Prose IX

Streaming from an imperceptible ceiling so high came down the most revealing white light. It illuminated the eerie vapor that pervaded the entire gargantuan atrium-like space, it as cavernous as its unseen ceiling was foreboding. The light defined little in the empty space save the center (or what seemed the center). There it formed a strangely, clearly delineated circle. Not even slightly amorphous as one would have thought, given the thick, diffuse vapor.

Though in fact, the light lit more than the center: It shone seemingly accusatorially on a shape-seeming man, naked and standing as if prepared for a fight he knew not from where it would come. Clenched fists by his sides, chest in a belligerent display, a visage of attentive intelligence and pride—he scanned the black all about him and waited for it to begin.

M.M.

 See, you gotta stay strong, for no one more than for yourself. You gotta believe that you are very much worth it. Worth the struggle and worth the strife. Because you see, the clutches of your pain draw the most strength from your own self-deprecation. Your prison is built by the insidious design of the lies that fester within you, that you unavoidably feed. So you must look to the innards of your self and fight for yourself. You are the first, last, and sometimes only, echelon of your own defense. Stay strong and stay faithful.

Aiming for the Horizon

I'm aiming for the horizon

For the cradle of dusk and dawn

Where both nothing and everything

Exist, in unison and in discord

I've decided to leave behind the trap

Of boxes, borders, and broken bones

All that I was beholden and usurped by

For something that is... awry and... at angles

I'm leaving behind the husk of my self—its shell

For it's so damn withered, weathered, and worn

Battered, beaten, and so bored, and burrowed

It's expended itself, now just an inkless pen

The horizon: far beyond all I've ever dreamed of

A sheen pinpoint beyond the vast mass of my own past

An unknown something, scintillating in its beauty

Finally a way out of my own darkness

M.M.

"Full-blooded and bold"

Full-blooded and bold
I have strife in me that fuels me
Stood upon the surface of the sun
And now I lust for the universe

Took me years to fall and years to rise
Lived off of self-doubt and dogma
A spirit with a yearning glow
And a mind building itself

There has been a darkness
Stretching from soul to sight
Darkness replete in me, filling me
Obsidian black, deathless night

I found meaning in love
I found salvation in love
I found myself when I found her
Life at long last

The sky I see, the man I want to be
Sustained by fire—lifted by might
The dreams I form, the reveries I breathe
Those living and those unborn

Twenty-eight years and time still a fear
My ambitions held in place by a single will
My heart held in hand by a single woman
And the terminal point a frightful unknown

The dreams and the desires
The storms and the fires
Visited every night, manifested every day
Fought for in every one of my living moments

M.M.

"Sometimes I forget that love exists"

Sometimes I forget that love exists

That it runs rings

round the heart

Down in the dark of the soul

I forgot that it is all

that makes us whole

Taking one step from nothing at all

To everything that we've ever wanted

and more

Just like the silence of the night

Calling us out like dying of light

Since we so adored the fight

And the heat

that it brought

Only to fall ecstatically like the rain

Gladly enduring the pain

and its ache

Ten thousand years

Or an eternal pour

I forget—and remember—that love

was everything we've ever wanted

and everything we wanted to die for

M.M.