"Up from cracked earth"

Up from cracked earth
Root of evil, vine of sin
Fallen stars with burnt wing
Shadow and soil and storm

Unmasked with shattering crown
While defiling the seed
And dissecting the creed
Come forth from nothingness

Minds of meek men
Cowardly in the light
Cowering in the night
Lifeless in their shells

Through aeons of dogma
First of hell, then of heaven
Like tempest of golden leaven
Rebirthed to cataclysm

Portals of time once askew
Now corrected and set aright
With the gateways now abright
Come forth, birthing from the earth

M.M. — 30-Jun-2016

"Whirling somewhere"

Whirling somewhere

Up there, there in the night

In the dark of the night

I was drawn to you

Starshine lighting the void

Mind filled with fiery sparks

Portals opened in your eyes

I was drawn to you

Bursts of light, births of stars

So far, so far, up there in the night

Careering elements set aflame

The same that pierced my heart

The same that drew you to me

Just rotations of light

Of stars shining, at the dawn of time

Somehow, somewhere, sometime

I had you, you and I, you were mine

Once upon, when time was not time

Up there, where space stretched

And coalesced our minds

In my hands, in my eyes

Fire and light and time

And you, and you, and you and I

Lost up there, in the night

Just you and me, free of time

Frozen, in motion, on fire

In the light, in the void

Just how it first was, and always was

When something drew me to you

Just rotations of light

Just us, in starshine

 

M.M. — 28-Jun-2016

"They raised themselves"

They raised themselves to
the purest of all falsehoods.
Just as they raised their guns
to commit the impurest of acts.
With no sight in their sights
but black and white and crimson.
They brought nothing to the world,
and only took away its light.
How brave they thought themselves,
to deal in death, never courageous
enough to come to the table of life.
And as the flowers cried and died
the men in white castles prattled on.
But they only killed themselves.
They only ever kill themselves.

M.M. — 13-Jun-2016

"Death risen from the grave"

Death risen from the grave
Life that extinguishes every beginning
Imperial star shining pure darkness
The void cradling the spark of creation

What came forth from nothing
Became the patchwork of the universe
Dreams assembled from logic
A nightmare construed as a fantasy

The dreamless, the lifeless
The deathless, the less-than-nothing
What came forth from the universe
Became the masterwork of the end

M.M. – 05-Jun-2016

Goodness

Goodness in a man comes in measures and portions. Each ounce a piecemeal attempt to balance his actions and deeds. What goodness apportioned him he loves till he can love it no more. And when love of it is lost he becomes an empty container, a vessel seeking a power of equal worth. But how can he gauge worth in something when he himself is bereft of all that is worthy? Yes, goodness is poured into a man, and he sups of himself because it is all that he has, in truth. In truth goodness—to be good—is so easily stolen, or so easily squandered. I would give away all my goodness just to feel nothing of its grace, to feel nothing of its guilt. Goodness becomes in a man a curse of his own making. Goodness becomes in a man a meaningless plaque and a bespoke commemoration so self-exalted that its ideal is a joke. Show me a man's goodness and I will show you a carafe that can never be filled.

"I went down to the river"

I went down to the river one afternoon, down to the waters cold as ice and old as time. I went to drink, and I went to know. Kneeling down I took a moment and I peered at the stream, and watched it course, ripple, bubble, turn and shift as it went. Cupping both hands I scooped a portion of its life and I drank. I drank and drank again. But nothing came to me. I looked at my hands, and just wondered at them. I scooped once more but this time I let the water seep through my fingers. I watched this, the waters freeing themselves of me, returning to stream. So it was that I realised that I came for the wrong reason. I had asked the wrong question. Instead, I realised at that moment that everything I held up to that point could not be held forever in my hands. And what I could keep indefinitely was not to be held but felt -- remembered -- loved. I was not meant to keep these things; I was not meant to think them mine. They were meant to course, ripple, bubble, turn and shift as they went. Just as I was meant to.

M.M.

The Scientist in Love

I am a man who thinks in very logical and reason-based terms, which is why for me science is a discipline in which I feel supremely comfortable. But as a consequence of this manner of thinking I continually struggle to understand or cope with characteristically irrational concepts such as love. This composition is about that very struggle.

"These are the better of days,

when it is science that keeps me up at night

and not love,"

he said to himself as he lay there in the dark.

The world for him was to be ordered and understood,

delineated neatly like the structure of snowflakes.

But neatly his struggle with love

certainly was not.

He could not measure the arcs and vectors

along which his emotions travelled when he thought

of Her.

The thunder, the pain, the longing,

the rain that kept falling—

in his heart there was chaos and unpredictability,

things he could not fathom in his usual way.

What rules were he to follow

in the game of love?

Where there rules even at all?

Follow one set

and he would be faced

with another.

No rules, it seemed, no order in this plane.

Why was it that he found himself

calm and collected

when tackling ideas and churning theory,

but

unsettled, unhinged and unable

to think when delving into his own heart?

And why was it that

She,

of all the people he knew, held such power over him?

He could not measure Her, could not deduce or infer

what manner of system She was.

She was a model who's every parameter just made his chest

...ache.

The logic of the universe was lost to him when his eyes

locked with Hers.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016

"Sometimes I struggle"

Sometimes I struggle telling the difference between dream and reality.
Sometimes I am stuck in the nebulous realm between sleep and waking.
Moments when I find myself trapped in my dream-fantasies.
Especially when I dream of Her—I hold onto all that I desire of Her, all that I wish were true.
I cannot tell what is real and what is not when I am with Her,
in half-remembered memories or self-deceiving revelries.
Sometimes, in hypnopompic hallucination, I believe that She is finally mine,
that She has always been with me, without any measure of time to estimate how long.
And at these times I wish would never leave the dream, to never be ejected back into the world.

M.M. — 27-Mar-2016

The Stars and Time

When you next have a moment, take a look up at the night's sky, when it is clear and you can see the stars. And then think on this: The stars that you gaze at, those spheres of fire now long dead that are now but signatures of light streaming to our planet—those are the very same stars that everyone who lives or who has ever lived has gazed at at one point in their lives. Imagine that. What you see in your view is the same image that someone millennia before you once saw. Such perpetuity. We are but a moment of a moment in the cosmic thread of time. And of this you might think: "How small I am! How meaningless!" Because in the face of such an incomprehensible amount of time that is what any finite, self-aware being would think! But maybe it shouldn't be so terrifying. Maybe all it is is a matter of perspective. Yes, we are here, for the shortest of times, but we are here nonetheless! We are real and we exist! We are a speck in the vastness of the universe, but we are the universe! The universe as we know it simply would not be without every single speck that makes it up. And we are not meaningless. We think we are meaningless because our definition of meaning is scaled up to the level of time entire. But that doesn't make a lot of sense when everything we are and everything we know or will ever know is at the same scale as the thread of our own existence! Our definition of meaning is not at the level of the universe or of the entirety of time—our meaning is defined by the time we are alive and existent. And in that respect I think we matter quite a whole lot!

Depression (Iteration 3)

What falls in the rain
in the nighttime of the world?
I see the rain when shone by the street lamps,
each drop careering to the ground.

There are bodies hunched about themselves
rushing through the falling, with no sound but steps.
No words and no acknowledgement of me.
I cannot reach them.
I cannot connect with them. Not truly.
I do not seem to know how.
Never seemed to have known.
But I try, as they run past me.

We are all vessels I think, enclosed in ourselves.
The lucky are able to breach their shells,
to touch the faces of others.
But we who are not so fortunate
ever pick at the thickened walls
with whatever implements we come to fashion.
Hammering and picking away
with what little hope that has not yet been ruined.

Nothing but a hollowness within.

I think I know what falls in the rain:
I fall in the rain.

M.M. — 24-Mar-2016