Less Than Dust

I would scream down ninety mountains to less than dust.
I would for you.
You who I do not entirely know
Nearly as well as anyone would ever guess,
I would scream down ninety mountains and several large foothills
If I thought it would change a damn thing.

I would write down every word I ever thought to learn.
For SATs or ACTs or GREs or ABCs or
Impressing those above and below me waiting to be impressed.
[So I thought.]
I would write down every word I knew twice,
In pencil,
If I thought that they would mean any more to you than my silence.

I would sing every song and dance every dance
And throw every projectile
And project my voice and project my name and project my thoughts and ideas onto a screen as empty as
These words.

I would.
There is nothing for me to swear on,
Nothing left to accept as holy.
But you can take my word as it is.
Because they are all I have
And even they are not truly my own.
And most likely never will be
[I will never manipulate anyone
The way you manipulate your words.]

I would scream down ninety mountains
But that would accomplish
Absolutely nothing
And half a pot of coffee.
Black.
No sugar.
Not at a time like this.

I have attended many years of public education
Which taught me that screaming down anything
Rarely amounts to much.
And but
I would happily defy these people with my wagons of teenage angst and my cannonballs of insecurities and flawless reasoning.

…

I would write you poetry day and night
And afternoons and dawn and other times the earth dissolves in
Shadows of incalculable measure
I would write you new mountains
Of sorrow and love and loss and gratitude and anger and
forgivenessandhumorandsunlightandtortureandrevengeandsolitude
But I know
Oh our forsaken God knows
That every word that pours from me
And falls
Through the veil, disappointed

…

Would only be erased later
Or worse yet
Ignored completely
By your synapses.

And what’s more
That leaves me with absolutely nothing.
And you with nothing but my poorly ­organized phrases
And we will both
Limp along the concrete concourse
Trudging toward the moth-eaten curtains
Of time we wasted
Screaming wordlessly at mountains.

Nevertheless
I would still scream them down
To dust and ashes and sand and fish and atoms

For you.