A Time for Tales
BY MARISSA MOSES

Fortune foretold a time when she would sing
a song of rhyme and rhythm without compare.
But then there came the sheets of ice and rain
which tormented the girl into twirling despair.

There once was a boy who fortune would tell
the secrets of time and unto him bestow
a great gift embossed in silvery white.
A great shift in the ebb and the flow he would sow.

Together they would play a part in charming 
the thing they knew not how to find.
Together they would set apart the rhymes
and rhythms of time's best pieces, of times best mines.

Sometimes it goes flat.
And then there's nothing to continue the story
for the story is old and already told
and how well we know where the kindling lies.

For whenever there is a time we need a thing 
to tell us lore and glories gone by
there is a yearning in us to go looking
for dragons and tidings of those who have lived afore.

But this is not the time of fairytales
though the faire folk still be in the woods round the bend.
You'll find that you listen for days that are past
only to find those same days are abound.

So to this be the wiser, for wisdom knows only fools
To be ever a stone's throw from your home's gate
is to be...
​figure the rest out yourself.

One evening over dinner and a glass of wine, we (Alex Mathews and I) were struck with the urge to just make something...so we took my iphone and filmed - movement, stillness, just whatever came up and out. I then took the footage and continued teaching myself how to bumble through imovie for editing. The text is from an adapted journal entry, written many years ago, by a young woman very different than who I am now - who was in a relationship now very far away. Hope you enjoy our randomly inspired and jumbled together little project! We hope to make more - because it was fun, and good practice in not judging ourselves and our creative process, whoohoo!

To the ends of the world and the corners of my lips…
To the currents of the faire and the tide of my gut…
To the fortune of the victor and the stride of the parting…
For the rest of my life with you I sing of truce.

Truce be found within my veins
Truth be present in an afterthought of feigned youth.
I have found the measure of life’s standstill
The current of my brethren surges through the effervescent bullshit of serenity

Searching, scouring for something real
Something fresh
Something unforsaken in its pretense

To pretend is to bullshit, to bullshit is to succeed
To fairly play the game leaves you with nothing but empty knowledge 
Fit for an owl atop a perch in the deep trendels of the forest. 

I wasn’t even invited. 
If I wasn’t invited, how can I go? 
If I wasn’t enrolled in the throws of youth how could it bestow the favors I deserve? 

The favors of youth grow quietly amongst the eaves.
The way I am writing now is at least somewhat coherent
Through its meaningless gibberish of naught. 

I am of naught,
for that, I am real.

It is time to be rid of the powers that bind you;
bind you and tie you to idiocracy and grief.
You are the reason I have hated myself;
I am not the problem again, stupid f*ck.

Stupid and useless, your draft is unending
boorish, brainless, and full of pumpkin mash.

To die as you have, fully living askance
with fatty deposits propelling you through.
You are the phlegm, the thick vicious substance.
​You are the derelict of my untimely youth.

To whom do I speak when my life says the word...
The word of pain, of sorrow, of complex strategy and exit.
To whom do I speak when I say words to calm...
To calm the story of us; acidic to touch, insolent to tongue - you wretch.

How dare you come hither feigning for draught, denying what I have spoke - 
But farewell compliment - dost though loathe me?
Dost though loathe me as I loathe you?
Unraveled and bare in the moonlight you fleck - discarded skin into the night sky.

"There is nothing inside but fear and disgust." and that to you means I am lost. 
Raving and chanting, you will return to the dust;
tiny particles of waste matter spinning through the air.
To dust as those who came before from whom you seek your providence.
​
But providence is a long ways away and you will not return...to dust. 

If the wind could talk, what would it say?
Would the lavender calling of time spent be sifted through like chatter?
How would it be that the time worth spending would end up in ashes?
Ashes at the feet of your saint and savior, like tears turned to dust.

When we go through the trimmings and trials that bond through the years
how does the measure of sand compare?
Does it ebb and flow like tidings and grief?
Or does it to dust like the feet of your savior as ashes and ashes we turn to tears?

I want to challenge my perceptions. I want synchronicity, yes, but I don't want to "coast". I always want to be feeling deeply and fully into the absence of time. You can think of this as thinking forward, being present, or moving through the past...but there is a place where they all align and that place is both nothing and everything and I have been there.

I know it is truth because I have felt it. I have been everywhere and nowhere all at once and this is what I am moving more and more into - this state of "beingness". It is the metamorphosis, it is the crest of the hill, the moment of suspension. It is brilliance. 

I can feel that I'm meant or called to resonate here in this upper vibration. I can also feel the tug of the lower resonance and the duality of these disparate tones. I don't think it right to dismiss the lower, but I do feel it right to balance out my experience of the two - to lean into the higher frequencies with as much trust and willingness as I do the deeper, darker sides of myself. But there is fear in this higher direction. Fear of the ego running away with itself. Fear of seeming "better than thou". 

​How do we embrace our potential and light when others see it as a threat or reflection of their own limitations that they do not wish to face? It is not true, that is not what it is, I don't believe that's the end of the story. And yet, I feel guilty for bringing insecurities out in others. But what shall I do to comfort them but dim my own light? How is there a way to guide myself into more apparent empathy but to "come down" from my flight? Certainly there must be a way to not clip my own wings for the sake of connection. Or is it something in between? Something I cannot see yet? 

Where do I go to run with the wild horses? Is there an utopia such as this or am I delusional? I feel the pull of distant voices - alive or dead I know not, but they call. They call and they sing and they celebrate my return to them. Where it all fell apart in lives past - it now has the shining north star and suns rays simultaneously guiding my way to freedom and joy, everlasting life and breath. 

Call and Response Sonnets
BY MARISSA MOSES

#1
Throughout the starlit nights gone by 
I've sat in wondrance as to why
your chilled response and firey eye
hath strove to prove my love a lie.

I cherish thee and seek to woo
thy every breath, thy every mood.
Your beauty hath bestown my heart
and from this love I cannot part.

I see not why my love you try 
to break mine heart and to deny
all that I know you feel inside
in every vein, in every tide

of passion that doth flow with might 
as rich as joy, as pure as light.
Resist not, don't let love be meek
eternity is ours to seek.

My ardour is the steadfast moon
that sings to thee a luring tune
of doting love and blissful sin
O, purge thy soul and live again.

Be near the heart that rages now
as swiftly as the gods allow.
My dearest dove do follow me
and if thou cans't I'll follow thee.


#2
Throughout these starlet nights that try
to tempt one hence and lure one night
thou speaks of wondrance and do dare
presume I should I could but care.

Thou claims to cherish all thou sees
but beauty's faire shall one day flee.
Thy love shall leave when spring doth fade
then wilt thou seek another maid.

Speak naught of lust and yearning fire
of shooting stars and hearts desire.
I beg thee, O, how I implore
that thou shalt leave me evermore.

I yearn for peace and solitude 
and shall not let thy longing mood
intrude upon my days to come
with doting love thou say'st comes from

a passion that doth flow with might
as everlasting as moonlight.
But this doth change with every tide 
of passion that thou feel'st inside.

Do leave me be and let this dove 
fly evermore without thy love
and if thou wilt not I shall fade
thy love with sure and sharpened blade.

These Midnight Hours
BY MARISSA MOSES

These midnight hours I devote to you
when light is scarce in the starless night
And through my mind creeps the longing passion
that swells in my veins and tortures the heart

Yet I yearn for this pain in these hours so late
as the wind beguiles softly with song
And in my silent reverie I want of your kiss
that stings deeply Through flesh and desire