That dark December night,
negatively charged magnetic eyelids forced open by a vibrating
assiduous humming brain
machine.

An untidy bed left warm, within the
smoking, choking exhaust fumes. An early morning engine roars.
I find that towering rock in eastern jagged-grin ridgeline.
Peering up from yawning limbs hung from red toothpicks,
frail clouds skirt that dark jutting face as stiff muscle tendon battles mud rock gravity staircase.
All alone, in echoey sloping vastness.

Lunge forward from tree line, sink down, old snow,
hunched old man drinks coffee says something…
Away from that wretched voice! I scramble
upward through white flakes, black boulders.
Wool gloves hinder grip, boots shove rogue rocks to space, hand slips, smash thumb,
eight now seven rocks until summit.

White washed walls of wild winter.
Silence.

In utero of a universe.

Four thousand feet above.
Fire.

Me, my despair, a stone palace, and trail mix. I brought hope.
You brought a shining red hope extinguisher then swung the emptied tank at my skull,
I am not impervious to pain like these rocks I hurl
at whirling gods they watch me
miss. Pebbles drop through glass table
swallowed by dark green limbs.

You do not know you could not know you cannot know it was right,
if you are Right, then I am Left
with aching expectations and a decomposing handful
sticky memories, remnants cannot be cast away, and
these blessed rocks are fond friends no longer call my own because
I’ll never look the same but they always will.

Step down from nowhere and retreat south, your footprints remain.
Darkened face, this line is named you and will stay there.
It is a cold winter rain
that taps my hunched shoulders
I have stopped answering.

You are in everything I see.
It is sickening because you own all and you will not let go but
you cannot own this next day.