The mountain Is an optical illusion
What we normally see
In front of us is a world
Of insecurities from a lifetime
Of forced perspectives
And a veil of fears obscuring
Our true faith & deepest potential
And when we attempt to rise
To live up to what's alive
within us, they say it's delusion
Ugliness planted so deep in the eye
All we see is the negativity
The beauty of our dreams is beyond
Recognition because it was buried alive

The mountain is toxic words,
So many times we've been told
How useless we are
How we were born not to make it
Even the most earnest of efforts
Cannot get us to the top
We've been repeatedly told
That the kid next door
Is better than us because he washes the dishes better and mops the floor
Now your confidence and self esteem has become so bruised because you placed it by the doorway like the mat they step on before they step on the tile floor

The mountain is society
We go to school & work hard
To get good grades but to what end?
Cause sooner or later
Society wants their servants
Who must heal the sick?
They convince you to become a doctor
Who must enforce law and order?
They convince you be a lawyer
Who must educate our children?
They force you to go teach the poor
Souls what you've been taught
So that the culture of conforming
To norms is perpetuated
And society can be at "peace".

But your soul dances to poetry
This they never told you
Your soul sings flawlessly
Like birds in flight in a cloudless sky
On a beautiful summer's day
This they never told you
Instead they keep on preaching about the endless cries on judgment day
You can paint a nation of beauty
All you need to do is just grab hold of a canvass and a brush
This they never told you
All they ever taught you was self-loathing and how to be harsh
On yourself but everyone around you.

The highest mountain, is yourself
You so often want to shift the blame
Because its easier believing
That someone else contributed
To your failure, otherwise admitting the fall would be a shame
For this I don't blame you,
Nor will I shame you
You see we've been told that the worst enemy is out there
So we go through life preparing for war, and spend the rest of our lives searching for HIM, and not find HER because she lives within us
We spoil her rotten because
You cannot conquer
That which you do not understand
And by the time we open our eyes to the real fight, we've already suffered a couple of blows and knocks from life
Grey hair and arthritic limbs cannot guarantee us victory over this fierce and lethal monster that you've become towards yourself

The mountain is nowhere, that's to say NOW-HERE
We look for greatness without
When true greatness lives within
Even the earthly mountain is not as high it appears, the real milestone to be reached, is the one within
So start today and climb this great mountain
To the pinnacle of the self
The climb is strenuous
But the view up there is priceless
All else is but an illusion
The real test is here and now.

I write poems about beauty;
Your name is on every line.
And how your pretty little fingers
Were made to perfectly fit into mine.

I write songs about perfection;
Your name echoes all through.
And how this hellish life on earth
Seems so heavenly with you.

I try to form perfect rhymes,
But to what mere words can I rhyme thee?
For 12 lines are too few to put into words
How much you mean to me.

Stars lost in darkness
Their twinkle too faint
To even try and paint
Imaginary pictures
Of a haunted pasts
Buried in pain

Their twinkle too faint
To even pierce through
The veil of night
A night so fickle
The sky disowned the stars
Perhaps ashamed
To call them her own.
"How could you even claim to be children of the light, when you can't even stand up for yourselves and shine bright at night?"

They were like invisible freckles
On her face, and they added to
Her wrinkles, the sky thought to herself,
When all she needed were crescent hickies
Delivered by the soft kisses
Of the crimson half moon
"Ungrateful little stars! I give them a home and in return they mock my glow."

The furious sky did not know
That those stars were shining,
Secretly still but they shone nonetheless
Perhaps the most beautiful stars
In all the galaxies
Brilliant in the own unfamiliar glow
But they needed attention
They weren't there for competition
For they understood that each star
Holds a peculiar uniqueness about it

They wanted to be gazed at,
Hours upon hours
Perhaps by a young couple
Helplessly in love with one another
Tracing the route to their unforeseen
But well anticipated future
In a world full of lovers
But with only a few
That make it through
To the finish line

They wanted be gazed at,
perhaps by a lone stranger
tracking a path to a long lost home
To hands that grew cold
waiting to hold him
And yearning to be held by his
Yet now he knew more than ever
That it was due time to get back home

Those special stars
Just like the most scared
Amongst us, longed for attention
A special kind of affection
One that doesn't care if the next star
Shines brighter or bolder
One that understood enough
To stay because affection heals
All our scars.

Succumb. Collapse.
Let yourself fall into every trap.
Then love. Cry. Learn.
And Grow.
By the time you know.
You're basking in the glow,
you've lived.
There's nothing better for you to give.