In accordance with the shared vision (for Jonathan & Sylvia)

The days that we meet are the days that we’re born
           Enchanted lifetimes where origin is risen again 
           of the ashes from randomness or pain,
           or from pillars of understanding and enlightenment

We refresh and begin anew with the ones we love
           Raised of the love of our creator, creators, and creations
           Pathways reveal themselves though cloaks and shrouds,
           and illuminate through fiery incisions.

In journeys toward a maze or a riddle we become 
           the cycle we tune ourselves into,
           until some crucial moment turns itself inside-out,
           like the first break of sun into dawning skies

This is the moment when you two have become
           beacons in the die-cast mold of a hardened world,
           or reflections of color and illuminating beauty
           raised in the shine of your redemption and love

MM 7.16

Modern conscience

Strange dots distant on a horizon line 
Encircling approach without cause 
            Without pause 

Sewn and/or rooted into a frame of modern conscience 
In fellowship degrade, it’s shifting 
             It’s drifting 

Strange recirculation within tidal pools 
Entropic forces alive 
            Will metastasize 

The dirge of symbiosis grounds into a pattern 
Treachery of its passage, into scourge 
            Into birth

MM 7/16

Dark days beckon

Every dim-lit candle burns away 
wistful melting wax reveal, 
an ill-formed layer - cold-gray ash, 
the burnt calendar days and rotations 

Passing across a channel or walking along an edge, 
the brow beckons inevitably 
to barren landscape below, 
to time well-traveled 

Every dim-lit hand of minds’ decay 
watching in waste’s rotation, 
a permeation of broken ideas or trite remainders 
through worn pages, dimming screens 

Passing through some type of afterlife, 
some pervasive move into 
the post-mortem of certain ideas, 
to permanent reminders

MM 7/16

Out of sorts with being in sync

I’m looking to simplify but not dumb this down,  
to crystallize the flow of light in tones of sound, 
into something we can move forward with –  
more tangible than the tics we’ve developed 
and more sensible than rapid response –  
an instant aggrandizement of position, 
positioned on edge in blurring fields 
on the slope of crumbling ground 

Some burgeoning fantasy quest develops 
across toasted slopes and though spring flowing shade, 
into murky dusk and down into night fire –  
on through the pricked points of thousands 
simultaneously broadcasting code onto the path, 
laid out with a mirage of muddied water, 
littered with signage, 
marking confusion away from established boundaries 
into a just pattern 

MM 10/15

Awake to mourn the passing of your future perception

Deep within a core of rotten wire 
tied in hundreds of little knots, 
a dynamic torture tension, 
like puppet strings from within 

Forced pleasantries within the line 
to the edges of a panic room, 
scaling around a giant centerpiece hole 
to a jimmied-up window board 

Awake before the alarm 
greets the day like a mourning song 
Morning’s mounting heaps –  
death and despair and uncertainty –  

blurring perception of the moment 
and mirroring the acid eating away 
the guts’ core lining and structure, 
or the labyrinth in the ear

MM 10/15

Mission Statement on Love & Marriage

Love is the intimate understanding, acceptance of, and commitment 
to ourselves and to another person 
We are born into the love of our family, 
and through that love we learn to love ourselves 

Transferring on to the important people  
who may cross into our lives over a lifetime –  
close friends, romantic partners, 
and subsequently our children, and our children’s children 

Being in love is love’s expression and intensification 
due to the physical and mental intimacy that results 
from two persons’ initial attraction 
and subsequent growth together 

Marriage is a partnership between two people, 
built upon a foundation of deeper love, 
where the partners define themselves through the marriage 
as well as individually, 
structuring their lives according to a shared vision 

The partnership creates a family, with or without children 
Its success is dependent upon both partners 
understanding, accepting, and successfully negotiating its cyclical nature,
 never letting it veer into the path 
of becoming linear

MM 9/13, revised 10/15

Not Easily Resolved

You packed for me a token of misunderstanding –  
   a monument for the time lost, 
   a symbol of the edges of a canyon, 
   a metaphor for violent waters 
cutting a drift through sand and sink
The sigh of resignation 
and the unrest of guilt 
mounts up like the expanse of a landfill 

Muddy tracks lay rested,
a campsite lies at the ready, 
the air is crisp yet stagnant, 
ominous hands swinging branches 
All movement is manipulated, 
calculating the plot of a course 
Dry winds extinguish a spark of forward motion, 
putting it into its place 

A continuum of unions fully formed 
in a nexus of understanding, or a pattern 
Gestures of seamless layers –  
paths marked with unbroken bonds 
To set out in isolation 
to wash hands in which to welcome, 
is the resolve to reveal the space 
that is enclosed within a spiral 

MM 7/15