*

constructive criticism always welcome

There is a marble stair-case in the middle

Of a burnt mountain, and it starts and leads

to nowhere. The pantheon of grey tree skeletons

And experimental wind howls.

I shouldn’t look up

While it rains but I can’t help myself.

It hasn’t rained for at least ten centuries

And my legs are sore from dancing for rain.

Now, it pours. Rivers down like gloom.

It spills cascades and my eyelids

Have not closed themselves; the gush

Dances my eyes out of their holes and

Rivers them down like fallen icaruses.

Now, it pours. I am stretching out my hands

To welcome hell, yet all I do is go up

And down a marble staircase, unfinished,

Un-started, in the middle of a burnt mountain.

 

I am aware of my own skin among the grey.

I am naked, and intimate, and rebellious,

And I am not but ten years old.

I am there to stone myself, mid-eastern,

Mid-sentence; a brute to myself.

 

I am turning myself in.

Mountains have prophesised another chain

 of events, yet I am to unveil my own ghostliness.

 Affronted and raw, the heart of my self

 inks itself in memories; bled out;

it’s another soundtrack, wind over high grass,

and I am forced to rebel.

I am not but ten years old.

 

My hair is still gold

And winds are there to stroke

My sore legs, up and down,

In the middle of my burnt mountain.

My eyes are hollow, filling up with ten-century-old rain,

the redness of his Aztec flesh, the marble stair-case; that

Skeleton grey;

I am not but ten years old.

I am going up and down,

I look up,

I welcome hell.