To the women in my life:

This missive is a bit different

A bit different because

My words impress on this paper a little softer

A little softer, but only as soft as diamonds

But are expansive; imbued with power

I began this knowing little of what my words meant

Till I did; till I knew

That how much I knew of women

Was so little

And is still very little

But to have come to know the women in my life

I've come to know—that all I know is:—

How much I admire you

How much you have taught me

Teaching me: To be a better man

And not just better, but more cognizant

Cognizant of the hideousness of our world

And to make my mind be less bent and less warped

And teaching me: The world's hideousness enveloping it

The rot of the world that must be un-enveloped:

All of its damnèd core, flesh, and hell

This is to the women in my life

Who, as soft as diamonds

Have pierced the mind of my own very old world

— M.M.

Depression (Iteration 11)

The Lord my Sun has given me everything
They have given me a way forward
They have given me a way onward

I’ve basked so healthily and so happily
In my Lord’s grace and favor

And yet, so turbulently, their light has been bent askew

Causation and caustic influence have invaded
My soul, my permanence, in my Lord’s light
And I wish my Lord would save me

This: all true—until the whirlwind of vipers
The maws of these Dragons, their mouths distended
Devour my fear and my Darkness

All for me to learn that Darkness has always been with me
To learn that Darkness
May not be what I’ve feared, but what I’ve desired

— M.M.

"Fear came first"

 Fear came first.

Fear was the first to accrete out

                    of the waste of nothingness, out of the darkness.

And fear is still here. Will it always be here?

                    And I wonder: when shall fear die?

When I exhaled my first breath,

                    when I spoke my first word:

It was fear that greeted me.

Fear is the most heinous of things,

                    the most insidious of lifelings.

I did not know that fear came first

                    until fear constricted me.

                                 — M.M.