"How the heft of the sun"

[Ex Tempore XVI]

In decameter (i.e., ten syllables per line).

How the heft of the sun weighed down on her,
and the height of the world a heady crown,
and a helm: mind weary and expended
yet heart held high against all worthlessness. 

M.M. — Maius MMXII

The Knife, Part I

[Poem XXVIIIa]

     An ode.
     To violence and all murderous acts!

A quick flash of light in the night and
life is taken,
claimed by the night (or
reclaimed by a thing that we think
only exists where light is absent—but
more likely just prefers
the dark):
This is how much life is worth to
the knife.

Din shatters the silence of the night;
shattering one life, leaving others
shattered.
The final testament only:
raised voices,
heat in the head, heat in the body,
act less thought,
a flash, light,
a knife.

What is it like? to
handle a knife with the intent—that intent.
A purpose that nestles in
so quickly and
so naturally—as if
it has always been there but just needed
nothing more than a nudge to
waken from
latency, or rather, to be
freed from the restriction of
morality—that, according to
the knife, has never really been human anyway.

How does one
do away with the hesitation and
accept the intent?
And what is the
thrust in like?
The first resistance of paper-like
skin, then the resistance of
outer flesh?
muscle and bone?
then finally, perhaps, ending in a
beating heart.
Which cycled the
blood—that is now a nuisance-liquid (to
the knife and the intent), staining hand but
satisfying
the knife.

M.M. — Aprilis MMXII

Emily's Evensong

[Dramatic Fragment II]

Enter Emily, half-mindedly walking towards a forlorn bench facing the nearly set sun; she sits.

EMILY:                                                                 (A moment for thought, then:)
And again you come, my sweetest dusk
Again you come, always, as you must
Though never alone—no, never alone
With you comes a chill of the bone
And the ember-warmth of a forgotten home

A great dimming of the wondrous sky
Moving the world, and me, to lie                          (Rests her arms on top of the back of
Bringing on a time for silence                               the bench; head propped, legs tucked)
To brood on a lingering absence
And to old night-secrets: my solemn abidance

Of me you know all
Know the spectres, my demons
Know them all

But what could I give in return
For all this given me to learn?
The staying of my aching heart                             (Placing her hand on her chest)
The many pains all here marked
The pains that are most alive here in the dark

My cherished dusk, my cherished night                  (Rising from the bench; ambling)
I will go down—go down like the light
Give myself unto shadow and shade
Lay my body in a midnight glade
Fulfilling the promise that I long ago made

      [TWILIGHT NOW FULLY GRIPS THE SCENE]

Of me you know all                                               (Singing increasingly softly)
Know the spectres, my demons
Know them all
But put them to rest now
Put them to rest so that I may sleep

Emily ceases; she looks at the muted glow of the horizon with subtle longing as she saunters away. Exit Emily.

M.M. — ?, Iunius–Iulius, November MMXI; Aprilis MMXII

Four Lines for my Passions/Inspiration/Love

[Poem XXVII]

Hot the fires of a maelstrom Hell;
kraken sea in me churning ceaselessly.
Hot the fires; the icy heights, the sweltering
depths: an innate storm raging freely.

M.M. — Aprilis MMXII

The Ambition in Me

[Ex Tempore XV]

Written whilst travelling by train from Manchester to Bangor.

All these modern little houses neatly packed together in bundles,
made ready for Mr & Mrs and the two-and-a-half.

Passing into and through these towns:
the bland colours of the buildings match the greyness of the overhanging and listless sky.

Much unlike the manor house seen along the way,
that has stood
and still stands.

Or rusting metal of refineries and old-man diesel locomotives, both still huffing and roughing away.

Helsby, also so neat, is at least dressed by a hand that aspires.

And pastures green, with a lively splash of yellow;
and the blossoming trees that bend down,
kissing the rippling river.

Further on, westwards,
treading forwards,
the sky begins to clear;
the sun—
hidden away still by persisting and apathetic cloud—
pronounces its presence, its worth,
even without any ostentation.

Then finally: the vast, unending sea:
unfettered, fearless and far-reaching in its scope.

Admiring of it all,
encased and carried within my restless body,
my glowing heart
pulsates in hidden passion.

M.M. — Aprilis MMXII

"Ode to Night" first prize in The Poetry Box competition

I entered a few poems into The Poetry Box International Horror & Dark Poetry Silver Cup Trophy Competition 2012 some time ago. I am very pleased to be able to announce that from these "Ode to Night" (below) has been awarded first prize!

In addition to receiving a certificate and trophy, the poem will be featured in the first edition of The Poetry Box Horror & Dark Poetry Magazine, to be published 30th April.

I have also been asked to meet the judge, LK Barley Robinson (founder of The Poetry Box), in person, for photos of the prize-giving and filming of my recitation of "Ode to Night". Considering the expense and distance, however, it is unlikely I will be able to do so.


Ode to Night

[Poem XXII]

For the night I write these lines,
a homage to the cold and to the dark;
the night,
wherein I have found solace and secret,
and a stillness that soothes a raking inner-voice.

In the distance
of the vast nightscape:
there resides mystery and a thousandfold ending to a single life.
In the distance rolls the deep movement of sound,
the gradual approach of a rumbling and turbulent
darkling dream—

...forlorn on a beach, touched by the chill before a coming storm
gathering itself in the heavy leaden sky...

Here I have watched many times the silent dance of shadows:
nebulous reflections of joys and failings from the past,
phantasmagoric sequences of future on black canvas.
I have conversed with them long, been overwhelmed by them,
have become a wraith and been taken aloft with them.
No more have they told me and taught me
than all of what I already know
—yet do not wish to know:
In night, truth is denizen.

Deeply ensconced
I have clasped strange thoughts and ideas seemingly not my own;
I have been taken to places so far, yet which lie but a reverie away.

Bereft of light and its lively life
I have come to apprehend
the life in light,
as that that lives disconcertingly in the grotesque incandescence of streetlight;
and that in the stars up above:
Those darling diamonds,
colossal spheres of undying fire
that span infinity
of space and of mind
—and yet how simply they stud the great vault of night.

Fear,
have I not come face to gaunt and grisly face
with you?
Love,
have I not endlessly been assailed by you,
and riven?
Here, where the ugly and the beautiful discard their masks.

Oh, here...
here are wondrous world-scenes:
though I have known them only in word and through the cadence of song,
here, in the night, they are raised
to fullest vigour,
brought to the fore at a heady pace;
they are glimpses that escape from fantasy, the progeny of dream.

By the night these words are uplifted,
held and enwrapt,
then cast into the evening wind;
thrust to the stony faces of glaring derelict edifices
and to the dreary dead woodland
hidden in the corner of my mind.

To the night I remain ever commended;
in the night, ever lost.

M.M. — Aprilis–Junius, Augustus–September, November MMXI

The ghosts I saw by the Menai Strait

[Ex Tempore XIV]

An idea that conjured itself whilst on an evening run that took me by the Menai Strait on 18 March 2012.

As I was passing by, I saw with unbelieving eye
the ghosts of children dancing in the field,
dancing under coming night, right by the Menai.
They glowed and flitted in the evening-blue
that lit the silent sky and this walker passing by,
who stood and witnessed these spectres
writhe and leap and turn from side to side,
from one end of the field to the other,
with nary a cry of laughter or anything besides.
I proposed to myself to approach these children,
phantoms of the night, of a time long gone by,
but worried they would fear my coming and
hie away back to the graves where they must lie.
So instead I decided to marvel at this thing
I now saw; and I smiled, for I had not turned
away in horror as men are wont to do when
they face sights like this, a sight of sprites
who no longer knew the real horrors of the world.
But at length I was espied and the children ceased
their frolicking and for a moment looked at me.
With great effort I tried a word, a salutation, a "hi",
but came up with nothing and simply gaped at them.
Though I could not see any light in their eyes
I could tell with little doubt they were not afraid of me,
and that they knew I, likewise, was not fearful of them.
All at once they turned and began to recede into the dark,
into the night, leaving as silently as the sky up high.
And there I was, left alone, left to remain and reflect on
what I had seen—was it real or but a vision in my mind?

M.M. — Martius MMXII

"Ex Tempore VII" runner-up in Thynks Publications competition

"Ex Tempore VII" (below) has been chosen as a runner-up in Thynks Publications Limited's Inspirational Poems competition. I was quite pleased when I was told, not only because I submitted it as an entry on a whim but because I wrote it in one night (hence its "ex tempore" title).

This poem, along with prizewinners and other runners-up of the competition, will be published in a small book sometime in 2013.


Ex Tempore VII

For G.

For the music I cannot draw
For the pictures I cannot write
For the sounds I wish I saw
There are those that I might

For the places of which I dream
For the tastes I hope to breathe
For the things I really mean
May rhyme and reason never leave

For the love I long ago lost
For that which did not come
For the paths that did not cross
There is still little and some

For the goals still unreached
For the struggles not yet won
For the walls that sometimes breach
Tomorrow will see a new sun

For the many occasions I reminisce
For what are now but memories
For all the days that I miss
There is still much for me to see

For age that creeps and creeps
For the time that slips away
For mountains now too steep
There will be stories to recount and lay

For the mistakes that I made
For the regret that burns
For the words I mislaid
I can and will always learn

For the fear that restrains
For when around me there are none
For the times ruled by pain
It is I who will overcome

For all this and more
For what will come and what came before
There is me, there is you
And this is all we ever need know

M.M. — November MMXI

White blossoms seen on Glanrafon Hill

[Ex Tempore XIII]

Flaunting gleefully like crowned child-majesties
against the backdrop of a sky-adoring sun;
these white blossoms, nature's emissaries,
announce to me that spring has finally come.

M.M. — Februarius MMXII

Effusion

Extraction began in a near-hypnagogic stupor at midnight whilst listening to Borknagar's Quintessence.

"Upon the ruins of the future
I climbed to behold
A distance so pale
An existence so cold"

If I were to show you the things that flutter in my heart and in my mind, I venture that whole worlds would then be created—birthed from simple lines of meandering thought. These things, these worlds: some of them could fit like evanescent trinkets in the palm of your wilful hand. Others could span the breadth of your own mind, or the universe that we share (illimitability characterising both). Pierce the gossamer film of my psychic enclosure and my consciousness would stream out with the kinetic force of far-faring comets.

There is an intractable longing in me, a bittersweetness that burrows in me every which way. Though the lids of my eyes feel unbearably heavy at this moment, they have weighed immeasurably for so long: I dare seek and see—both with my eyes and eyeless eye—the impossibilities of cosmic voyages, future-fantasies and idio-dramas that play out differently in every new dream. I cannot express how much I desire to live them.

And the burden remains my own.