Unlit Window

[Poem XXXI]

There is such envious joy in an unlit window.
The lights inside perhaps just recently switched off,
that had lit a scene of laughter and vivid colour.
And the warmth within cooling—but only for a time,
until they all return in joy, laughter and vivid colour.

**

There is such tragedy in an unlit window.
Silhouettes stand motionless and cold,
unmoved and unneeded for far too long.
They stare at themselves and at nothing,
and out to a world that goes by and goes on.

M.M. — Augustus, November MMXII

Rain

[Prose VII] 

For Lulu.
Never dismiss the faeries; this comes from my own⎯

It had started to rain before I had left the building. The end of my day had come and I collected my things to leave. It became clear enough when I was outside that it was yet another rainy day in Wales. But this was no light shower I had found myself under; this was a torrent of water let loose from the sky to batter the earth below. This realisation was quick in settling in in my mind, and added to itself a hint of sour delight when it came to me that I had only a hooded jumper to wear through this child-storm. Accepting I would be far from dry when I got there, I started to walk home.

The heavy falling of rain—like that of the downpour I was now walking through—changes one's world in such a way. Those caught under it, braving it to make their way somewhere, seem to be hurried, as if the hounds of time were chasing them down for no obvious reason. For myself, though, the most curious thing about the rain is its insulating effect. More often than not I find that when I'm out and it's really chucking down I become encased in myself. Every detail of the world around me is accentuated: the sound of the rain's patter as it hits ground, rooftop, waterproof; the almost hazy curtain made up of droplets; the chill that accompanies the rainfall. All the people I pass turn almost into disinterested spectres flitting through the streets, specimens that I study half-keenly.

In barely any time my clothes were soaked, nearly through and through. The textile of my shoes could hardly keep out the water such that my socks and feet soon felt like slush. I was drenched. It became as though I were wearing some awkward-fitting one-piece that was just as unwieldy as it was the most natural garment I could ever have worn. But then at this point I did something unexpected. I pulled back the hood of my top and turned my face toward the sky, so that I could feel the drops fall on me—every single one of them. There really was no reason behind it, either; it was spontaneous, I just had to do it. I had to feel the rain as it was sensed through my skin: something external to me as it felt inside of me. And because of this I felt I was something else. I was immersed in myself, so immersed in myself that I had... found the deepest point of my self. My world, just moments ago a bustling machine of sights and sounds, had become a microcosm. A universe made of and birthed within myself where I was both a spectator and a creator. I continued onward, an intangible being on the inside, a sopped heap of clothing and flesh sloshing its way home on the outside.

And a heap I certainly was when I finally got to my house. Immediately stripping off and tossing away my sodden clothes, my first and only thought was to shower. The hot water was an ecstasy. And this is another curiosity for me: a hot shower. There is something primal about the heat from the water stimulating the skin on my bare body. A sort of transcendence results from that physical sensation and, for a brief moment, I am overcome. It's as if I am removed from everything I know and everything I am. Ecstasy is certainly one way of putting it, but it's also much more. A millennium lived or a galaxy leapt, all in an instant: it's much like that. And I plunge into myself. Indeed, however deep in myself I had been while walking in the rain, this heat now drew me in even deeper.

Stepping out of the shower, I was anew. Drying myself was like wiping away the dirty, liquid remnants of a part of me that I no longer wanted or needed. I then stood before the mirror, naked, and used my towel to clear away the vapour on the glass. The man looking back—the droplets on his skin, that distinct sheen in his hair given by the water—was not the same man that had been before the downpour, is never the same man. I stared deep into his eyes, wondering what I could see in them. Perhaps I wanted to see that world that had emerged in him. After remaining puzzled like this for a while, I headed to my room to put on clothes and, by doing so, complete the regeneration the rain had instigated.

Now warmed and fresh to the point of contentment, I took a moment to look out my bedroom window. The rain had just about stopped and the sun had found a weakness in the grey defence of the sky. Out in the streets, everything and everyone appeared to slow down and settle back into the rhythm that the rain seemed to have interrupted. The outside world was as it once was, and I couldn't help contemplating that soon I would be a part of it again.

M.M. — Iulius–October MMXII

"I have seen"

[Ex Tempore XXIV]

I have seen the naked flame inside of me
that illuminates the centre of me,
the flame I carry in the desolate fields
domed by star-studded night.
I have heard the call that resounds
down in the deep of me.
My ambitions are untame creatures.
They drive me on, the ravening of me;
they career like far-flung comets.

M.M. — October MMXII

"Silence in the midnight hour"

[Poem XXX]

Silence in the midnight hour
Silence in the midnight hall
Silence and I here once again
Waiting for the dawn to call

Words soon coming on
Words some not my own
Words as honest thought
Company when I'm alone

Heavy the weight of my world
Heavy the way and downward wind
Heavy the dream settling in
Negating the rules that bind

Lost in the midnight hour
Lost in the midnight hall
Lost in the labyrinth of time
As into nothingness I fall

M.M. — Iulius, October MMXII

Words for a Picture VIII

inner place 2 by ~niqe on deviantART

Rosie told her everything that had happened, all the while stumbling with fear over her words. Clarissa did not say anything throughout that moment—a perpetual moment—but then rose, gravely. Slightly hunched forward, she turned toward Rosie. Clarissa's silence was profound but tame compared to how she looked. There was enough weight in her face to collapse the sky, enough scorn to wreck heartless men. That visage signified the beginning of Rosie's doom. And Rosie knew this; her own face, now bloodless, marked it all so clearly.

M.M. — October MMXII

This is how the poet loves

[Ex Tempore XXIII]

All I can offer you are my words,
for they are the truest part of me.
Only they can speak the truths inside of me,
even though the truths are sorrow and joy
and apathy—all fair to my words.
I would be mute without my words,
and if mute I could not say what I have said to you:
secrets whispered that night
when we stirred together, alone in the dark.

All I can offer you are my words,
for they lay me bare and naked before you.
By offering you my words I offer you everything:
my life, my virtues and triumphs, my faults and failures,
my dreams, imagination, my fears—everything;
everything my words could ever give.
And after all, these are my words:

"I love you."

I do not know how to convey to you the measureless impetus,
the surmounted fear and absolute surety behind that utterance.

But then, only my words can do so.

M.M. — October MMXII

"I saw her there"

[Ex Tempore XXII]

I saw her there, again, for the first time, all at once and for all time,
my time, her time, I lost myself in her time, lost myself in her, for
she was all thunder and fury, I was all thundered and furied
and thrown into disorder and the ordered maelstrom of her
storm that came for me, came from her, it was her and it knew no
mercy, no need for mercy as her sword sliced like silk, because
love is all fever-dream, impetus, want-and-hurt, is all, absolute

M.M. — September MMXII

Wayfarer

[Lyrics II / Song VI]

Lyrics for a song to be written by Joel Thomas Martin.

To step into a dream
Is no simple thing
To live a dream, so much harder

The dreams I have dreamt
And all I have spent
To bring me closer to forever

But the closer I have got
The more I have lost
Getting further along the way
Became a burden of my own making

[Chorus:]
I have come and I have gone
To places known only in old men's songs
But I am a man who lost out to the years
Returning to himself only after so very long

And what has it been for?
When now I know no more
Even after everything I have seen

Still searching for a home
Still walking my own road
Even after everywhere I have been

Tomorrow will be like yesterday
Another destination I'll mislay
There is no end to my journey
I'll never find what I'm looking for

[Chorus:]
I have come and I have gone
To places known only in old men's songs
But I am a man who lost out to the years
Returning to himself only after so very long

What has it been for
After everything?

M.M. — Aprilis–Maius, Iulius–Augustus

"At the dawn of day"

[Experimental II]

Largely written in the dead hours of the morning in the weakening grip of inebriation.
Fragments from a mind lost of itself.
—

For Annie

At the dawn of day, and of man,
at the breaking of the sky,
a dreamtime blue had begun its shattering.

The punctuation of man-light
that lit the way
punctured true-light.

Yet despite this, beyond the light
and the shadowed trees
the darkness and the silence were still there,
watching me.
 
Man does not know the silence that is awake when he sleeps.

And in the end
it would be the fire behind the sky that would rise

—man would not rise.

M.M. — Augustus MMXII

Passenger Seat

[Lyrics I / Song V]

Lyrics for a song written by Kristen Koller.

[Chorus:]
On this darkened road it's only you and me
And I still fail to see
Just where we go

I look outside to see ourselves stuck in time
And you just drive on by
What we were

Along the way we lost
Our words even though we thought
We would never fall apart

I've sat and played my part
But now I realise that
You've driven right from the start

So finally it comes to me that I must confess
That I have felt like this
For so long

Were I to hit the brakes and turn away
Just what would you say
To me?

Though I know that you
Would simply drive right through
Every stop we've come to

But maybe I'm the fool who
Never saw through you
Who never knew what to do

[Chorus:]
On this darkened road it's only you and me
And I still fail to see
Just where we go

I look outside to see ourselves stuck in time
And you just drive on by
What we were

[Chorus:]
On this darkened road it's only you and me
And I still fail to see
Just where we go

I look outside to see ourselves stuck in time
And you just drive on by
What we were

M.M. — Iulius MMXII