On Greed

This last deception rooted plays

Upon a new design

And set to deign on vile ways

Of those who sit to mime

 

They crave and reign on duped delight

And cringe on purest creeds

To file within a nauseous taunt

And sway like rotten weeds

 

When tireless hunters crave their prey

They do what comes in teach

To slay what little good becomes

The efforts for their reach

 

But in this foreplay rest foregoes

Their lairs of darkness deep within

And find the evercrusting foes

Of liars’ pools and craving win

 

And when in dawn awakens light

And masks of skin and bone retreat

Will terror of a righteous hand

cause tepid pulse to pause in beat

 

Their minutes run in wayward course

To patch a tear with grass and air

For in a mend that lacks remorse

Will open wounds cease true repair

-j.m.

On Jericho

In glacial boom the sonar trumps

through walls that snug the city in

And temple stones shrug in respite

Of sinners dwelling on pulpit bins

And calls to skies, fire reach their sun

And nights in darkness far from grim

Will joyous deserts rise with sand

And form tan meadows in layers rim

By dunes to peak a man’s despair

The people sire from great to moss

Minutely dim the flame with care

The loneliness of tundra frost

 

To this grand city will walls to crumble

And men to flee and women blunder

but truth be set in yearly light

Of dearth reprieve and timely plight

 

-j.m.

On Heat

In the inside of a man in heat

Of wells in deep restraint

Surge the waters woven rivers deep

And torrent crisp with breaks of wave

And in the hour of man’s defeat

When laid with troubles of summers’ past

When heat decried the bellow foul

Of smitten coals in glow to last

Felled by nothing and wanting more

He takes and swallows what barriers keep

He stretches arms that rain to pour

And wash away what sorrows weep

But to the last his will undone

By chains of iron in purest ore

Has nature ways to deal its pawn

To tear asunder and will no more

 -j.m.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 7 Laws of Goodness

7 laws of goodness write

On hardened stone by given light

but torrent human froth does flow

bathing sinners who doth bestow

the tempest light into the fall

of souls engraven deep in all.

 

The 7th light of law be kept

from takers of seen treasures’ gold

and avaricious goals be swept

in emptied coffers’ weathered toll

 

The 6th to be denounced at right

in disrespect thy father’s gnaw

of youth enjoyment struck in plight

and drowned in trite familial caw

 

The 5th to be in herald cry

by moralist in spoken swoon

across the masses hold their light

for demagogue in anxious tune

 

Four have felled and three entrust

what’s left of angel human rust

but in these few kept clean and kempt

will apples soon be bit to tempt

 

The 4th in coupledom doth lie

To seal in rites of single pair

but flee to rivers running high

across their word to others’ share

 

The 3rd in consternation flee

In seeing lines that tend to bend

towards other sexes not decreed

to be indulged with lustful tread

 

The 2nd bathed in tar and blood

by shackles torn past civil ire

and let to roam with sharpened blades

in assembled plans to death conspire

 

One remains and six have fled

By willed impassioned human bred

And those that fly above these all

Will find the last to cue their gall

 

The 1st we find in bottom pits

of molded soils of 6 that lay

and keep themselves in crusted fit

to bar the good and keep at bay

For in this first we find enlist

the might within a trembling force

to melt the frozen hearth of six

and let inspire a virtuous course

 

The 1st is lit by hardest flint

Atonement fires to quell the rile

and burns away the soiled tint

of past aggrieved and current mire

 

For in the rue of past misdeed

Will gifts be given to those intent

on digging paths to unearth reprieve

to quell despair and naught lament.

 

-j.m.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Consolation

Reveling in daytime glee

the joy of social throes in tow

While hours pass and minutes flee

the mark of human emblems glow

by common feeling among those friends

to pass my life, to enjoy their airs

But crossing smiles define my trends

and sags by subtle weights it bears.

Indeed they see and draw embrace

indulge in me with kinder cares

Lamentable to find defaced

extended hands to take in theirs

A truer set I could not find

To renew a vision once beheld

And plant the germ to grow inside

entice the bloom, remove the veil.

My caps of ice, except not cold

by warmth the loving outside share

In company I find their mold

but in this cage I do not dare.

I fright, I flee, I look away

Passion’s eye in lasting pour

I gray the color of their ray

Until in me I find no more.

 

 

 

-j.m.

On Nocturnal Thoughts

Night brings a release of little nooks in the mind that hide during daylight.  Thoughts and repressed memories come abound and the silence of a dark room can be the only light to illuminate their unexpected appearance.  As I squirm under a warm fleece, I remember the familiar smell of a Colombian summer, visiting the small towns dotting the road to countryside holidays, and even the slight exhaust of a polluted Colombian capital.  These are memories brought to life by smells I may catch in a millisecond while walking down Lexington or any other avenue in the midst of my commute to the office.  It all comes alive when there is nothing more to think about, when the body slowly drifts to sleep and its sweet loss of consciousness.  I dream of seeing these things again soon, but I know it probably will be some time.  It isn’t until daylight that I realize I had already fallen asleep and the memories are gone.   Well, the memories themselves are not gone, but their resurgence would have to wait another silent dark restful night. 

Do I crave moments like this, above all? I would have to say, they do give me a feeling unlike that of laughter I can enjoy with my friends, or the gratification of any other personal successes in my active life.  These other moments in my active life (and I have come to refer to my life outside of my drift to sleep and its eventual state as my active life) may have some meaning; they give happiness for my immediate consumption.  But they end and, come later in the day, I can find not so happy moments again.  Sleeping to feel, sleeping to remember, sleeping to smell the days when true joy to be remembered many years later- that is the pursuit of happiness that seeks me out. 

On Aged Innocence

It is clear that children have certain perceptions of human nature innately naïve and perhaps stabilized by the sanitary environment their guardians instinctively create for them.  A child’s fear revolves around objects in his life whose loss create the largest void; a child would more readily fear the loss of his mother or comfort object then, let’s say, the possibility of not being adequately provided for in the near future.  His vision to a surrounding environment will find limits within the confines of his guardian’s choosing.  If a parent has lost her job, she won’t make it a point to convey the gravity of such a situation to her child lest she burden him with something beyond his capacity of endurance. 

 

As the child grows, it is quite fruitless and impossible to keep the confines of real world issues from his notion and he will learn to adapt to new hardships.  As adults, humans are expected to have developed a mature capacity for enduring most commonplace trials and spontaneous misgivings.  With each gradual milestone of maturity throughout adolescence and adulthood, the constricted yet visceral POV of a child has been replaced with an all-encompassing mental vision tainted by perceptions of true sorrow, malice, and anxiety.  True hardship gains ground and innocence has been lost.  

 

I often find that many I know, myself included, will inevitably revert to childhood mentality when presented with moments of extreme fear; the fact is, although adults are capable of protecting themselves emotionally, there come times when a greater protection and comfort is wanted.  During recent hardships, I have found solace in my childhood home, in the company of my parents.  People will identify their childhood surroundings with the protection they were afforded when young and, even as adults, can revert back to idolizing those childhood comforts once more.  A desire to find an inner child, the innocence once lost to the grave reality of adulthood, is not only stronger but can affect adult perceptions of dire situations.  Last week I witnessed someone’s cruel nature towards another, and instinctively felt confused.  Why would anyone be cruel to another, or cause suffering when no gain is to be found? When I experience the cruelty and mean spirit of others, I can only remember how safe I felt from these dark marks of maturity in the comfort of my parents, my childhood protectors.  Where were they now to prevent such things from happening? Even so, as adults, we realize human nature is ugly at times, and we can understand that some people choose not to exercise kindness.  If all adults could revert back to innocence of childhood, would there be any cruelty left to fear? Probably not, but with the weathered experience of our adolescence and adult years, it’s impossible to convert the inner mechanisms of our ethics to the unassumingness of childhood morality.  This makes the random glimpses through the eyes of our childhoods even more valuable and yields a necessity to treasure and learn from them.

On a Season’s End

A distant call in the wayward throes

Of winds in blight by winter snows

For night resounds the chill and cry

The white that soars without respite

 

As crystal droplets fall in line

I gaze unto a lighted sky

A hollow field in distant view

Adorned in color of Orion’s hue

 

Pastoral lined with hollyhock

Groomed pastures and a forest mock

a danger’s fire set alight

In here a room, where troubles write

 

Although my cry is true and free

Within ordered life an ignominy

I, bound with shackle, often wrought

A desperate roar for winter shock

 

So to scenes of winter’s care

I take my pen and so despair

To tint the white of an empty note

with words ablaze as heaven wrote

 

The cry I hear among distant wind

Responding to my own within

As hollow memories to me flock

I detail them as to me they walk

 

Once ended I take down my pen

And look upon the lighted den

Of a meadow I sought in distant view

Now empty, tired, void of hue

 

For my winter time has come to end

And snow melts fire, a lonely friend

Consumed in me and ever sure

That life has come and gone once more

                                                                                                                               -j.m.

 

On Hope

Showered with a renewed sense of hope this evening after reading one of my favorite novels, I feel it pertinent to comment on the phenomenon.  To hope is defined as wishing for something with expectation of its fulfillment; it serves a beacon of light for most, and fires passion and motivation in all.  To have hope is to understand the possibility of improvement, the refinement of a sullied experience, a reprieve for the unbending will of fate’s catastrophes.  I can recognize the feeling in my own being as a splash of positivity and inextricable excitement, when worries get washed away and troubles find no seed for harvest.  It may linger on for a few minutes to even days, and daily existence carries on in its usual form but with a distinct beam of innate knowledge that something good is near fruition. 

 

Hope can be as natural to man as any other feeling; it is almost a reflex to expect good fortune and joyous moments amongst everyday sorrows.  But I sometimes ask myself: is it possible to ever be without hope, either for immediate fulfillment of joy or long-term expectations of improvement?  Could it be possible for one to be so brow-beaten by events and occurrences in a life that it could be fully instilled in their consciousness the certain knowledge that nothing will ever get better? 

 

I would first look to people in the most dire of situations; poverty, hunger, illness, etc.  It is easier to acknowledge the state of hopelessness for those who live in unstable situations that harbor danger and disorder on a daily basis.  To live in constant tragedy would most definitely produce some sort of expectation of things going always awry.  There is no expectation of fulfillment because there is no expectation.  There may be slivers of hope, but only in the immediate happinesses of transient things, like good weather, a day of less fighting, a little extra food for a daily meal.  However, the overall situation of someone living in such a state could afford little hope in a grand measure: one to ease their life completely and rid the immediate danger of its daily trials.  I can speak little more for such situations because I have not lived them, and I would not want to underestimate the power of the world’s goodwill to alleviate the burden of those that battle such life-threatening trials. 

 

I will instead question the existence of hopelessness in those who do not live in precarious environments, but are plagued with failed fulfillment of the emotional kind.  Could there exist a numbing of this reflex of optimism, caused by constant despair of mind?  When one’s own greatest desire can be fully dampened by life experiences, it is easy to ensnare oneself in a cage with no key.  The prospect of possibility may seem a distant glow in a field of constant failure with no means of mowing those barriers that have planted their roots so firmly on one’s own concept of expected fulfillment. 

To live such a life would be terrible indeed, and to find no means of alleviating the void of optimism would not extenuate an overbearing hopelessness.  I have faith in others as I do in myself that, in our darkest hours, a little pocket of strength outside ideals of hope will be found to rip those weeds of their root and allow us to plow forward.

 

 

On Presentiment: Fortune-telling or a plain ol’ gut feeling?

I’ve always questioned the matter of human prescience, the sensation in our souls which we at times deem an immutable foreboding of our own joy or tragedy.  Is this foreknowledge to be considered commonplace, or can we ascribe to it something a bit more out of the ordinary and beyond our human means of comprehension?  When we act upon an imminent desire, and have a sudden realization that it could go horribly wrong, or feel that its completed act will bring about a positive end, with what certainty do we act upon such a revelation? 

 

It is a matter of questioning the source of these innate forebodings.  Innate, as they are, means they have come from some level of consciousness in our understanding of the present situation.  If we act upon our will, it is the conscience behind that will that will irrevocably augment that little voice inside of us to say ‘yes, this is good, your action will bring about an end in your favor’ or on the other end, ‘this is wrong, you have erred and will soon face some unpleasant moment.’  Many will recognize this presentiment as just that: our own gut feeling of an event’s consequence in the form of the little voice reflecting back as an expression of the human conscience.

 

However, there are those who will choose to mystify such revelations and find them anything but commonplace.  I would look to situations where one does not act in any way to promote their will, but feel presentiments all the same.  If a mother is suddenly showered with sensations of tragic foreboding for her son or daughter, and soon comes across the fact that the said son or daughter has suffered some misfortune, she will look to the heavens and say ‘I knew it in my heart that he/she was in danger’ and be more likely to attribute such presentiment to a higher power.  Is it God that strategically places these sensations in people at the right times, hoping they would act upon such a preternatural presentiment and prevent some future misfortune?  Or can one ascribe these feelings of sudden revelation to the other ordinary emotions solely produced by our own penchant to worry and logically infer?

 

To argue against faith for logic and vice versa would not be a conducive means to analyze such subjects.  It takes more than faith and more than logic to comprehend with a lay man’s perspective the revelations of presentiments.  I would argue that faith in higher powers and mystified vagueities complement and at times are products of the innate development of our psyche that makes it possible to produce specific forethoughts.  It is the love of a mother that will yield such presentiments for her children.   It is the gut feeling produced by our conscience that will dictate the presentiment towards the outcome of our actions. 

 

Looking to the actual outcomes of the objects of our presentiments can also provide a telling picture.  Were we correct in believing that our actions produced the forethought result?  More often than not, we are not correct; we have little control over the complex character of our external environments.  But for those presentiments that proved right, we can safely pat ourselves on the back and acknowledge a keen intuition on our part to predict (most often by experience) what future joys and tragedies will befall us.