The ghosts I saw by the Menai Strait

[Ex Tempore XIV]

An idea that conjured itself whilst on an evening run that took me by the Menai Strait on 18 March 2012.

As I was passing by, I saw with unbelieving eye
the ghosts of children dancing in the field,
dancing under coming night, right by the Menai.
They glowed and flitted in the evening-blue
that lit the silent sky and this walker passing by,
who stood and witnessed these spectres
writhe and leap and turn from side to side,
from one end of the field to the other,
with nary a cry of laughter or anything besides.
I proposed to myself to approach these children,
phantoms of the night, of a time long gone by,
but worried they would fear my coming and
hie away back to the graves where they must lie.
So instead I decided to marvel at this thing
I now saw; and I smiled, for I had not turned
away in horror as men are wont to do when
they face sights like this, a sight of sprites
who no longer knew the real horrors of the world.
But at length I was espied and the children ceased
their frolicking and for a moment looked at me.
With great effort I tried a word, a salutation, a "hi",
but came up with nothing and simply gaped at them.
Though I could not see any light in their eyes
I could tell with little doubt they were not afraid of me,
and that they knew I, likewise, was not fearful of them.
All at once they turned and began to recede into the dark,
into the night, leaving as silently as the sky up high.
And there I was, left alone, left to remain and reflect on
what I had seen—was it real or but a vision in my mind?

M.M. — Martius MMXII

"Ex Tempore VII" runner-up in Thynks Publications competition

"Ex Tempore VII" (below) has been chosen as a runner-up in Thynks Publications Limited's Inspirational Poems competition. I was quite pleased when I was told, not only because I submitted it as an entry on a whim but because I wrote it in one night (hence its "ex tempore" title).

This poem, along with prizewinners and other runners-up of the competition, will be published in a small book sometime in 2013.


Ex Tempore VII

For G.

For the music I cannot draw
For the pictures I cannot write
For the sounds I wish I saw
There are those that I might

For the places of which I dream
For the tastes I hope to breathe
For the things I really mean
May rhyme and reason never leave

For the love I long ago lost
For that which did not come
For the paths that did not cross
There is still little and some

For the goals still unreached
For the struggles not yet won
For the walls that sometimes breach
Tomorrow will see a new sun

For the many occasions I reminisce
For what are now but memories
For all the days that I miss
There is still much for me to see

For age that creeps and creeps
For the time that slips away
For mountains now too steep
There will be stories to recount and lay

For the mistakes that I made
For the regret that burns
For the words I mislaid
I can and will always learn

For the fear that restrains
For when around me there are none
For the times ruled by pain
It is I who will overcome

For all this and more
For what will come and what came before
There is me, there is you
And this is all we ever need know

M.M. — November MMXI

White blossoms seen on Glanrafon Hill

[Ex Tempore XIII]

Flaunting gleefully like crowned child-majesties
against the backdrop of a sky-adoring sun;
these white blossoms, nature's emissaries,
announce to me that spring has finally come.

M.M. — Februarius MMXII

Effusion

Extraction began in a near-hypnagogic stupor at midnight whilst listening to Borknagar's Quintessence.

"Upon the ruins of the future
I climbed to behold
A distance so pale
An existence so cold"

If I were to show you the things that flutter in my heart and in my mind, I venture that whole worlds would then be created—birthed from simple lines of meandering thought. These things, these worlds: some of them could fit like evanescent trinkets in the palm of your wilful hand. Others could span the breadth of your own mind, or the universe that we share (illimitability characterising both). Pierce the gossamer film of my psychic enclosure and my consciousness would stream out with the kinetic force of far-faring comets.

There is an intractable longing in me, a bittersweetness that burrows in me every which way. Though the lids of my eyes feel unbearably heavy at this moment, they have weighed immeasurably for so long: I dare seek and see—both with my eyes and eyeless eye—the impossibilities of cosmic voyages, future-fantasies and idio-dramas that play out differently in every new dream. I cannot express how much I desire to live them.

And the burden remains my own.

"Evening descends"

[Ex Tempore XII]

Evening descends on the bustling earth;
extending darkness mutes clamouring colour.
Our worlds dim and defer for once to silence;
pace is gratefully held for a while.

M.M. — Februarius MMXII

Emilie Autumn - "How to Break a Heart"

How to break a heart
It is not difficult
Anyone can do it
So could you, if you tried
Just find a light
And switch it off
As easy as blinking
That's what I was taught
When I was too young to ask
By ladies in white nightgowns
In dripping weeds and black ribbons
A girl's best friend is a small handgun
The question was useless
For I could say yes
But you've got to ask my army
And they are not inclined to grant favours just now

Grotesquerie

[Metapoem III / Experimental II]

Variations on a theme; experimentation on technique.

I can
             feel Him
       in my mind
I can hear Him scratch at the doors
                     picking at the walls
               Don't
let the lights go out! never the silence!
Why              is it
             when      I
      shatter                     the
mirror          and
                         try
             to    rearrange
      the                                    shards
      does the reflection remain the same?
"Perhaps if I just sever our left hand we
    You know we won't ever stop; we like this"
"won't have to worry about doing it again?
    too much. Now stop your nonsense and pay"
"Because, we've only done it a few times...
    attention: there's another one for us."
As I lie in bed in my room, I notice them: edges—where wall meets wall, meeting ceiling.
"Hmm... no, that won't do; the edges are much too crass, and too boring!" Better that they
were more rounded, concave. "—There! Much better." The window shutters as well
leave much to be desired; cascading as a waterfall is more their wont. The ceiling again:
"Surely that's beginning to crack", and crack it does. First slowly, then quickening—"fissures,
at last!". The fragments of this enclosure fall away, are discarded as insignificant bits of
rubbish to the nothingness. Opens the void, and I stream, tip of my mind first, into a—
Desert moonshine
        —scorch me!—scorch me!—scorch me!—
Moon shines in the desert
        —bless me!—bless me!—bless me!—
Shine deserts the moon
        —save me!—save me!—save me!—
I watched    crippled boy, hobbling                street,
             and       to the hardened ground—
And   did       care.
  raped a woman just the          night;
I hurt                    way imaginable—
And I did not        .
I killed a man with my 
Because he looked at             wrong      —
       I                   .
  stole    girl         her bedroom;
I tortured and                 her with a finesse—
And         not care.

M.M. — December MMXI; Februarius MMXII

Phantasmagoria

[Poem XXVI]

Come to me, sweet Sleep,
Hand-in-hand with thy brother dearest Dream.
Wings aflutter as I steal up the keep,
The stair stepped seeping at the seams.

Take me from my brick bed,
Rending the fibres of the clinging coil;
Transfigure loathsome lead
Into capricious mercury till my breast boils.

Thus unto haunted hollows,
Where Beauty waits as silken sylph;
There to faithfully follow
Her face, bedecked with gilded glyphs.

Come to me, benighted Belladonna,
With deathly, livid lips.
By thy misty waist thy fell fauna;
My life soon to slip.

Guided by the mighty moon
I will saunter through the forest full,
Which is lit by rampant runes,
Where fantasies rage and rule.

Journeys through time
Upon star-capped seas,
Experiencing sights sublime
That are mine solely to see.

My name will drop into the Deep
And will be forgotten forever.
Thus I will take a last lasting leap,
Unlashing my tautened tether.

When I drift into dream
I am welcomed well
By these themes:
Sleep's most surreal spell.

M.M. — November MMIX; Februarius, Maius, September, November MMX; Februarius MMXII

Poem IV - "Of the present frivolous regard of love" [Back catalogue]

Of the present frivolous regard of love
I seek to extol and rhapsodise here in no way:
I leave that trifle to those who are deaf to
The clarions of the true, blissful empyrean anthem.
And O! how that elevated of melodies has been
Chorused again and again, and always, in me.
It is the lilt of cherubim descended and embodied;
Yet twofold, and is the tenor of tyrannous torment,
That chides more than brings agony—if the paltry
Difference can e'en be distinguished in this respect!
And affliction of this song of songs feeds from naught
But my own timorousness, the most inferior of things.
What am I to do in the face of such warranted onslaught?
Shun the anthem, shut my ears? Or share in the song?

M.M. — December MMVII

Words for a Picture VII

To be read alongside "open your eyes" by Ewa Brzozowska (bubble-gum-heart).

The hold weakens
as the lights of the hard-defined world begin to blur and dim;
till the nebulous line is crossed without awareness,
a crossing millennial in distance
and quantum in duration.

M.M. — Februarius MMXII