I see your kids
running around the table
screaming
and crying
existing on some
hyperactive wavelength that
exhausted adults have
waived from their capacity.
You sat there
making an art out of tuning
them out.
Quite impressive really.
Not so much could be said
for everyone else in the room though;
the rolled eyes
or deep, hollow groans
cursing your parenting skills.
The hell with them anyway.
You sit and enjoy your tortellini
and your fifth glass of wine
no frown or smile just
the blankest face
I've ever seen in my life.
Blank as,
not so much a canvas,
for a canvas was built for
the intention of being
transformed by color.
But you,
your face is the white slate
face of an unclimbable
mountain. It is
the forgotten
empty
dusty
journal of your parents,
stuffed in an attic.
Your face doesn't ask
for pity
or ridicule,
it only asks to uphold
it's sanity amidst
all the struggles
this life has to offer.

You'll get through though,
and so will they,
Sometimes it is at
the very bottom
where people discover
their greatest strengths.

I look at her and
I close my eyes,
And oh where my imagination,
Send my eager mind,
The wiles versus my wills,
oh those hills they bind,
Men like me, like demons versus the Lion,
Exorcized, exorcized,
Yeah, but I am Legion,
if they beat me one time,
Oh, next time, time,
They'll be mine.

And those mountains of lust,
That once seemed unclaimable,
Unclimbable like Everest before
Edmund Hillary, like the Sistine Chapel,
Before Michelangelo, oh I will persist,
I will pursue, with the littlest smile,
And the darkest hue,
Where after many days fight,
Suddenly. Then, in the night,
when alas my victory is won!
My prize I will take,
And her pleasure I will reign.

YOU think life will unfold you an open road
glittered with success and times of joy
there’ll be goldcrumbs to lead your way,
and a shining light to keep you bright.
But life is a squeeze in a crowd of grumpy people,
no space to manouvre, no space to move
you’re bumped and pushed aside like weeds,
when you get up, there comes another wack
upon a wound that already bleeds;
so, you try a different route,
up an unclimbable hillside,
with strong winds pushing you downside
interfering with your footprints;
as far as you can see, more rocks and muck,
here’s life’s another hurdle, oh, ***?

It's difficult, purposturous even, for some to conceive
Of a life that is fought for

A sense of security earned
With every waking hour you've been cursed

They baffle at the mute colors with which you paint
And half heartedly smile,

As they pass, with their fluorescent teeth
Yours ***** and yellow

From the brown water that has become your gasoline
From the cigarettes that are now your oxygen tank

The good air is all bought up
The good food is all turned to ****

**** for you to envy
As you scrub

They will loan you a dream
Knowing it is an unclimbable mountain

Because they are waiting at the top
With the soul of a shoe

You eat stew out of habit
Always chasing the wild rabbit

The price of love is too high
It reaches the summit of an unclimbable mountain
One look and the mind says it isn't as high as it seems
The climb begins
Slowly
Steadily
Everything is alright
But then disaster
It is truly unclimbable
And before one can register
They are knocked off
Breaking into a thousand pieces
Like their heart of glass
Forever shattered and bruised
But they glue what they can back together
And forget their failed attempts to conquer what they thought was theirs to master
They look at the mountain anew  
And each time they look up
The mountain grows ever higher.

F life it puts us through hell and expects us to stand strong against it all. Iy fircus uus to make impossible decisions. And all we can do is hope we made the right choice. It is trying to drown all of us at once. It turns us against one other. Making us race to the top of an unclimbable mountain, that never stops growing. There is always someone better or something new we must have, to be the best. It places us in front of these mirrors that point out every little flaw or annoyance. Until we just stand still. Hoping if we never move again that we will never make another mistake. Life is an unfair dealer. It hands some of us straight flushes constantly. But will never give us more than a mere ace from time to time. I call these ace’s of false hope. For they fill us up with just enough hope that we try again. Just to rip the ace away pushing us back down under the water. Just to watch our sprites break over and over again. We fight tooth and nail to get an inch ahead when some are handed everything. Life continues to run us over like we are nothing. Expecting us to get up just for it to happen again. F life for being unfair and expecting us to be ok with it.

Sparks of light
reflecting on almost-still water,
rippling in the wind,
serenely defying the inaccessibility
of an unreachable institution
at the highest of unclimbable summits--
This is Juilliard.

The flat, submerged pond
rejects bravado because
this school doesn't need anything
to signal superiority.

There is no path
I could have taken
that would have led me here.

Never in my life
would I be the right "material";
my cloth is of a different texture.

Not tough enough, I'm
not thin enough.
Not strong enough, I'm
not smart enough.

And to the woman
who was enough--
the above and beyond,
the prodigy,
the innovator,
strong and tough and smart and thin--

if I am not enough, she is abundance.

I am concrete, she is limestone.

I am quartz, she is diamond.

How can I ever
see a bright picture of myself
in the shadow of
such a woman?