I saw a mountain today
But it wasn't real
And I found myself picturing
What it would feel like
If I ever saw them
Forgetting that there are mountains
That I have seen

But some were small
Stuck on an island in the Mediterranean sea
Others taller, overgrown by trees
Meandering a war torn landscape
Like irregular forested pyramids
In between which poverty, anonymity and frailness
Are woven in with the fabric of lost days

Azure dreams of getting away
And viridian primitive, haunting aftershocks
Of history lived by the thousands
Expelled in an endless summer breeze
But more like daze, rippling slowly outwards
All part of an endless wave
Rolling on and on folding us, our histories
Inside its arm

Once I saw mountains
Little stacked triangles of geologic history
Twice I saw mountains
Wishing these were the places that I would always see
Thrice I saw mountains
Now a mountain
Is what I'll be

Sometimes I think
Or feel
That this life is exactly like a dream
Like that dream that upon waking
Has you feeling mystified
With a dull aching inside
Still and small but vaster than the sum of all your parts
Left behind it closes when your eyes open
To be forgotten
When the new day's water comes rushing in

As if within your life
Is an endless spiral of other lives
Hidden so that you might feel
The culmination of their being
Leading up to you
Threading in the wakes of their rippling waves

Vanishing days
When you go down to leave your own
Ripples in the lake

I move, swiftly, out of pace
The room shifting
I am forgetting all about this place
Before I leave
Making sure
I will never come back to go through that door

Stomach knots when I clasp the handle
Rotate a 90 degrees
My feet heavy, my heart thumping, I freeze
Memories wafting through the opened crack
Curling around my face like an unwanted and unpleasant breeze
I freeze

Orison, a swarm succumbing to a feverish itch
Scratched it to catch it going nowhere above my head
Here in this white and grey pastel hallway
History’s hand comes down heavy handed
Clamps itself around my throat
It won’t let go until I let go
And I can’t let go of these maddening picture shows

Black around my cavernous eyes
Peer inside, glacial stalactites and dust mites
The heart commanding what my hand ghostwrites
As murmurs and noise and lights
Omnipresent or unclear, at least I know
It’s everywhere and it isn’t  mine
The hand that writes
Speaks my mind
The tongue it keeps does not play kind

The heart thuds and thumps once more
Loudly bringing it to the fore
All the faces that I’ve seen before
All their menacing smiling eyes

Turn around
Lock the door
Walk away

This house, this history and all its mysteries
They’re not yours anymore

I recognized those hands
Thin and bony
Slender
Harsh and tender
Around mine

Travels, a train
Dusk, dawn
In and out and away we went

We were something fierce
Something young, wild and restless
Breathing in
The air was all you
Fleeting

I remember the fire
The storms inside
Those churning, revolving wild waves
Dazzling displays of falling from great heights

I remember those hands
Wrapped in mine
I remember how we clawed to be near
Tearing away all the spaces between us
Until what was left was only
Wholly you and me

There's blots and stains and bulbs tonight
Caught in a throat that can't swallow it
Turn away and find old friends
Friends you left behind
Now they burn away these nights with you
Forget for an evening what you can't avoid during the day

You look to find, distract your mind
Ready to dive down into
A maelstrom to help build a new you
Fight exhaustion, fear is physical
Drift on whisps of smoke
Don't give up, you give up the hope
To cope you fold your wings again
Of paper mache, they can burn again

The letters swarm like birds of prey
It burns inside but comes out
As cold, stiff, dead lumps of ice
In the morning it died
Come noon it comes again, alive
Stuck inside

History
Delicate, desolate history
Full of you and me’s
I’ve grown attached to these heartbeats
Time resounds, do you hear it
It’s for you and me

A casket
A journey, long road, comes to  an end
Life, perhaps mispent
But fate might always be smiling
Just beyond that coming bend

Broken bone
Calls to home but home is not wanted
Not mine to go, not mine, I grow
My own
From gardens of wilting blooms
Another season will see it soon

In comes the monsoon
Dripping life, drumming against the boards
Of a balcony where strumming I hum my lonesome song
Lamenting the ending of something gone wrong
Though this river's journey to the edge of the world
Has only just begun

Temporary regrets and missings
Of memories that crawl underneath your skin
With a flourish this night turns over its leaves
To reveal another day
You breathe out the ragged dusk
Shakes, bristles, shedding the husk
Avail the morning air
Lest the mourning of a midnight's dream
Breeds despair