"the words we speak"

For S.

the words we speak
hint of all the worlds
that come in and out of
existence in our minds
a language that is a magic
we alone can speak

to say what you mean
and mean what you say
to hold your own heart
in your trembling hand
this most precious stone
and sing it to sleep
and warm it back to health

the greatest mystery is all
which we do not say
for in the unspoken
is the anthology
that you have written
that, if ever allowed to be read
gifts an entire universe

M.M.

"It is the banshee"

It is the banshee that wails in the corner of my night
The devil of temptation that smiles out of sight
The great hollowness in the dark deep
The purloiner of my blessèd sleep

I am ablaze with the fire of madness

Stricken ill with the ambition to feel something

More than that which my paper-heart bleeds

Lost in the savagery of this endless wilderness

My sacred Sun deserts me in this black desert

Leaving me as prey to the howling djinn

The searing fields of all my unhidden sins

And the self-loathing of the guilt deserved

M.M.

To Be Unyielding

To be unyielding
To suffer the trials of this life
Teeter on the perch of cataclysm
Peer over the edge and turn back
The thread unravelling in the
Bastion of despondency and enervation
But a tautness left at the bone
Chaos will reign and devils will roam
The sword and spear never relinquished
This, for the brave, the bloodied, the unbowed
To be unyielding
Face-ward the undying sun
The call from the deep never silencing
And not a drop of hot blood ever spilt

M.M.

"Amorphous as a cloud"

Amorphous as a cloud, slipping between light
Emotional immaturity strangles the soul
With far too many deceiving planes in sight to step upon

Downcast as the pouring rain
The failures throw themselves excitedly atop one another

The manual for love was lost in the fires of growth
Or maybe all there has ever been are the fires
Uncontrollable and always rising like a flood

These vibrant colors do not stay – they just run
Till life is blind and the stars no longer shine

M.M.

The Tower

The tower exists as a thing unlike anything in its own world

Its time slowly dripping through a sieve of mist

A structure cursed by immobility and immutability

Its internal beams adamantine but its facade perpetually crumbling

Erected imposingly in the desolation, under a vault of ashen sky

Drear in aspect, imposing only because of its utter isolation

Unchanged, unchanging, unchangeable

The tower stands in fierce opposition of the great empyrean

But achieves nothing of effect

Prideful in its ambition and conation, but weakened in its will

A kilometer high, and verging upon the inch of its life

And ensconced deep within this monolith

Beats a heart terrible and tremendous

Pulsating like some endearing horror

Shining like darkness; loving like hate

The tower has stood here an age, and not even a minute

A monument to all that is other and unending

M.M.

"There is no such thing as starting over"

There is no such thing as starting over
To start over, to start fresh
Really means to store the old bones
In a great chest to be towed along
Starting over is to be weathered
And worn -- weary of the trifles of the world
Setting upon a new path is simply to
Continue along onto a bending in the road
What I once believed of the hope in starting anew
Is now a recognition of the spectres
And ghosts that haunt me in the dead of night.

M.M.

Strife

There will be blood
There will be casualties on the morning bill
Hold fast to your slowly fracturing soul
Because the descent is so unforgiving
You will find that that voice in your head
Will soon turn cacophonous
Steady yourself; gather your wits about you
For this war is only just beginning
Never forget the treasure that is self-forgiveness
Never lose sight of your inner grace
This strife is a fiery path that must be walked
Walked with strength and conviction
Walked with the very fire that will immolate you

M.M.

Self-Forgiveness

You owe it to yourself to exercise whenever possible your inalienable right of self-forgiveness. Those who are their own harshest critic will know all too well how easy it is to lambast one's self, and how much of a ridiculous struggle cutting one's self some slack can be. But it cannot be that all the amassing weight of guilt, anxiety and shame of your world is meant to be placed interminably on your shoulders. At some point, the sentence will have been served; your time, done. However difficult it may be to forgive yourself, you will know by the kindness bestowed upon you by your very own heart that there is a moment when you must shuffle off those weights. Always remember that self-forgiveness is your sacred right; self-forgiveness is yours to own and to find reprieve within.

M.M.

Sunday Sun

This life turned insipid in color before I even noticed.
The sunlight refracted through the lenses of this world;
refracted and turned insipid before I even knew.
Great clarity of memory intermixed
with the implacable rolling of time
has bred a vision of impeccable despair.
The irradiation that warms my prostrate body
engenders the thought-warping of my mind.
Light and time; distance and silence:
My running-through by this warm Sunday sun.

M.M.

Street

Saw a man, enter from the world,
into the street mid-night during an arc of time.
Pausing a moment in the garish isolating streetlight,
he looked up, away from his own light, toward the
great starless void that had been eyeing him for years.
With a breath and mustered force of might, he let out:
I've done my time—I've earned my right! Now let me move on!
During an arc of time in the black of the night,
soundlessly—spent—he slipped away, back into the world.

M.M.

The Golden Spiral

For Jiho, following a conversation.
Title taken from Primordial's The Golden Spiral. 

So very planar are we to think
the endless loops of our lives to be
merely circular, arcing transversally.
Take the bottom rim of your empty glass,
manipulate it three-dimensionally,
and watch as the world turns concurrently.
Infinity is a simple thing; entropy and
progression are far more complex.
It is a golden spiral on which we
are ascending (or descending) perpetually.
The golden spiral stands as monument,
ominously, in the nexus deep within.
Bravery to partake in our own interrogation;
prospection to move us upward.
Diversity in what makes us
happy and free should be paramount
in this, our grand enterprise of living,
our ascending up the golden spiral.

M.M.

Freedom

For ––

This freedom that we have waxed lyrical about for nights upon drunken night is a concept that we have never really understood, I think, till now. Freedom, you see, is at its fleshy heart a release so far catastrophic to the mundane patterns of daily life – of inveterate society – that we did not really know its implications. Freedom – do you see? – is a thing that is meant to scare you to life – to your true life. We cannot pretend that our own personal freedom is not an unlatching that will eventually lead to the listing of casualties on the morning bill. Freedom is a price to be paid, granted, but also too a world to be won. And it is only those who in themselves recognize that they are in their truest of natures a supposed affront to the mores of society – society, at whatever level (interpersonal, familial or civil) – who are best placed to understand the cost of what it means to be, in the absolute, truly free. What's more, it should not be an illusion to them – these modern Byrons of the world – that though their freedom is a calculus esoteric to the vast majority of their peers; their freedom, even at the very dying of the day, is a recourse, a setting, that they cannot ever really escape. Even by their best efforts or the good graces bequeathed upon them (falsely or otherwise) by the uncaring and unkind and individually irreverent hand of society, their freedom will still invariably come knocking in the midnight hour.

M.M.

Frankenstein

The mixing of electric storm and untempered
imagination leads to the birth of the roiling
mass of flesh and conation. The eldritch dreams of
man portending the stealing of the greatest key of
divinity, coveted by demon and angel alike. As up
from the deep comes terrible and steep the price
paid for immortality, for touching the face of God.
The awe and the wonder that stretches us from
known to pernicious shores. Held steady in hand
the secrets of the universe, which are far too great
to be known by corruptible human life. But the mass
prevails, stepping into the light shattered by lightning
and the hell-gate left ajar. With heaven torn asunder,
the wretched pride of man is crowned complete.

M.M.

Self-Awareness vs. Self-Interrogation

It recently dawned on me that there is a somewhat subtle but critical distinction between self-awareness and self-interrogation. I think the meaning of self-awareness is quite well-understood by people; self-interrogation, however, is something perhaps we do not think much about. By self-interrogation I mean a systematic and sincere questioning of our inner workings, particularly with regards to the conflicts raging inside of us. It is substantiated by the processes of self-awareness of course (how can I question my inner self without being aware of its trappings?), but it is much more involved than simply acknowledging one's own faults. Rather, self-interrogation requires a level of candidness that may very well reach a level of cathartic unease. At its heart is the need to be able to unwrap both the nature of our behaviors, thoughts or beliefs and their origin(s), and if necessary to critique ourselves unabashedly, with the ulterior motive of affirmative self-love. The goal is not simply to become ever more self-aware and expert on our own malfeasances (or virtues, for that matter); it is a vehicle by which we can enact real and substantive change, by which we can set out the next steps in the grand plan for our self-development.

I have spent some time the last few days interrogating myself—or more accurately, attempting to devise a method of thorough and bona fide interrogation. While I feel like I have "nailed down" self-awareness (for the better or worse...), self-interrogation is a concept that is well and truly new to me. This is new ground upon which I tread.

Our Voice

There is in each of us a voice, unique in timbre, idiosyncratic in projection. Rarely do others hear this voice clearly—reserved as it is for the quiet times of solitude and pensive introspection. But it is there, in all of us. And while some of us would seek to guard the utterances from this individuated voice, like a precious but secret treasure, it is my belief that deep inside we all just want to be heard and listened to. To find someone who would sit with us for but a moment and simply attend to our words. How could it not be that true understanding of our selves, by others, is predicated on us vocalizing all that is within us, on conveying without judgement or fear the silent but tremulous stirrings of our most vital soul?

Sunset

fire to starve my soul
water to stunt my growth
this how I slowly dissolve

the storms rage on inside
mountains tremble at my cries
my blood seeps into wells of time

flesh becomes so ephemeral
loss of control more continual
here I go into this black hole

crowned a crown of self-doubt
my mind will stride about
till twilight takes me out

M.M.

"I lay my well-worn bones"

I lay my well-worn bones upon this bed of aether,
on the turbulent high seas of dream. The energy of life
flitting and darting through me as a bird of prey
on the hunt. A dynamic inside my psyche that
plays out like the most absurd psychodrama.
Self-awareness was gifted me—cursed me—
with the instruction manual carelessly misplaced.
I find myself in a cycle of regressive infantilization,
speaking to the disfigurements in my soul. And
what they have to say is but banal repetitions.
My speech to the external world, to proximal
beings, is twisted by the complexes of my own
insecurities. The Promethean Man is nowhere to be
found; dallying somewhere down by the hollow.
Word and action, thought and intention—imbued
with fractured colors that need reassembly.

M.M.

"We are bloodied"

We are bloodied but we are unbowed
They ask us why?
Because we see the light of every new day!

We stand in hell, and remain unscathed
They ask us how?
Because we are fallen but full of grace!

We sometimes do wrong but we are good
They ask us how can that be?
Because our sins do not speak for us!

We lose but we come back again
They ask us how can we?
Because we are not dead yet!

M.M.

Depression (Iteration 6)

The slow slithering of time makes the mountain
on my chest ever more ponderous. The voice,
from an unseen villain, blares so madly; here,
in the perpetual unlight. Perception has become
a wicked scattering of insipid, enervating color.
And I have vaulted myself from one end of hell to
another. Speaking to all the disfigurements I find
in my soul. Dancing carelessly to the pipe and drum
of whiskey-fueled ravings. I set the world to wrongs.
I would offer my poisoned blood as oblation to the
redemptive ground of the blessèd empyrean—but
my blood is not even worth the sorrow it sustains.
For at the dying of the day, it is with effaced doubt that
I see that salvation is a fruit far too bitter for me.

M.M.

"Through long bleak winter night"

Through long bleak winter night
And down the old forgotten road
To where we lay buried, and forgotten

The years, they were stolen from us
And our lives reduced to lies
The times we spent enticing death
The hate we harvested in our souls
Drew us too close to the edge, to the end

The twilight took us, under the earth
To tombs of our own flesh and our bone
Damnation found us too soon—too soon

Death is an unending darkling dream
And these graves have no measure

M.M.

Prayer

I pray to feel fully again
Grace me with the fire of passion
again
I once saw in the sky
the red dragons of ages long forgotten
Give me sight to see them again
Lost myself somewhere in the void
Left my heart somewhere on the wayside
I beseech Thee to allow me
to delve once more into my own mind
without perturbation
or hesitation
For there in the sky is mine
Grant me the strength
to love truthfully, precipitously
To live, again, freely
O Gloria!
I pray to Thee, my Lord Soul
I pray to just feel something good again

M.M.

"What fire"

What fire? what heart? what burns in the dark?

All fire! all heart! I burn so brightly in my dark!

What gold? what worth? what stars in the sky?

My gold! my worth! my stars in my sky!

What love? what will? what drives you on?

Her love! my will! I am driven madly on and on!

M.M.

This Bastard Love

This bastard love
in me
Runs round like a headless chicken
No sense
No control
Just spins around like a
perpetual
top, defying the laws of physics and
reason
I speak to it telling it to
please kindly cease and desist
but it looks at me with a
clueless expression
and continues to
run round
like a headless chicken

M.M.

"laid at rest"

laid at rest I tremble in the void
cast into motion I am immolated by the sun

"descending like smoke"

descending like smoke the marble stair
stars in her hair, the moon her skin

something she said
nebulous and deep
"I—forever in the—"
stars in the jewels of her eyes
that held me fast and whole
held me in her, complete

I lay with her in a bed of dream
mind... body... —in a bed of dream
her eyes like jewels letting me in
we wrapped ourselves round each other
lost in space, lost in time
in a bed made of desire and dream

M.M.

"What do we have?"

What do we have? At best a couple of chances to try for what we really desire in life? Sure, sometimes we do end up getting what we want by convoluted twists and turns of unpredictable circumstance. But directing ourselves purposefully toward some end, some completion of a sought-after intention? We have what seems like one chance to live for it, one chance to take a leap of faith, and no second chances. There are, of course, things that hold us back—some of them quite reasonable, I suppose. I just wonder what it takes to overcome our restraints. Is it the abrogation of fear? Is it meticulous planning? Each seems to have its advantages, and its flaws. In the end, the ultimate worry is the day that comes when there are no more chances to take.

Meditation on Running

Out there on the road I can confront my demons, and

stand face-to-face with them. Out there, more than

anywhere else, they are as human, and as broken, as I am.

Every step—and every step—and every step more—

I tread on each and every one of them.

I know you're better this—I know you're better this—

You are better than this—You aren't a piece of shit—

The physical exertion of it is tied directly to an unlinking of sorts,

a tearing away from the form that carries you along like some

ponderous weight. It is like you are a freed bird that has been caged

for most of its life, ascending into the air and finally becoming

what it was always supposed to have been.

Swept along with the music in your ears, with waves of

freedom taking you away from the hard, worn world of your life,

to some ineffable ecstasy of biochemistry and pure will.

All ignited and propelled by just a bit of psychical energy;

energy millions of years in the making,

and here induced on this stretch of road.

OK—you can do this—you can do this—you can do this—

I run toward something unreachable, knowing that
I have already reached it; reached peace in the distance.
I run not to run away, but to run into something better.
I run not to run away, but to run into something greater.

I give away the gift of guilt; I take off this harness of anxiety.
I leave behind the darkness of my body and mind.
I run not to run away; I run to return to where I began.

M.M.

On Body Image

I, like the vast majority of those who have grown up in image-conscious societies I'm sure, also from time to time struggle with poor perceptions of my own body image. It's a particularly poignant topic for me since for as long as I can remember my supreme endeavor has been to develop ways of improving all aspects of my life and my being through the well of determination and worth that comes from within. So when it comes to the way I look at my physical self, I am placed on this kind of battlefield fighting against the more self-deprecating voices in my head. I look at myself and think, "Oh, I am too fat", or "Oh, I don't like the shape of this or the shape of that". It is a battle against myself. And what strikes me is that body image is, perhaps strangely, a concept that I can use to truly learn to believe in the better parts of who I am as a person and an individual. If I can source strength from within myself—if I can buttress my self-esteem in the most shit of moments—then I have learnt something valuable; then I have inched just a little closer to developing my own self-worth. It's one skirmish at a time in an ongoing war, but one a skirmish at a time is all I need.

"The night holds"

The night keeps all my secrets
The night keeps my heart
In the night I speak to my demons
In the night I reconstruct

M.M.

"I rest there"

I rest there lying at her side
studying her sleeping mind
hoping to capture any thoughts that might slip through
the minuscule cracks of her inner-world
I wonder what would manage to escape
Amorphous clouds, a variegated lily
or perhaps the matter of a protostar
the beginnings of some solar system within her
Caught by her embrace in a waft of
splendor, desire and intellectual magic
a thing is born, of a wildness and electricity
This creature here in front of me is the most
wonderful of puzzles; an enigma with no solution
Inside that mind of hers there exists a universe
one I will never be able explore directly, only vicariously
It is those brief glimpses of starlight that pierce through
her psychic veil that rumble and crumble me all at once
A moment left perplexed, then ocean-deep in beauty

M.M.

"Winter-night"

For A.

Winter-night holds reign atop the plateau
A realm of stagnation and frozen thought
Years, that turn into years, and slow time
In the great desert of coldening night

It would take the memory of fire to open the shut eye
It would take the shifting of a stilled soul to raise the heat
Something deep down and long old, rising to the fore
Found once again, in the lightless abyss of infinite mind

From a stirring to a rumbling to the rupturing of planets
Light trumpeted forth, from the void, in a parade of wonder and will
The webs of sleep cleared away; the ice burned away
Such that there stood, in golden imperium: Life revived

"what little I have learnt of peace"

what little I have learnt of peace

from the wreckages of my past

tells me that even this pain
shall in time also pass

M.M.

"Run away"

Run away. Run away to the far-off places
To keep away loneliness and fill empty spaces
Somewhere distant, inside the approaching thunderstorm
To regenerate, recultivate; to restore your former form