Poem VII - "I am not who I am" [Back catalogue]

I am not who I am.

Locked in 21-year corridors,
Left to peep through narrow keyholes
To espy fleeting moments of fantasy
And my Darkness.

Left and right the walls,
Night-black, polished onyx,
Flaunt portraits
Of horrific romances:

How lovely they all are.

But reach to touch them as I may
And they fade behind more locked doors
Of these twilit corridors.

I am not who I am.

M.M. — October MMIX; edited December MMXI

Poem VI - "Solely and supreme I held thee" [Back catalogue]

Solely and supreme I held thee
On sparkling, serene seas
Of yesteryears and forgotten lore;
The burnings of the heart and its roar—
But I have lost sight: my woeful pleas.

For what I have known of love
And the flights of splendid doves
Has been dashed by Time
And its reign; and the bitter clime
Of fate cast by the Above.

Now I tremble in sight of thy countenance,
And to give double mine own essence
Would be no great a price to pay if once again
Grace would resurrect and stay this pain.—
But alas! the pall is still and absolute the consequence.

M.M. — Februarius MMIX; edited December MMXI

Poem VIII - Esoteric Art [Back catalogue]

Words and thoughts: I shall bend and mould to my Will.
The cryptic and hidden: I shall prise wide and imbibe;

And deep inside I recognise and affirm the plurality of men I am and can be.
To set free and let wail the manifestations and fantasies that swell within me.

To kiss the snake and embrace the world,
Plunge into bliss and the million folds
Of love and time—into all things that are mine—

Whilst up above the stellar host will know no equal to their own light
Other than my radiating and emanating, illuminating orb burning so bright.

Without fear I am, with potent Will at my very core;
Without constraint my consciousness shall ever soar:
From inflamed Venus to belligerent Mars;
From aureoled Helios to Selene up in stars.

I wish to live unabashed and fully,
Be at once Dionysian and Apollonian—truly;
Unlashed, able to evolve and thrive,
To explore the labyrinth of my questioning mind—
And what infinite wonders may I there find?

Thus to cradle the Pillars of Creation
And witness the Universal cessation.

M.M. — October MMIX; amended Februarius MMX; edited, title revised December MMXI

Poem XII - "And so the world" [Back catalogue]

[Published in Forward Poetry's (formerly Forward Press) Poetry Rivals' Collection 2010 - Whispers Of The Mind on 30 November 2010.]


Influenced in no small part by T. S. Eliot.

And so the world continues its languid dissolution,
and the hum hum, drums and wails drown all out;
whilst creeping along his bleary path, head-wingèd,
comes Hypnos and in train his progeny—

What whimpers will I give when Thánatos comes for me?—

Creeps:

the scent of ancient forests where hoary wizards roam in wisdom—
In his hollow-hillock covered in moss and lichen lives the hermit:

I am the one-man screaming, arms in upward fury, lambasting the silent sky;
the spectator, miserable and magnificent, spying happiness from corners.

But what if that reflection of sunlight on that tin could bring me
back to those carefree days in places long gone?
Back to relive—to relieve!—reword words not said
but meant!—so dearly

...meant....

His back: so bent!

I tarry here; tire of this place.
What lies beyond where the stars pine
and
—'bove?
—below?
—before?
—behind?
my mind?

Would that I could...

could just....

Take a moment!,
ye hurried masses;
take but one single moment!
And—

Behold:
A vista:

An afternoon of a dying sun
dispersing its golden sea of remains—
Azure sky and a painter's clouds.
What a marvel to see
(to be able to just see!)
the neo-Gothic tower and spire
Posturing Proudly, timelessly,
defying their makers
and all manacled man alike.

What will break my adamantine shackles!
I wish to handle my hollow universe!
And dare!—yes, dare!
Ha-hah!
I will dare!
and!...

Palsy: fell-come, my dear friend:
Do you too feel the heavy weight on my chest?
My heart tender is severely constricted!
and restricted!
My how restrained and pained I feel!
Damn It!:
It is merciless!
Damn This!:
This lace!

But do I still not wander?:
in secret fantasies of love
and in secret fantasies of life?

In these precious
reverie-memories;
sham remembrances:

Garden lights—
outside a modern Danish summerhouse
—under variegated twilight.

Childhood innocence in a sheltered school-world
Oh and all the little things that are for me
All the small and touchable things
All the things with noises
And flashing lights
My things
Mine

A horroromance with
my Lady of evenfall-breed,
enswathed in sepulchral ruched satin;
and a dead-of-night tryst:
We together hurrying away
to oblivion
in an ebon landau
drawn by daemon equine—
all the while flitting with ease
between lucidity
and lunacy;
between the ethereal

and idioreal:

So I ride as passenger;
the country-dark night-chill
—erstwhile besieger:
I dismiss apathetically
its clamouring for the world—
and it
now forgotten.

So I ride;
onwards!
on byways;
onwards!
on highways;
onwards!
on my ways.

So I:

I, ensconced in a seat that stokes warmth—
Come, dream!; come, sleep!

I, observing the unlit country in awe—
Come, mind!; come, psyche!

I, immersed In the Nightside Eclipse—
Come, memory!; come, reverie!

(Two glinting eyes: unshut;
two pricked ears: censorless;
but a smirk
and silence kept.)

M.M. — Februarius-Aprilis MMX

Sonnet I - "For is my heart a vessel daring sea?" [Back catalogue]

Posted some years ago; presented here with cosmetic changes.

For is my heart a vessel daring sea?
Dare tempest, thunderstorm, and trident's quake?
Alack! yet mine is sheltered by no lee,
But rather shipwrecked, beached—denial's wake!
My lute, a-tuned so fervidly, doth dote
On thee; thou, crown'd for prime seraphic grace.
I strive toward thy heart despite thy moat,
Toward that thorny rose done up in lace.
And those who confidently try compare
To Beauty's host, but folly they will find.
As sure doth night aways with any glare,
In like course souls of ours will duly bind.
So onward, seaman! Love for none will wait!
Forever onward—nothing left to fate!

M.M. — October MMVI; final line revised December MMXI

Song II - A Love Song Macabre [Back catalogue]

Oh deathly Cassandra, come
For you I have shunned the sun

Rise from your fathomless dream
So we may haunt the lands unseen

To wander twilight arcades
And nocturnal promenades

Take my hand and I will show
Secrets only devils know

Oh my cold Cassandra, come
For their hollow love lies undone

How your obsidian tresses stir me
Razor-spiked like kraken sea

I could gaze forever into your eyes
Serpentine, lambent like fireflies

All at once you stupefy me
Daze and deaden so easily

Oh impish Cassandra, come
Hearken to words once unsung

I have armed 'gainst frivolous light
Flaunt now your eclipsing might

Unleash 'pon my entranced heart
Shadows of your blackened Art:

The evernight of your worldview
The diffidence you eschew

M.M. — Martius-Maius MMX; edited December MMXI

Words for a Picture VI

To be read alongside 127 by Mecuro B. Cotto (MecuroBCotto).

[Excerpt from an unfinished work:]

Why            is it
            when        the
      mirror                     shatters
and            I
                        try
            to    rearrange
      the                        shards
      does the reflection remain the same?

M.M. — December MMXI

Prose III [Back catalogue]

The Revelation of Lyrus Maskivian, the Deathless Prince, General of the Askkalan Armies (Ch. IV, § xxiii); recovered from the ruins of the Black Citadel in the year —.

In the riotous swathe I cut through the centuries, I sought always to unite the exudations of the beauty of love and war. And I succeeded. Though lesser men—men who dare not utter my name even now—have called me a madman, a butcher, all the permutations of malevolence, the very awe and terror that will perfuse through them once they know the true magnificence of what I have reached will at last and forever stain history with the quintessence of this grand conception, of this Art Revealed. The weak-willed worms cannot even begin the attempt of opening their insignificant minds to imbibe this most secret and enrapturing knowledge. Mountains of life-despoiled bodies I have piled, nightmarish landscapes I have trodden, entire nations I have burnt to ashes and one woman I have loved to the extreme; all to learn that in reeling horror and burning love there lie things that are crystal reflections of each other. They are, quite simply, the manifestations of what repels ordinary men and what ordinary men feign and pretend to understand. They reside at the threshold between sanity and madness, where very few are able to remain wilfully. They are the warmth that radiates within when one encases and seals his heart for just one other, never again for it to be unlocked. They are the purest art, revealed to an individual only during the very rarest of experiences, experiences of masterful devilry and uncompromising adoration, experiences that I have dared, in my audacity, to live.

M.M. — Ianuarius MMX

Poem XIV - "To the North" [Back catalogue]

To the North—
where blizzards beat
where white death hides

To the North—
where a nightsun eerily shines
where I dream of shadowed luminescence

To the North—
where mile-upon-mile is glacier and snowy plain
where ice kingdoms are unmoved and eternal

To the North—
where truth lies at the end of the world
where I walk aimless and fated

To the North—
where coldness wraps round me
where numbness seals me inside my mind

To the North—
where I lunge into the unknown nothingness
where I seek the something my heart craves

To the North—
where solitude is a congenial audience
where the gelid wind cuts open my distended self

To the North—
where I conquer all and in-between
where to languish is to be vitalised

To the North—
where silence is song and symphony of soul
where I begin where I will end

M.M. — Junius MMX

Experimental I

Written extemporaneously when somewhat intoxicated by alcohol at 3 a.m. on 10 December 2011.

What are the lines when extracted from the mind?
What are lines?
when hidden sometime in summertime,
when lines were one time of a mind unlike that now mine—
signs of a time when mind was kind,
kind like the lines that seep through all the time,
that seep through my mind, clocking away aligned with time;
and the spine of mine that heightens with every line that my mind, though unkind, writes,
line by line by line by line.

M.M. — December MMXI