The Mountain

The rope hanging

The 8 track playing

On a loop and caked in dust

The voices they hate me

Judge me and berate me

Their words I should not trust

A voice perched on my shoulder

A nothingness the weight of a boulder

Motivation is a wasteland

Hostile critic, grief, rejection and anxiety

Quilting blankets of disappointment from society

A mosaic stitched into my skin by my own hand

The layers pile up with distorted faults and failures

Is that a mound of unwashed clothes on the floor

Or is that me?

Nerves frozen shut

So I'm too bundled up

For joy to find my skin

And did joy just not care enough to come into work?

If the ticket doesn't get punched

Is the card so full of holes that there is

Nothing left for the metal teeth to rend?

How do you find something if it's so chipped away

That there is naught a crumb to defend?

The layers pile, till I am one with the floor

And more will, alone, join this moor

We are hills that were once plains

Not much, but what little remains

Will flowers grow on these living graves?

Flowers of public smiles that mask the pain

When we turn away, then comes the rain

Overburdened petals droop like lips bending

Tired of holding high, their edges pretending

Every blanket accumulates till the force is miles high from freedom

Yet so many find their own escape, why so many we must discuss

The mountain we have to climb is not on the horizon

The mountain is crushing us, on top of us, apart of us