"He was a small man"

He was a small man with big dreams
and a mind much too unquiet,
filled with themes dark or loud
or proud or just a bit unkind.
There was so much more in
his core, so much waiting to be
realised and given to the world.
Out from the deep wells
he wished to hurl the thunder,
chaos and quakes that tore him asunder.
Colours of a light unseen and unknown
to others. This star raging in the night;
the comet's impetus propelling and
impeding him all at once. And
in the night, he was lost and yet
there grew and burgeoned as
architect of all that he knew himself be.
Promethean, fire-stealer, knowledge-bringer:
hot as hell the maelstroms churned.
He was a a small man but his dreams
streamed and darted within his mind,
and he would see them into the world.

Poem XLI
M.M. — 20-Jul-2014

"Not the darkness of the night"

Not the darkness of the night
Nor the darkness brought by might
Not the darkness before the light
But the darkness in our minds
Is the darkness that we must fight

Ex Tempore LXXX
M.M. — 27-Jun-2014

"She fell away"

She fell away from me like the coming of the autumn
Gradually and inevitably the stone sunk in
We lost each other when night took away our sight
Now the shadows come in and the winds sing

I once held fire in my arms
Once upon a time I knew the stars' words
They spoke through her—such was her voice
But goodbye was the last I ever heard

The cold closes round as a shroud
Warring with the glow of the embers
Silence tries to bestill my heart
But never will, for I'll always remember

Ephemeral dreams are all that's left
And a tether to the past
I will hold on to the ghosts that haunt
To the very last

Ex Tempore LXXIX
M.M. — 25-Jun-2014

Questions

I find myself in a room of questions.
Questions lock and bar the door and
questions are scrawled all over the walls.
In the grip of doubt I ask myself endlessly
of how to escape the cages,
to find my way out of the dark-night forests.
Questions I have asked for years
are as familiar to me as my kin and
replayed as often as my most important memories.
But the worst question of all is
the one which I know all too well
and yet do not know how to ask.

Ex Tempore LXXVIII
M.M. — 01-Jun-2014

All things begin and end with me

All things begin and end with me. This is not to say that things not of me are not in themselves real, but rather that meaning is inherently a consequence of my self, my "I". To echo Crowley, each of us is a star. A star bright in the void and burning ever so fervently. The paths that we wend and burn are for us to choose - both the direction and the meaning. Whilst whoever and whatever we each are may be things some of us share, in the end, all things begin and end with each of us. We are unique, perfect in our imperfections, stars in the void, burning in whatever way that is our own.

Ode to Words

Fly, fly my words, fly on high
Birthed from fire, fly through the sky
Like wisps of wonder whispered in dead of night
Soar free, unfettered from silence's bite

Unfurl your sails and course through the seas
Through my mind's oceans go forth from me
Search for wherever your destination lies
Whether in empyreal heights or otherwise

The infinite cage of my mind is too confined for you
So like flood and storm I release you without construal
Take your power and freedom and wreak as you will
Ever and always, for my aims remain unfulfilled

Then hurry, you nebulous weights of mine
Fly, fly till you find others of your kind
Perhaps in others' minds or in the black
Fly for you are not meant to turn back

Ex Tempore LXXVII
M.M. — 20-Apr-2014

Sundown in Cardiff

The sun falls in Cardiff
and amber suffuses onto building and bystander.
Onto bricks and rooftops and in the trees
the dying golden light casts itself
as the earth's warmth recedes.
I walk along with music in my ears,
a silent observer in a city of glass and concrete.
In all the windows I see sundown mirrored,
sundown and the world itself reflected.
I have been here before,
in another time, another place—
but it is as it has always been:
walking through the city and watching the pace of life.
Here the faces are the same,
and so too the movements;
but each, as I have come to know, is unique and individual.
Amber scatters its terminal magic as it has always done,
but this city is but another in the journey.
I will ever be the observer,
but an observer of a world of my own choosing.

Ex Tempore LXXVI
M.M. — 19-Apr-2014

Limits

Everything we know and everything we believe is limited to a given extent. This is at once a bad and good thing. It is a bad thing because we may rely on assumptions when said assumptions are not appropriate for a given situation. I may make the mistake of believing that something or someone is the case when in fact my beliefs are too limited to make an informed and proper decision about such—which could result in a range of detrimental consequences. And it is a good thing because our limits are what permit growth and development; they are what engenders learning, and importantly, re-learning. As a scientist, this excites me because it means that what I may know and discover today could very likely be supplanted tomorrow; something new is always waiting to be known—my current knowledge is only as firm and as confident as the knowledge I will acquire tomorrow. And tomorrow will always await.

Certainty

Find yourself in the throes of despair and it will become painfully clear that an intractable symptom is the difficulty in trusting certainties, at least positive ones. But time and time again I rely on one particular certainty: that tomorrow always holds another day. The new day brings a new sun and with it the chance to try again, to win, to fight the darkness. This is the certainty that you can hold on to, the one that you can trust. And I wholly believe in this; I place my faith in every new day and in every new sun. Today the world may not be mine, but tomorrow...tomorrow the world waits to be won.

The Individualist and the Wilderness

As an individualist I have a very strong affinity with the wilderness. I would wager that many other individualists have a similar relationship. Nature is where the individualist can assert his or herself without restriction; the individualist and the wilderness have an almost inextricable bond. And it is a strange thing: that my need for deep and encompassing connections with other individuals is somehow negated when in the wild, that removing myself from human contact leads to a (temporary) dissipation for attachment. Perhaps for the individualist the need for this connection is unnecessary when placed in the most primal of environments. Or perhaps it is really its grandest fulfilment, that what I connect with in the wilderness has definitions that go beyond the prescriptions of human attachment.