I live in a world of rapidly diminishing returns,
Seeing the days grown short.
Looking out to the horizon,
A shadow rises against the backdrop.

Pulling my coat against the chill,
I shudder as my weary eyes water.
Another day grinding
To a halt, times of laughter
For which I cannot barter.

I walk a lonely path, my feet echoing
Foot falls on the firmament.
I drag the load-stone of a troubled past
Made permanent.
I struggle to keep up, to push forward
The leaden weight of existence.
All around me is dead air,
A dull roar,
And my quiet, hard acceptance.

My life in the blackened breach,
With hope just out of reach,
And all my defenses engaged.
Sculpting the weight, and act to create
A monolith of defiance,
On this mortal stage.

But the elements scorn and
Reject my weakened will.
I've become averse to the sound
Of my own heart.
When will it be still?

In my desperation, my restless mind drifts:

I feel like I am lost in a forest of petrified bereaved.
The face of sorrow chiseled on everything God has conceived.
Branching up with life ended long ago.
Of those rooted to the ground, the posture of exaltation is
Twisted and gnarled, stunted and calcified.
All here are defeated,
All denied.
These vanquished stand upon an ashen earth,
At the foot of a heaving mountain of fire.
It dominates the landscape, thundering and quaking,
Churning with molten mire.
The power beheld is hollowed and hellish,
A betrayer of my heart's desire.
Devoid of fertility, it sends its toxic waste
Spewing toward the lurid sun,
Its fume chokes my parched throat;
On my knees, I feel my life is run.
The mountain is a false god, lying.
It receives my agonized worship,
From a soul whose prayer is dying...

I want to wander astray,
To leave this wreckage and flee;
Slipping through the wire, undetected.
I would spend a day
Far away from the war flags
And scorched battlements --
And the smell of death,
Deflected.

If only I could face down
The demonic mountain of fire
With a renewed heart of passion!
To recreate the charred landscape
In the image of my life
Reawakened.

I must try
To utter a new song
Of exaltation,
From a love that is triumphant!
A sound soaring up toward
The warming sun,
A new day expectant!

The sculpted monolith will finally
Be raised, completed...
A graven icon of my spirit, undefeated.