Mountain

I tried out a different writing style, focusing less on rhymes and like-sounding words. Something simple. This turned out well!

I’ve been climbing for some time now

The people pass me by

The cold wind blows the spindle of grass under a warm sun

I’ve been walking so long, that my feet blister into

The roots of trees that cradle my body

An egg in a nest of mountains

I wait to leave my shell

And explore another world like a butterfly

But to climb to the top of the latter and look down at the departed

To make my way until there is no one who can stand with me

Or above me

Is a solitary, vicarious sort of love

I am slipping, slowly

Sitting in the lap of a winding road

On the steep steps of a sideways horizon

I fall like the summer rain

I scrape my metal hinges, a tumbleweed of trilling rot

And I fall, in humility, in humidity, in the dusty outcrops under the stars

I take up my wandering through the wreckage

And try to make my way over the obstacles of it all

I want to be a mountain

I will risk everything living or plastic for the right reward

But I will never give away my spirit

Those who have borrowed it may have wanted it broken, beautiful

I too have crushed myself so entirely

Hoping to become a diamond

That this blood could never be

When they pry my beating heart from the ground

Its roots deep in the dirt

Under the pressure of the earth’s touch

Under the gravity of a heavy world

That I’ve been climbing for some time now

Heaven can only be so far away

I’ll take this rusting body to the clouds above their heads

You should see the way the trees swoon and bend for the wind of a dancing sun

It reminds me of the quiet riot of my childhood

Even as I sit alone, now, damaged

I am still climbing over these memories, these castles in the muddy sand

Long since abandoned by children now lost in the hard chaos of a real world

I dare not build another temporary rest out of this malleable nostalgia

Even if I climb this mountain alone

I will see the waves of rivers and lakes that left me behind

On high

I will speak in tongues not my own anymore by the campfire

I will laugh tears of love to the nothingness of an empty sky

And no matter what

I will reach the top

Make it my home

I will not fall again

Because I have no where else to go

But up

I must find the spare parts, brace myself like a smile

To fix the broken pieces

Refurbish these shackled hands

And learn how to cradle this frail ember of love, again

Like the hands of God that no longer intertwine with mine

I will shelter this candle in the wind of tooth and nail

This time, I promise you

The spark will not die with me

When I am no longer here

All my sharp edges dulled by the deteriorating chasms of a chalk moon

When the werewolf in me swallows the sun

And it unravels into a long oak sapling sprouting from the core of my stomach

I will be clean as the cliffside at midnight’s dawn

And the smoke on the water will be still, like a great multicoloured scarf of clouds that

I pull from my slack jaw mouth like a rabbit from a hat

A magician of the imagination I can no longer believe in

And a slave to a world I have yet to accept

One that would leave my broken body wheezing torn by the mountain

Until the ribbons of my soul shimmer roped in the summer sun

And lose their way in the crevices of rocks

Like a campfire under the dark side of ebony heaven

Turning to ash white as a bony mist of the morning

Buried in this candle wax pillar of the heavens’ netherworld

A Wickerman lit by the fallen effigy of distorted formless ebbing sun

Drowning in a cruel sea of stone tides, a lukewarm glow gone comatose

Author's Note

I promise I read every single review, and I generally will reply to them. I look forward to my next review, because it helps me learn. Even if it's just one word, I promise, I will be happy to hear anything you feel needs sharing. Whenever you write on my shortcomings or breakthroughs, or the themes of my poems, or share ideas and friendly criticism, it decides my next poem to an extent. I will listen, learn and be thankful. And 99% of the time, you'll get a reply unless you're trolling me.