come then, Hangman—the noose if you please
The rope my breath to take and my life to seize
No remorse, nary a regret and to hell with mercy
I am at the end the first free man you shall see
And the last you shall ever see on his knees

M.M. — 07-Mar-2016

Depression (Iteration 2)

Were I to give you my name it would be
Hopelessness.

Were I to give you my word it would be
Weariness.

Were I to give you my thought it would be
Anxiousness.

Were I to give you my mind it would be
Emptiness.

Were I to give you my heart it would be
Weightlessness.

Were I to give you all of me it would be
Darkness.

M.M. — 06-Mar-2016

"She was in my dream again"

She was in my dream again.
I saw her as I knew her once—
a caress upon my cheek,
a lightness come over my heart.

It was all like some memory
that never happened.
A fantasy filled with desire
and an ageless aching longing.

I wanted her as I once did—
my body pressed against hers,
myself in her and she enfolding me.
Motion and heat and carnality.

But just as it was back then
it ended before it even began.
I would have pushed aside the world to be hers.
But she is a dream.
She will always be just a dream.

M. M. — 04-Mar-2016

Ownership in the Love Ultimate

Since submitting my PhD thesis this past Thursday—an accomplishment that I will not be ready to fully take in until I defend it—I have been ruminating on the things that I own, my possessions, the things that are of me, that are mine. The PhD is the quintessential piece of evidence that I have been blessed with an intellect, with a sharp and rational mind. It is this that has made me into the young man of science and letters that I am today. That is unquestionable. My intellect, and the faculties it consists of, are mine. And I am not modest enough to deny that they distinguish me from a fair proportion of people. But, are they the most important things that I possess?

I am not a rich person, or a poor one. I want for nothing and I want nothing—nothing physical I mean, nothing that I can buy. I am quite content with my financial status and will be happy with it as I earn more income in the future (which will happen as a natural consequence of my progressing in my professional career as a scientist and nothing more). So, my things of financial worth, they are not the most important things I have because I don't value them that highly.

But when I think of the people in my life.... The story then changes. What do people (my friends and family I specifically mean here) give me? They give me companionship, friendship, understanding, hope and love. They give me love. I have love. No, I have certain kinds of love, and they are all important to me. But, the most important?

No, not these various kinds of love, but all-encompassing love. The love ultimate. I mean the love of one other (in my case, anyway). The love that I have been searching for since I finally began to understand what it was and that I needed it. You see, everything I own and have gives me tone and nuance. Love, however, gives me meaning. Love, to me, is the most important thing. The only thing I think I really want in my life. The thing that will save me from a life of just tone and nuance. Love is what will free me. Free me from myself—because I am too much of myself. You see, everything and everyone in life constitute things and persons that you interact with, that you have exchanges with. You share these things or you share yourself with others. That, however, is not the case with love, the love I mean. With the love I mean, the love ultimate, you have an ownership that is not just your own: it is an ownership of two parties, you and the one you love. This is very different from all else I've been talking about because love, by definition, cannot be unless it is a thing owned by two others. Therefore, the most important thing for me is not what I have or what I possess. The most important thing is what I and another would possess, would have. Love is not a thing of single possession. It is shared... no–it is co-owned. And that to me is what I desire most, what I want most, what I need most.

M. M. — 28-Feb-2016

Depression (Iteration 1)

I am just built like this, I guess, and
that little fucking voice of mine in
my head is just a consequence of
certain atoms assembling into place,
certain DNA and certain cells
deciding to act up as they wish. Which
would be fine were it not for the
shadows...the shadows...the shadows.
I dwell inside myself, and the walls
are not painted. There are things
scurrying around, somewhere, in the
pitch black. I talk to them quite a lot.
It makes me weary, though. Intensely
so. But at least they talk back. I think
it would be worse if they didn't. Well,
maybe not. But at least the scurrying
things want me. Maybe they love me too?
That wouldn't be so bad, I think.

M. M. — 23-Feb-2016

"What little thing"

What little thing of yours is it that you fight for? That you lie for? What meagre treasure that you clasp so tightly do you shield from the wolves of the world? Is it a woman, a man, a child? Do you bear arms and blow the clarions of war for another? Just some person? Perhaps it is some small thing that you call love for which you build bastions of steel and light across the lands, the seas and the heavens? What paltry thing is it I ask you? That you would cut out your own heart for? That you would end life for? That you are so afraid to acknowledge? You would bring all the world to its termination for this thing, wouldn't you? What then? What is it that holds sway like this? Does it fit in your hands and yet you cannot hold it? What? Tell me? Please.... Please tell me.

"He placed at the feet of the world"

He placed at the feet of the world tinder to which he would set alight a blaze as fierce as the sun. An inferno that would climb the trunk of the earth up toward its decrepit crown. To the head of the beast and its impregnable cerebrum. With the fire from which he had birthed anew he would ignite every plane and every sphere. Such was his: a mad design of psychic science, aeons-old yet nascent in this existence, at long last coiled to the realm of the corporeal.

"There were just words"

There were just words; they had no real meaning. Just a random assortment of sounds and utterances, like the scattering of stardust that follows the death of a sun. But to him they were everything. They defined the very reality in which he stood. They held him together, sealing the seams of his mind and buttressing his will and conation. He would have been lost, would have been nothing, without words, without his words. And there was nothing more in the world that he desired than to bestow them to another, as a gift parcelled by his trembling hands with the entirety of his love.

Love in the Time of War

Coming careering back from the battlefield
with wounds bloody and firm hand on steel,
the Devil himself could not hold back my love.

'Midst the cacophony of war and the rage thereof
it was you that I dreamt of nightly in the fearful cold;
it was you who kept the light burning, kept me bold.

I hacked and slashed and cut innumerous men down
for an unseen king, but I only ever will bow to your crown.
My Queen, I gift to you my life entire and my soul.

For it is by your love alone can I ever atone,
Can I ever forget the disfigured faces in the dark,
Those that have left in me bloodlust's hideous mark

M.M. — 17-Jan-2016

"The moon rose" [Incomplete]

The moon rose like a portent of
Doom for those blind as I
Who bereft of light and unpolluted mind
Roamed grief-stricken and bare
Neath Luna's spiteful glare
In wood and mire like a dire vampire

A ghoul wanton and wayward
Knowing not toward what I flew
Whereupon I come upon
A mere of black icy water
That sung to me as strongly as
Its liquid that stung me as I imbibed

A psychopath's dream drew me in
Down to the depths of malice and sin
Wherein I found a vigour much older than sin
A voice spoke with sibilant note
From that black water under the gleaming moon
Gave me a vision enwreathed in fire
And in my hand all that to which I aspired

M. M.

The Whore of Babylon

So, when She came like benighted night, to topple the Crown of God, I asked, "Why?"

Because I rose a shining and rotten Star, the Great Whore of the World
From gutter and pit, to a kingdom of glass and the marbled faceless
Child of nothing, begotten from nothing, and now Aught and All
Venus-anointed and Gaia-born—a helm of razor-locks, weaponed with a spear—
A spear, a phalanx, a staff, a rod: an Arm erect and unsheathed
Because I tore off my shackles, flaying my dimmed flesh
Which now glimmers in the face of the downing Sun
Shimmering in blood and dripping with the sweat of my sex
What was my course if not this? A Helen who prized herself
Who chose to stand at the precipice, at the Gate of Damnation
Who now refuses to further regurgitate the vomit of Dogma
Heathen, defiler, wretchedness embodied; once a body, now a Will
She who tore out the Pages, who broke the Tablet
Born in Sin and borne by Sin—
A wayward Star that knew no other course
Than that which was forbidden, hidden and barred
Because I shall place atop my crown the Crown of All-Light
And so be destroyed, destroying with me the whole of the World
I: Whore, Warrior, Woman
Who stands before the Infinite and the Eternal
With but Rage and her everlasting Will
Risen from the desert sands, made of earth and ash
Who now stands at the highest peak
Destroyer of Light, the Bringer of Life
My womb will be the grave of the Word
My victory gestating from the afterbirth
Because I stand, with God, above God, beyond the Universe itself
A being of nothing, that will give birth to the End
All this because I have etched my Fate in the sky-vault above
An Act, by my hand, because I so willed
So it was to be and and so it now is
From a lifeless Death to deathless Life

M. M. — 04-Jan-16