The Sun Still Rises

I sit upon the shore, at the world's end
I sit upon the shore and contemplate the end
I sit and look up, expecting everlasting night
But the sun still rises

The weight of life, it hangs from my neck
The weight of life presses down upon my chest
The weight of life seems not to lose its might
But the sun still rises

I come in from the cold, looking old as time
I come in from the cold  with the chains that bind
I come in and think the frost better than my fright
But the sun still rises

The stars of the sky, they seem to always shine
The stars of the sky are of my kind, out in this night
The stars of the sky tell me there is always light
That the sun always rises

M.M. — 30-Apr-2015

"I asked her"

I asked her, "What is it that you makes your heart turn into flame?"
"I don't know," she said.
I asked her, "When was it when you first woke from your prison-dream?"
"I don't recall," she said.
I asked her, "Where is it you go when you let go of the world and let free your passions?"
"I don't know the place," she said.
I asked her, "To whom did you gift your soul, all fragile and yet impervious like steel?"
"I don't know their name," she said.
I asked her, "What is it that you would do if I told you who it was that first felt the birth-pangs of love?"
"I don't know what," she said.
I asked her, "What is that you know, then?"
She said, "That these questions need no answers."

M.M. — 28-Apr-2015

Love yourself

For a long time now I have believed that love must begin with yourself: you must first love yourself before you can truly love another. For loving yourself means that you know, and more importantly accept, everything about yourself. And when you know and accept yourself then you can give yourself to another, truly and wholly. Because loving another demands that you submit yourself to the care and keeping of another. True love then requires that your submission be genuine, and this genuineness can only come from submission to, and therefore love of, yourself. Come to love yourself first and love for others will naturally follow.

"When it first began"

When it first began, I do not quite remember
It may have been late one night last September
When first I saw her there in a lucent dress
With eyes bright like the moon and lustrous tress

It was slow at first, I think, like a calm forest stream
But when I finally noticed, I was too far within the dream
My mind, once so structured, ruptured in the rapture
I fell into her, fell into fathomless feelings and her capture

And when came night, each midnight, the dream took hold
As if my body fell into ice and was shackled by the cold
But a cold that was met with an equally fierce flame
Rippling through all my senses, a passion so untamed

Where this would take me I could hardly have known
Unknown like the secrets in her dusky eyes in which I was drowned
What she taught me, of myself and of love for another
Were something I had never felt before, and never by another

She was enervating and invigorating, this conqueress
And if I could have stopped it I would not have, I must confess
The constant disassembly and reconstruction in me was a thrill
A passion-fever, a near-addiction that I could just not kill

She, this beautiful thing, stepped out bare from some fantasy
A fantasy that I indulged in and voyaged blindly on its sea
With but a toss of her hair or an utterance of her voice
I was run through and torn apart, all allowed and by my choice

The bloodless savagery, the calming force—this was her way
A weighty, crushing silken caress, I remember it still, to this day
The dream left me changed, left me a little less whole as a man
But how I wish I was there again, there, when it first began

M.M. — 26-Apr-2015

Joseph Alexander

Joseph Alexander sat in his favourite coffee shop drinking his favourite tea counting the last days of his life. The coffee shop, despite being his favourite, was a place with very little character with very uninteresting people, or so Joseph Alexander would say to himself time and again. But there he sat, in his favourite seat—it was by the window, so that he wouldn't have to look at the décor—counting—day 1, day 2, day 3—all the very last days that he had left. "There will be a day when I will go to the library and read every book," he would say to himself. "And another when I shall go to that beach for first and last time." On he went, counting and listing everything that he planned to do, all methodical and quite neat. "I think one day I will save for a special occasion, to do something just absolutely wild. Perhaps I will go to the zoo!" Joseph Alexander continued like this for a good hour or so, and stared out the window, which had not been cleaned this morning, such that everything outside looked hazy and off. He did not quite know why he liked this coffee shop so much, but then, he did not like questioning these sort of things. He was much better as listing all of his "Last Days", he called them. He was very good at this; he did it every morning for as long as he could remember. When exactly any of these days would happen he would not dare, of course. That was not the point. It had nothing to do with when anything was going to happen, just simply that it was listed in proper order, so that when they did come he would know exactly what to do and how. And so Joseph Alexander kept on with his enumeration. Until Death walked in through the door.

M.M. — 21-Apr-2015

"Love"

Love. Love is what will save us from the darkness.
In the face of invisible onslaught of such ponderous weight,
The relieving light of love shall be the armour we so require.
It shall slash open the veil of night with its gleaming tempered sword;
With its heart of unbreakable metal it shall steady us and strengthen us.
What force within it! what hope!
This seemingly intangible thing we name "love".
But this nothing-thing shall be our salvation,
Our flame, fiercely burning bright—
Deep—deep in the dark of the night.

M.M. — 14-Apr-2015

Invictus

It was like I was shot through the heart. Pierced through my ribcage and flesh by a thunderbolt come from some unknowable provenance. I was down; I was low. My spirit's wholesomeness in a feeble state. I found myself winding the villainous back roads of self-doubt. And how fast I careered. But while under the shadowy vault of self-pity something of an immense force struck every particle of my very soul. The adrenaline was oh so noticeable as it coursed throughout my body, carried along by the vehicles inside me wrought by aeons of time and nature's patience. And my mind. It was if a fog or haze was swiftly cleared from my thoughts. I could soon feel a primordial strength take hold of me. Strangely, it was at once a physical vitality and a mental one. I used it; I fell into it; I armed myself with its weapons. And thus reinvigorated I clawed and climbed myself out of the pitiful abyss.

And here I stand—still here and always so. A man with but his heart, his head, his body and his will. With purpose and direction. A murderer of fear and a liberator of my own design. Freed from my self-convicted imprisonment. With his eyes and volition directed forward unto every new sun. Soul invictus.

M.M. — 28-Mar-2015

"Fallen son, fallen sun"

Inspired by the music of Enslaved

Fallen son, fallen sun
Shouted at the gods in vain
Beseeched the vaulted sky
Silent like the dense night

Rode on like the wind
Through the forests filled with death
And the fires of my birth
Hell and earth, one and the same

Moulded from the soil
And fused with the lights above
Caverns in my mind
And the timber of age in my limbs

Fallen from the dreams of the thunder
Onto the hard, living earth
Blood burning, breathing hurting
Child forgotten by the elder ones

M.M. — 09-Mar-2015

Of a Song

I heard a song come in from across the seas.
It came down, like a falling petal, from the starry nightsky.
The melodies were of a lightness of the soul
and the harmonies sourced up from deep down in the heart.
I heard this song, fallen down from the clouds up high,
and it expanded in me. It grew as a child grows,
with turbulence and joy and pain and wonder.
It lingered, it lingered for what I thought was so long,
stayed with me like a lover during the warmth of summer.
I indulged in its lilts and romance, I freely admit.
It led me through meadows and in and out of dreams,
with nothing but a fine note or two, or a whole theme.
I think it felt to me like love, or perhaps spoke of my own,
one lost long ago or unrequited. Yes, it was touched
by the softest tinge of inconsolable, bittersweet sorrow.
And in that sorrow came a flood of nostalgia,
and a smile brought on by memories of happiness,
and sadness too—for what is love if not a most welcome pain?
This song, it left me too soon, abandoned me
to the ordinariness and blankness of the world.
This dream in sound, I fell into it like one would fall
into the eyes of the loveliest of women.
But the dream, the song, ended, like the closing of her eyes:
a moment of bliss cut short and stolen away.

M.M. — 08-Mar-2015

The First Beat of the Heart

The first beat of the heart came from across the sea
It travelled the leagues across the ocean of love
From the kingdoms of ice and evening-time dreams
It came waywardly, fallen or stolen from some star above

Drumming and deepening, its young resonance grew
Consonant and in concordance with an elder song
Soft or rough, and mighty as the seawinds that blew
Coming as a comet from far away, whence it was flung

The first beat came and jolted to life the fledgling soul
Brought with it a light like starlit gold, straight from the sun
There risen across the sea, every one of its parts one and whole
Beginning the beating first begun, deep in the depths of some dying sun

M.M. — 02-Mar-2015