The Life Story

Your life is the greatest story you could ever read. Why? Because it has all of it: There's adventure and humour, drama and suspense, love and tragedy, birth and death. What's more, the lessons that you can learn from it really do stick with you; there's just no skimming the book of life. And unlike any other book, you just can't flip to the end to see how it all turns out. What happens on the next page, the next chapter, is anyone's guess. And that's all at once pretty scary and exciting, I think!

"The dreams came back"

The dreams came back to haunt again,
and she was right at the fore of them.
A little older and wiser but still the same;
a thing entwined never really leaves.

Dancing with her in the summer rain;
it was a memory that never happened,
but one that held fast with iron chains.
Dancing under the sun one May day.

I consort with the night, slumberless,
and there in the dark her face shines.
She speaks words of starlight that bind,
to a dreamer wishing to be deaf and blind.

The dreamer must awaken or fall,
escape the dream-halls and end it all.
Or is there no end to the reverie?
No release for he who remains entralled?

Poem XXXIX
M.M. — 05-Jan-2014

Love and Freedom

I believe that love is, in a sense, a form of freedom, an exhilarating freedom. This freedom comes from the realisation that you are accepted for who and what you are, whatever those may be. It can be a frightening thing to be who you really are, and for somebody to embrace you as you are is a truly remarkable thing. To someone you are the most brilliant of stars, twinkling in a colour that can only be perceived by that person. And this is of course reciprocated by you to the one you love. Love, then, is like a release, from the shackles of self-doubt, self-deprecation and loneliness; a release into a freedom where you can flourish and develop unrestricted. To love and to be loved is to be free.

Greatness

A defining mark of great individuals is that they are in themselves a force and a time. A force because their actions oscillate through their own environment and the environment of those proximal to them; a time because their force imprints on reality for an enduring period. But greatness is not exclusive to those who history remembers. Each person, known and unknown, has greatness in them, for they too are a force and a time. In their own lives they are capable of sending ripples through their microcosm and leaving upon their personal histories a mark of significance. It is only a question of whether this greatness is harnessed.

Dragon

A decade of abuse and terror enslaved her.
She was locked in a cage both in her mind
and in her life. Afraid of the night and sleep
because he came when the lights went out.
Disgust, shame and fear tore at this innocent.

Until that day when the Dragon in her awoke
and those reptilian wings tattooed on her back
became real, bursting through from flesh, bone
and blood. From then on the darkness was no
longer her warden: fire had become her breath
and fire burnt to cinders the pain and the fear.

Ex Tempore LXXI
M.M. — 08-Dec-2013

Sapiosexual

When she walked into the room
I found myself consumed
by an outpacing heat.
My heart then felt it soon,
falling into a swoon,
stepping to a military beat.

Electricity in her eyes
and razors for thighs,
she sliced as she went.
Her voice, a sweet lullaby,
that could bed the sun up high:
her words had me spent.

But the sharpness of her glance
and that neck-breaker stance
could not compare to her mind.
Straight through like a lance,
her thoughts slowly advanced,
as mine charged hers in kind.

She and I collided as two,
and into her everything I through,
until we were much like one.
Giving all I believed and knew
because then and there I knew
my heart and mind she had won.

Ex Tempore LXX
M.M. — 26-Nov-2013

"What was Her name?"

What was Her name?

She came robed in night with the stars in Her hair,
A whirlwind fever-dream that dimmed all the lights.
Breath sweet like death's deceitful grace and embrace.
Cold to the touch and yet a blaze in Her eyes
That burned through the haze that She wove.
No words from those livid lips; but a kiss, both ice and fire.
From me She took, or rather, to Her I gave my life and light.
And so now I will be dead by dawn; to Her a prize that She swiftly won.
And never will I know whom or what stole my glow.

What was Her name?

Ex Tempore LXIX
M.M. — 24-Nov-2013

Synapse

I stand by myself inside myself;
disconnecting myself from myself,
coursing along the fibrous channels.
The colours are so much more alive with my eyes closed.
Electrochemical firestorm,
a synchronous, oscillating universe reflecting on itself.
How long the journey? how far the voyage?
The answer lies in the distance of the synaptic cleft.

Ex Tempore LXXIII
M.M. — 20-Nov-2013

The 11th of November

Eyes that still tell so much, despite the glaucoma,
and that had seen too much.
Seemingly so fragile in that chair,
but back then a stone against the waves.

*

I ran into Death earlier today,
he was counting from his list by the wayside.
I stopped and said,
How goes the tally, my old friend?
He looked at me
and simply nodded in affirmation.

*

In the Davies' house in Rhymney
a photo of him stands at attention.
He was very popular round the village,
she says, with troubled hands.

*

The fields have long been overgrown in Flanders
and the air long cleared.
The earth holds in it memories, mostly terrible ones.
But there, by the autumned trees—
only the flowers have to suffer winter's cold now.

Ex Tempore LXXII
M.M. — 11-Nov-2013

"Rain is falling"

Rain is falling upon their heads
They who fought but now are dead
With belief and strong will and heart
They stood together and yet apart
Women, men, children—one and all
Cold and lifeless under funeral pall
But once so full of life and steely sight
They all answered the call to fight
A fight for right, for life and liberty
To reseed freedom's fallen tree
And though it may seem all in vain
Yes, high was the price they paid
But the spring once more has found its flow
And embered hope regains its glow
The dead, they pass on to you and me
And all those wishing to be free
The courage and strength and will to live
For which everything I would gladly give

Ex Tempore LXXI
M.M. — 02-Nov-2013