–Man on the Mountain, long and hard have I searched for you. Your home here among the clouds and mist of whirling solitude is like the passing breath of a word yet to be spoken– there is a silence here that I do not comprehend. Should I beg you to rent it asunder with my childish questions?
–Young man, you come upon me in my quietude and solace like the cries of a baby to a young mother and father coupled in the throes of their love: you interrupt me, play upon your need then sheepishly defer to my superiority in matters so ineffable that to speak them would be like drinking wine from a bottomless gourd. Why have you come here? If it is because you are lost, say no more, for are we not, every sentient being, lost to ourselves?
–No, Great Man, I am not lost, but consumed. My days are filled with a hate so powerful that it has begun to nourish my darker spirit. What is a life that exists to hate? Why is it that those who clutter my life also furnish it with the food of my meaning, the food that, once ingested, is then transformed into the hate-bone and hate-flesh of my being?
–Oh, little man, what true worries have you that you would speak such gibberish to an old man who wishes for no more than to be left to his mental wanderings? You speak to me of hate, but do not know what it is. A food, you say, or flesh and blood– this is petty meandering through a landscape that cannot be described by your banal and impoverished language. Would you like to understand hate, know what it is so that you will know that you have not yet experienced it? Listen to me and you will finally put to rest all your false fears in the face of the true malady of hate:
Remember that blues are solemn, lifting as a feather, and flutter alone in despair. Forget not that the length of day is harsh and turns to a night for its end, vermin in suckling worship with needled teeth of nibbling desire. Night, day, all is a plague that only cares for sin. With melting eyes and molten heart, a vouchsafed couple ripe for the moribund plains smeared with this blood-tainted stain of birth. Yet in the end, a bit at ease, aglow in the embers of approaching futility, one remembers a certain mind-essence condescending to worship. In this state that is the sovereign of mind, the trees wave above leafy grounds as they settle to compost. Underneath sits eternity scarred by the hands of the brutal minions of man himself. He is the evil, man, the evil particle of self because all that he has reflects the remnants of confidence in a merciless departure from this world. So do not believe him when he looks to your heart and speaks: “I thought on virtue, I thought on sin. These thoughts left me blind as thoughts go slinking in an out of eves of concerted disarray. Their illusionary masters are greater beings. Theirs is a rapport with intimate accomplishments led astray as are most who follow a lamb that brays like a jackass.”
The Man on the Mountain leaves, but he is not gone. The weary one on a quest turns to go, and hears these words as he is enraptured in mist and confusion, repeating to himself, “what does this mean”…
Umbriate Press Poetry 