ashen mountains

talk not soft, be but beguiled
settle wildly those sediment sentiments
gathering on the ground, amassing like black-grey peaks

nurtured by crisp winds cutting
corners
dashing ashen clouds into memory

when we made for those mountains,
shuffling idly between the grayed out gouts of stayed faces
cardboard scenery made a backdrop to our famed escape
we wept and lit a vigil for lives erased

when your voice shattered my dull-eyed wondering
i was dreaming of being awake.
i was waiting to grow like a shock
i was watching train cars blur by

scrawling circles on shifting sands
wind-carved creases on our hands
of time we draw our epitaphs
and hide our faces when it laughs.

adolescent countdown
you're nothing special you know
chasing fallout funnel clouds
trampling shallow excavations

your metamorphosis
is a time bomb
the smiles disappear, the humor is gone
couldn't stop
the balance of power
the shifting prideful strides

this is where is all comes down
machete'd pedestals
watching your pieces fall.

--

hurry up and wait for me
we meet where news travels fast
i've mastered your mantelpiece
you're only showing me off

your words struck a winter chord
bloodlines withered and snapped
apart from you for too many days
you're only trying me on

we raise a glass of slow relief
you aren't the ocean nor i the reef
the hour wanes and droplets stain
i'm only keeping you down.

hurry. hurry up and wait.

your walls

your walls are wounds
scarred over
curtains of charred red
impassable, jagged
torn texture

when i dreamed i scaled one to
peer at a childhood
as it were
a ship in a glass bottle
rising and bobbing in waves
of soaked sands

i had to laugh (nervous?)
at the immensity of it all
so many deep red walls
built standing so tall

where necessity bred the need for
barbed picks and sharp metal cleats
digging and drawing dark gouts
dozens of years to scale
the mangled mountainside

when all those years ago
you could have simply
shattered
the glass
and set sail.