Depression (Iteration 5)

You see, I just don't think I am built for this
Something about the stitching of my atoms
Doesn't seem to fit right, in the grand tapestry
I am of a way that perplexes even myself
A way that crisscrosses over itself in a peculiar
Manner; contradicting itself, redefining itself
And the voice, inside the void, made of obsidian walls
It does not stop—incessant burrowing and twisting
Feelings that come on like gravitational waves

And how is a universe supposed to exist inside one
Much greater than himself? Or to exist amongst the
Hundreds of others that he comes across?
The World that crashes into worlds and leads to a
caustic reverberation that shatters the glass of being

One—it is the vile curse of One. One is the sole
pole that flies the flag of comprehension, which itself
misleads itself in the air, in the sky, in the flight of I

What for is the turning of the mind unyielding?
I think we are things of no mass, of no direction
I think that it is that we think far too much
I try and I think I try too much; a kindling much
too ambitious and much too hopeful of its end

M.M.

At some point during the turn of the world
I lost my voice, the breath of fire that I had inhaled
and exhaled as naturally as the beating of my mercurial
heart. Once I would call to the winds of future and smile at
their response. But somehow I forgot how to sing the
song, the song that I taught myself in the dark, in the void,
in the infinite pressure of my own unquiet mind. Bravery,
ambition, defiance, Promethean will: all these, they were
my voice, my song. But now lost somewhere, along the
revolutions of the world, along the incessant pacing of life.

M.M.

From nothing we came

From nothing we came, to nothing we shall return
Or so they say
But what of the lightning and fire of the in-between
What of the immensity of mind, the infinity of possibility?
The labyrinthine perplexity of the love that expands us?
We are the everything in the nothingness of the universe

M.M.

The Physics of Love

The linearity of time has never eased
the allure of tracing the lines upon her face.
The collision of particles, and the resultant magic,
has always paled in comparison to the magic
that occurs when gazing into her pensive eyes.
These physics, running amok inside of me,
are like petulant children in a stellar nursery.
I was first moved by the law of gravity
that she herself wrote, that she herself commands.
Her pull and her gathering of all things along her vector
has flung me from one corner of the cosmos to the other.
These physics of love, drunk on their own principles.
A postulate that I found myself fallen in, most helplessly.
A scientist enthralled by the very nature of her existence
and all its mysteries – by the theory that she is everything.

M.M.

"You know just what you are"

You know just what you are
Red dragon sleeping a thousand-year sleep
Dreaming of cosmos and the revolutions of time

I awake from a slumber of darkness and undeath
To dwell once more in the wildfires of starlight
I stand before moribund stars and allow myself to burn
Carving multiversal symbols into my coruscating flesh

Remember just what you are
A Son of the Sun, an undying flame amidst the void
Shining nexus of thought and action
A body of unfettered Will, of uncaged Love

In a world of fear and loneliness, alone the monolith has stood
A monument of shining Individualism and self-determination
A pillar atop the highest peak of the Self
Out in the far reaches of oceanic turmoil

I have waited half a life, a life alone
To rise from the tar pits of my own making
To emerge as a field of stars, an idio-galaxy
Unleashed upon the frailness of my former being
To damn the fear and loneliness of yester-I
To the realm of the distant, forgotten void

M.M.

"Not quite the effacement of face"

Not quite the effacement of face
But the eroding of a once-weathered man
Stepping from pebble to mountain
From mountain to tetherless aether
Slipping through the masterwork of time
Its machinery and its machinations
Not quite here; not quite there
But ever present ...much too present...

M.M.

Seasons

Half-dreaming—

of the unending turning of all things

Summer has been slipping away

taking my solidity with it

What warmth and the caress of her I had

is stolen, in the turning of the axis

Desire—the fire, lit by each penultimate season

And extinguished at the end of it

Everything I am is toppled again and again

in the unabating change of time

Once the affection of her heart

the next, lost in the decay of autumn

I am perfected—for me, for her—

but crumble and desiccate at the end of summer

The cycle is unbearable

The wheel—the clock, revolves, as it always has

As it has since the first flutter of butterflies

since the surety of what she means to me was realized

***

The seasons are a paradox: They are at once the harbingers of that which is new and nascent; and that which never changes, never dissipates.

M.M.

In the State

Fear was the best oppression. A perfect violence simply because it was an implied violence. It crept and skulked throughout the cities and in the remote villages like a mist that came out abruptly from the deeps of the impenetrable forest. It kept close to all like an inseparable companion, draped over the shoulders of hunched men and hushed women. Its tell-tale signs impressed on the children more and more as they grew older, they unfortunate enough to not know a world without the fear. It hung everywhere. In the streets, in the shops, in the dance halls, in the temples. It was a life form of its own. And perhaps it had become untameable, even by those who thought that the rope was theirs to wield. How could this be living? How could this be life?

But a passion still glowed in the eyes of Simon Daschink. He was a single man, a quiet man—a dangerous man. Or so all the men without names and sombre suits believed. Condemned for being just who he was, for loving another man. An abomination in the eyes of State and Church and "the common morality". In truth, though, Daschink had not been dangerous because of who he was, because he was in love. No, not before he became a man in love who lost his love. A flame had been in him once; but it was a simple flame for him and for Him. A warmth for two in an unlit and cold playhouse run by men rapt in a comedic masterpiece. Now that flame was a fire, for murdered love is fierce and inextinguishable and unforgiving.

An individual is composed of three main ingredients: Passion, Reason and Will. Passion—in constant conflict with Reason—draws an individual out from within themselves out toward the variegated colors of the external world. Life in the State necessitated manacles be placed on Passion, but by one's own self. Simon kept his unshackled Passion secret, of course; a treasure for himself and Him. For it was Reason that instructed him, that protected him, that kept him safe. Reason is a master, and it is captain at the helm. In a world that is seemingly bereft of all vestiges of the rational, one's own Reason must be the last rampart, the final defense against the mindless onslaught of dogma and doctrine. And then Will. It was when his heart was stepped on by the jackboot that Simon knew the true meaning of Will. For Will is action. Action both in act and in word. Will is expressed through a purposeful change of reality. For Simon, his Will would come forth as many words and many acts. The former stoking the hell-furnaces of the latter.

M.M. — May 2013; Aug 2017

Being strong

It might be a fair judgement that what we call "being strong" is an idealization, one which is predicated on the notion that to be strong one cannot permit weakness. This I think should be quickly and summarily dispelled. To be strong should instead be characterized by piecemeal bouts of strength. It is foolish to believe that we can be strong every moment of every day. We instead should teach ourselves to capitalize on those moments of transient yet intense realization that, frankly, "we can do this". There is much worth in taking one single minute of your time to gain some perspective of the situation you are in and just what the hell you are going to do about it. Times of weakness or the allure of capitulation are completely normal and just fine: they come and will come again. Your strength should not be a weapon designed solely to fight off weakness. Your strength should be a vehicle through which you convey yourself from your nadir to your zenith. Your strength should be a well of energy, based in your core but not always observable, that you tap into when appropriately needed.

M. M.

Every Broken Man

Every broken man is in search of a new spirit
Whether or not he recognizes it or not, he seeks
A purified river to wash away his sins
His company is no one but shadows
Reflections of the past and prior wrongdoings
The long face of the bright, full moon
Looks down upon him in honest affinity
With silent recognition, he sees time
Etched upon its pockmarks and scars
From a storm-brinking, sullen beach, he sees
Across the far reaches of the dark sea
A near-distant future, his to hope and to own
But even the sanctity of his own forgiveness
Which alone holds his true resurrection
Cannot dispel the ghosts in his now lightless soul
The night that fires aflame his scorched earth

M.M.

"There is no Great Truth"

There is no Great Truth other than that which constructs the infrastructure of your being. What you are is a reflection of what you choose to do, what in your heart of hearts you truly believe or want. Whether by determinism or by unfettered free will, there is a responsibility to account for, to own up to. Everything that comes to pass is a lesson that instructs you on what kinds of fibers constitute you: A facing up to the darkness within you or appreciation of your implicit privileges. Life marked out is an anthology of pain and joy, and how we were gauged at a given time. But at the end of the day, it is strife that drives us onward. For if nothing else, strife is the most essential ingredient of a dynamic life, and the reaction to it the mainstay of your development, or lack thereof.

29

The sunsets are just a bit different now
Not quite the golden-yellow and fiery-red of yesteryears
Every choice is made with tints of lackluster
Hints of creeping uncertainty and apathy

Perhaps once the path was certain and
The direction a simple matter of "one foot in front of the other"
But why all this hollowness? and why the listlessness?
Where is the excitement that once threw your imagination
From one end of the galaxy to the other?

The best-laid plans have been lost somewhere in the stack

Maybe this is just a temporary deviation?
A steering off the path? some stroll through the thicket?
Those wanderings you once made in the dead of night
Long to be returned to; the cosmic flights through mind
And dream have been ready for departure for a short eternity

The center—once again you need to calibrate to your center
To that place which you alone can perceive
The best of you—the best part of you
The boundless nexus of all that makes you you

M.M.

First Passions

First passions leave indelible marks
Second ones are even more bittersweet
Like an old memory turned evening fantasy
So much beauty infused into a single thing
A whole life generated from a nutrition of fire

Once, I saw in the unending sky, a name
Something akin to a song or an effortless kiss
It flowed in, like warm water over my skin
I drew in a breath, a deep breath—my very first
Just a name, written in the vaultless sky

What we grow to know during our measured lives
Belies the unfathomable hidden in our measureless minds
It is all just a wild ride, of happenstance and questioning
The lucky ones see the universes in others' eyes
The brave ones sail across the dark seas, heart in hands

And I would give it all for that feeling of awe
To take it with me once more on my wayward way
Anything just to live fully one more time
One last time before the final dream takes me

Remembrance

You've found yourself in the swirling storms of
a mechanized world, churning hellishly upon the
planes of forests swept away and paved over.
Eyes glazed over by lethargy and apathy;
body and heart left weary by a heinous society.
Once you were enwrapped by winds channeled
through deep valleys and the mists of primeval waters.
Every new day is no new day, but instead a
struggle of breath and bone against the synthetic.
You've forgotten the chemical dance of flame.
The imperceptible scales of cosmic time and space.
The molecular life seen in every leaf and in every
beat of a heart; nature's signature in all things.

M.M.

"In that room"

In that room, I saw a reflection of a man that I could become, that I wanted to be. A man stood upon the foundation of his self-constructed principles and the ashes of his bygone strife. A vision of a future that I had lost sight of not long ago. An accreted inner peace, born out of a lifetime of sleeplessness and restlessness, imbued the scene. What I viewed in the briefest of moments was a world won, a distance finally crossed. In that room, I caressed the bright plumage of hope and felt the cooling of a sun-lashed earth, the restful evening I have longed for finally come.

"What sonorous cry"

What sonorous cry heard in the dead of the night?
A wild running through the mind
Hapless and weak, as a child in the forest, lost
A tremendous weight held fast to the heart
A tremendous love left aimless and yet fervent
The cold keeps to the body, a respite from the heat
A fire that will not abate, that will not die
Though no desire to let it expire; there never was
The scale, balanced on a knife's edge
One choice: to live but to hurt
The other: to die but to rest
There never was a choice; not with her
It is all part and parcel of the path
A journey not meant for the restful
It is but thunder and aching
Always sleepless and ever-stirring
That which gives life and purpose and strength
The curse and the gift—this love
The upheaval is set and directed
What sleep is left is for the dead and the loveless

M. M.

Fallen

The Fallen God stood atop the peak, the imperial sun above His
broken diadem, above His shattered godhead, searing His wingless back.
A great lance in His hand, a brand of fire and apostasy, a terrible thing.
With a movement of blinding light and imperceptible speed, He raised
His weapon and thrust down the spear, down into the mountain upon
which He domineered, down into the Earth, through rock and crust,
through spirit and mind, piercing the veil between god and man and
matter. What wailing arose, reaching into the world, beyond the seas and
the lands. A cry first heard before sound was sound, when time was young.
The God awoke the Old Things, dispersed the lies and dogma.
What reigned before would reign no more. It would no longer be fear
that would be the principle directive, the false law compelling men to
lash themselves to the book or the cloth or the martyr.

M. M.

11 p.m.

You are a creature of delirious fever.
I fantasize about what your skin must feel like.
How you are, in your most natural of states.
I would map every groove and curvature.
And every hidden place of you.
A cartographer lost in a new world.

How I dream of you.
Always you are there, in the darkness.
A phantasm never laying to rest.
Flitting from thought to shadow, shadow to thought.
Oh, you are the wild thing in my mind.
The ravenous thing.
The sinful thing in me.

M. M.

"Come to rest"

Come to rest, the surge had ceased
A tempest of unspoken hurt
Once wild, now still
Inside, a world had been built
Edifices of glass and light
An Eden in a forest of darkness
Harried by onslaught after onslaught
Kilometer-high waves had come once and again
But now the sky expanded, azure and clear
The sounds of the world sung themselves
Softly now – a breeze, a whisper
And at least sleep, a sweet slumber
And stillness, deep, there in the world

M. M.

"Sleep"

I slept so deeply. More deeply than I had in months, in an eternity. But it was a deep slumber that belied the terror that lay in waiting. The dream was a pseudo-memory filled with falsehood and truth, a fantasy mixed with pleasures and nightmares of a future past or a future to come or a future never to be realized. But no worse a thing was the role I played with no choice: that of omniscient spectator. I think now that gods, all-knowing and omnipresent, are beings to be pitied, for they bear the weight of not only what is and what was, but of what will be—and the variegated colors of chaos of known-unknowns. The sleep and the dream that I endured, helplessly, though deep and uninterrupted (unlike in nigh on all previous instances), was a manifestation of all that I feared but knew to be truth. All that I knew was just waiting to come, one fateful day in the waking world.

M. M.

Examining your beliefs

With some careful consideration one may come to realize that any philosophy—be it political, moral or metaphysical—originates, is accepted or is practiced through the vehicle of the individual. So, it is by the token of any person's desire for autonomy and self-direction that such genesis, assimilation or espousal of particular philosophies must have at its heart a responsibility of ownership held and accounted for by the individual. In other words, one must take it upon oneself to rationalize and fully consider the tenets of one's beliefs and their consequent imperatives. It is not enough to take things for granted; it falls short to just take oneself at one's own word. Rather, I would say it is an obligation to examine, and update where necessary, the nature of what one believes, especially in the case where one actively seeks for others to share the same beliefs. This I would argue is salubrious as, from time to time, a people, composed of individuals, must assess the "health" of their values. The state of the world turns on a dime and it is not rational to believe that one need not turn along or keep up with it.

The Wonder Physical

It is the light that unveils the soul
Dispelling darkness of the unknown

Elevating worlds of the quantum
That whirl in magic and momentum

M. M.

I am fallen in you

I am fallen in you
Like a wave that weeps the shore
A sun that runs itself in
The contours of your face
are a future eternal in distant past
And your eyes rise something blind in me
You lightning away the dark
Darken that silent background noise
My physics are all turned I suppose
With day of light wavering from night to night
Energy running young and unshelled in me
And everything that you are
I am fallen in

M.M.

"The space between atoms"

The space between atoms. The interval between thoughts. The rapture of orgasm. The piercing of a knife. The lifting of a melody. The stealing away of innocence. The godhead of grace. The godhead of sin. The power of a lie. The cataclysm of truth. The kinetics of a fist. The hunger of violence. The satiation of knowledge. The ecstasy of beauty. The void of war. The purity of unlight. The evisceration of love. The evisceration of love. The evisceration of love.

M. M.

"It's those melodies"

It's those melodies, that music with the otherworld cadences,
the lyrical sounds that take you to that other place: that place
in your head, in your heart,  where all your true desires and feelings
are hid away, kept away from everyone else. It's those songs that
take you there, that divest you from the here-real and take you to the
real-real. There, where you are true and solid and physical and gossamer.
From one note flowing to the other, all ephemeral and yet all eternal.

M. M.

Memorandum

I felt like there was something waiting to happen—something waiting for me. The chaos inside my mind had come to a head. And the restlessness had burrowed deep into my fibers, the full extension of my being. A vibration of atoms, a tremendous vibration of my atoms. Half asleep or half between death and life, everything once a construct began to fall away. Just motions in time: these thoughts I knew to be cataclysm. I was in a moment in time, the only moment in time that mattered. And one step from falling into the pool of the sun.

M. M.