Prometheus

The dawn of day
The millennia etched in the horizon
Suns that have risen for eternity

Awakening with great mind's eye shut
From a grave, stillborn and wretched
Layered with absolute cold and stagnation
Beleaguered by the tides of restrictive time

Womanly in vigor and disrupting order
Love coming from deep unknown
Nurtured to manhood by emboldened will
Conation and will, desirous of freedom and more

Risen to heights, beyond mountain peaks
Declaring war with petulant gods
Armed with a sword of light
A coruscating blade, cleaving the black void

A circle of fire, a ring of flames
A storm of ignited elements streaking across the empyrean
Fire in the flesh of man, in the heart of woman
Kinetics of force enflamed
Truth raging ever more wildly
As the vibrant colors of horizons change hue

Destiny in mortal hand
Death and life as courses undetermined
A soul found between a thought and a word

M.M.

"A rush of blood to the heart"

A rush of blood to the heart
A heart stricken and enlivened
An enlivened soul rearing to crescendo

Maybe this is just a dream of a yesteryear
A memory come back to haunt me
Never-dying and perpetual
A dream living wild off itself

She's all the proof I've ever needed
A consignment straight from the echoes
Resonant and deep in my inner world
A secret wish and a burning desire given word

Carried along by the primordial storm
A storm raging and wrathful and velvet red
Red and black, like black encroaching night
Nights spent wrapt by her dominion
The dominion in which my mind is most free

—M.M.

infra

light bent askew- the blessed eyeing sin askance
humanity drained & obsidian substance infused
a line Of terror streaking across the silence
wordless, formless -light bent askew

Appassionata

Like light cast into a swirling mass

of night, I am torn and I am stripped

A mind trapped by the confines that

love has erected around me. A passion

tantamount to violence, softly infusing

I lift myself and bare my soul to the sun

Run by the cold rivers, in the ancient wood

Dreamless the dreamer in the dead of night

My nights that she keeps, with her pale, beautiful

hand; a hand I wish like madness to hold

I slip away, to the wayside, to the inside

deep into the core of a starless vault

where she alone shines, bright and warm

The might of it, the weight of it—the

simple thought of her nestled next to my heart

Forces that came forth from heat, kinetic

energy come into being like the first bursts

of light: wrapt, as I am, by her movements

Sonorous and dulcet voice repeated in aural

memories, or a twirl and a tilt of the head in visual

scenes of just yesterday or the first day we spoke

Dreamless this dreamer who dreams for requital

but the dream effaced away like mist of an

early winter morning. An inner light that has grown

in me illuminates landscapes both arid and fertile

The streams of future are wayward stallions

unbridled and untamed. Just as passion and desire

run unfulfilled. Rove the rover lost in his own land

a land no longer his own but reigned by a hand

and a light cupping his heart and irradiating his mind

A mind that has been satisfied at long last, by a mind

stitched together the same, with the same sheen of darkness

All like water through a sieve and physical laws perfect

to a precision imperceptible by man. Because she is

precision, a blade with an edge so fine that my thoughts

themselves are rent. And assorted as they are in strange

new ways, by the beck of her word and her worth.

Regina of my night; dusk under your tow

countess of my day; dawn encroaching with your step

If truth be the sole judge of this passion, then my crucible

has been passed, and exceeded, and utterly engulfed by

the fire in her eyes, the blaze of her caress and the

inferno-maelstrom of her mind. Dominion of passion

Turbulence of storm-assailed sea. Love of a vastness

never known before by this dreamless dreamer

"Not by design"

Not by design or by intent

It did not become fact because it was meant

The two streams seemingly coursed apart

For years on end, till in one abrupt shift

They collided into one another

I lost all my words, and felt nothing but a chaotic peace

Standing in the sun, I felt the light fill me inside

It was the Answer I did not know I had longed for

The epiphany to efface the Question I did not know to ask

In a quiet room, on a day of little mention

A thought cracked like lightning

A clarity swept like fire through my being

In that moment, with no warning, I finally knew

My heart

My mind

Both belonged to her

"I dreamt of a grassy beach"

I dreamt of a grassy beach, of a storm approaching from the sea. Dark and heavy clouds moving as a living entity toward the land. I stood upon a mound and felt the coming change, felt the wind and the cold that grew gradually. I was nothing but a witness to an event as old as the earth. A rhythm of nature. A moment in time. And through it all, throughout my watching, I wondered of her - saw her in the distance. For this storm from the sea, this dream of dark and wind and rain - was her. An event of such great magnitude that it would change the land forever - she would change me forever.

"The desert ran on"

The desert ran on for years
An expanse as wide as the mind
Where time weighed down with stellar mass
But brought no change

In the distance of the night
Desire lit the way
Warmed the cold that lingered
Desire that was a half-dream
Giving flight to a wingless man

And it all just ran on
Far into the breadth of the sky
And into the deep of the heart
A craft of light and love
But solidified and unending

M.M. — 03-Sep-2016

Experimental VI

Composed whilst intoxicated.

One star, one form,
We are one storm
Held together by prediction and model
But no storm
And no form
That could ever contain our soul
That could ever contain our connation.
But held together by the sound of galaxies.
As far as my blinded eye could ever see.
From one event-horizon t'another.
The sound of galaxies—
Music to the ever-eternal
And language to who are first-born
Begot of reality and the ripples of consciousness
That attempt to normalize the planes.

M.M. — Aug-25-2016

I think I stepped out of myself. What I saw as I walked on were just shapes and forms rushing by me. Or grinning faces selling something or other that came half-alive, and jittered. Time shifted awry. In the wrong way. I think I stepped out of myself. Watching myself from just to my side...or...maybe not my side. Someone else's. ...Something else's. Dissociated. I think there are planes of reality, that normally are layered. Interleaved. Mine went all askew. Mind went all askew.

Living with Anxiety in a World of Chaos

About this time last November I shared on Facebook an open letter about my battle with major depression. What I didn't also mention at the time were my related struggles with anxiety. For those who may be unaware, depression and anxiety are highly comorbid. While I wouldn't consider myself to have an anxiety disorder, my bouts of anxiety can be sufficiently disruptive to my mental health that I'd like to briefly discuss them. This is in light of previously vowing to myself to always be open about my experiences with my ill mental health, with an added motivation of helping myself and others in the same situation cope better.

In particular, though, the reason for this post stems from a train of thoughts that I've been having recently: that of living with anxiety in a world of chaos. What I mean by a world of chaos is a world or a reality that is inherently unpredictable. Or, one in which we cannot control future events. Control, or rather the lack thereof, is what I would consider to be one principal driver of anxiety. If we could have things our way, I believe we who suffer from anxiety would have our hand on every lever, our hand on every string that controls the chaos of the world. I think this is how we see it, how we wish we could steer things so that we would never have to feel again the second-guessing, the guilt, the pacing heart and the loss of ability to focus that we feel.

The world is replete with chaos. And I don't just mean the daily tragedy, catastrophe or cataclysm. I also mean the events, however small, that blindside us. You know, the ones that really hit us when we least expect. And really, it's those kinds of instances of chaos that fuel most of the anxiety we feel on a continual basis. But I want to emphasise this concept of chaos, because I think it's important to grasp and (eventually) accept if gripped by anxiety.

When it comes to external input or stimuli, the mind is by and large designed to respond in a particular fashion or default to a particular state. That is, it is built to process things based on a predefined set of expectations. And if the input it receives doesn't adhere to these expectations, the mind attempts to correct (either itself or the input) using certain heuristics. There are multitudes of empirical tomes providing evidence for this. The special problem with anxiety is the way in which these heuristics overwhelm or disrupt our well-being. In a logical and rational world we would react to what are sometimes just inconveniences, misunderstandings or failures in communication in a logical and rational manner. Or if we lived in a world where we could predict and control events we would never have to feel the dread and loss of certainty of outcomes. But this is not our reality. We exist on a plane dominated by chaos. And that leads to ongoing discord in those prone to anxiety.

Finally, for introverts like myself, I think anxiety has a uniquely strong effect. A key feature of our personalities is that we do a lot of thinking; we live in our heads. Add to that mix a propensity to worry about and perseverate on the most illogical and intrinsically meaningless of thoughts or events and you have yourself opportune conditions for anxiety to thrive. Our mode of being is so inwardly oriented that we are especially sensitive to the chaos that originates from the external world. And if you are an introvert who values above all else control over your own life, then it seems only natural, given the laws of entropy that govern reality, that we succumb to anxiety.

M.M. — 24-Jul-2016