The Mountaineer

Down and around the mountain, the ground
Was stark, strong and slick as the rain fell to pound
Staccato dark clicks from his foot to his crown
As the clouds unveiled the peak he’d assail
Alone

It could not be scaled, the tales heard, regaled
A bedrock of bones from the bold who had failed
Though many gone up, not one had prevailed
Yet on the bay he was sighted still furling his sail
Alone

A single dark pick, a tangle of rope
A slimmer of light where once heads had held hope
Fluttering faint whispers of this stranger were spoke
As down the path his feet led his head seeking a bed
Alone

Perhaps he’s the one, the townsfolk heard said
Might be he’s mighty, and mountain he’d tread
Though what they’d learned as other ascended
Path up was simple, was down where lay dead
Alone

Awoke in the morn, innkeep’s eyes filled with scorn
Six scores of these souls, so what more was one more
A contrast to his, his wife’s eyes were forlorn
Too many saw lost as the mountain they fought
Alone

Skill could be taught, practiced, honed or forgot
Killed, left to rot, but you’ll reap what you’ve wrought
Past climbers knew not and thus look what it’d brought
Lives frozen for naught he would take what he sought
Alone

Thus down and around the mountain, the ground
Crashed and was lashed though his steps made no sound
As purchase was found and no longer earthbound
The crack of his pick would echo and resound

As skyward he climbed laying line after line
The click and the clack of the bones he did find
These careless companions only served to remind
The reason with dead that the valley was lined

Eyes to the sky and chest to the wall
An ascent found in inches, to heaven he’d crawl
A sharp spur of ice cracks an echoing call
Time slows, wrong he knows, he could not simply

Fall

This Desk

This desk, this desk, simultaneously symbolizing success

As well as inspiring me to there balance a pen and send my forehead down to rest

I’m told hidden here is a chest with a fortune from which to wrest, just ignore the shattered souls, broken hulls and the wrecks.

Maybe it’s a test, nothing more, nothing less, maybe this is purgatory, unsure if cursed or blessed

There’s a privilege and a blessing to even be in such a state to question and frown, but I cannot be the only one with a tension and melancholy deep down.

I’m 28 and I’ve worked so hard to be told 35 more this is barely the start.
Constantly oscillating between gratitude for my home and food, and hungering to see these expensive-ass windows with some stones smashing through.

My mind runs through my ears, should I just lean in and find something from which to profiteer, looking through glass wondering how people face it down with no tears? Oh dear, maybe there’s a communication interference between my brains two hemispheres.

This desk. This desk. This horrid fucking desk. This stained and varnished stage for childhood dreams to meet their death. This isn’t how we were meant to live I soliloquize under my breath. No swords from stones to wrest. The sun sets on our dreams, I’ve forgotten which way is west.

Oh capitalism, you vain and plastic schism, I’m forming my own scooby gang, come on and smash it with ‘em.
Half joking when I say I’m looking to start a movement, buy a plot of land and set roots loose in it.
So if you’re like me and soul aches to be free, stuff your pockets full of seed, study up on animal husbandry, if you know about self sufficiency, maybe we align on our dreams.

And maybe we can avoid being called a cult for a year or three.

Simultaneously a cry for help and the most privileged shit I’ve ever wrote.

40 more years of this I’m gonna choke, overthrow, smash the yoke, remove the hand from the throat, ideas like kraken arms fuck yeah I’m gonna rock the boat

get your goat…cheese. Trade you if that salmons smoked.

Born in the 90’s, my retirement plan’s societal collapse, I’m so fucking sick of ‘I want my oil money now, there’s enough time left to elapse’. Consign your grand children to water rations, elusive passions, confusing actions, boil to remove the infections, whole forest reduced to fractions, waiting for the truth in a blacked out newspaper, 100% redactions

Once more I’ve made my mask for this masquerade

This time it’s crumbling at a faster rate

Hopefully it’s past the end of day that the plaster fades

If yours will stay, maybe you could explain the mass charade

Our Wicked Problem, written for the event of the same name

MOTHER

My children, oh, you who I love, the ones who gathered as I rained from above

Blessed water, life, greenery that grows, glowing kindling that gathers then buckles in snow

I reminisce those early days, bliss, the way the birds chirped in the dawn coated mist

Maybe I was complicit, maybe I'm to blame, maybe I'm the one who cast the dice in this game

First

After all you were mine, watched your descent from the vines, grasped the stone and opined

With this I will make all you see into my own design

Fine.

HUMANITY

So the time passed, evil so banished, the fright of the night that firelight then vanquished

The unknown set to a pyre and lit, we beset all our fears and bit them down to the quick

Split woods and stacked stones till our towers stretched and groaned

Walls behind which we built until the doors cracked and from there we spilt

Moved to our shores, then hulls and oars, there was no where on our mother that we could not explore

The gifts and the bounty of the land, precious metals that we could wrench from the sand, our ancestors and these wonders that they could not comprehend

MOTHER

My children, my loves, my precious adolescents

Smile down upon you as you grasp and smash your lessons

Occasional misbehave and these lessons I would save

The way that you'd sway and waddle as you'd play

Your first words went from me to how to why to more

HUMANITY

More, from hunger to grasping for more

To bulging stores and overflowing pours

When the depths you can plumb and no measure left undone

How can you resist your own strength when your own mother you can overcome?

MOTHER

My children, a moment, reckless, careless, a portent

The depths of my love, you reach and claw, torment

Foment this pain, these actions I could not support it

Why do you reach and strain, poisoning the rain

INDUSTRY

And thus you begin to see! how our mother would cast her ties over us so endlessly!

Come my brothers, my sisters, uncover this earth, tear the gems from her skirt to demonstrate our worth

Here we shall begin to tear into this dirt, this ever increasing dearth,

MOTHER

Please goes the cry your unrelenting industry

The way that you rip and grasp and ask unflinchingly

I have so much to give and you have far more to take

I wished you all your dreams and you instead found my heart to break

HUMANITY

So we band together, cry industry at her deposits

With one hand we shall wrench them free while the other pens her sonnets

Individuals are weak but together, this world - we can accost it

Mother knows since day one we've always worshipped profits

MOTHER

My children, my loves, my golden glowing spawn

I know that your love you have not withdrawn

But together, oh together, an endless mouth that gapes and yawns

Before long our song will reach its denouement

INDUSTRY

Care not, forge on and if to her we should cause injury

Why blame on the people, what can they do individually

For they created us, they envisioned dreamed beheld

Every river poisoned, and every tree felled

HUMANITY

Kick the can down the road, these problems we knew would never affect us, too old

Our children will fix the problem, bandage mother loving fingers, controlled

TO AUDIENCE

So I speak to you, the gathered individual

We stand so divided but we can become indivisible

Whether you're made of science or a purveyor of the spiritual

Know

One hundred companies belch forth 71% of emissions is what I mean

Paper straws are a good start but I lean more towards the guillotines

Do what we must to make the guilty flee the scene

And rejoin our mother hand in hand in the glowing green