The Summit

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The black cloud from the volcano hung in

the air like a storm. We stared at its image –

the face of a raging demon, mouth gaping screaming

some earth shattering heresy.

A sidewalk caked in the ashes of a problem had

a name written in it that no one wanted to say.

Snakes covered the earth like grooves in

the sierra sand.

My left hand opened and I beheld a diamond,

black and transparent; my right a ball of flame.

I was still standing on the mountain.

Behind me the sky grew suspicious.

Herbs plotted against me as a standard procedure,

not because I had done anything.

Then I saw a man, a man with skin pale as crying snow,

and it was blemished, impure, cut with the stain of

former holiness; and his eyes looked at me, black like

the window to a Great White Shark, teeth like onyx;

and he saw me from worlds away, staring at me from an incalculable

distance; and he wanted to kill me,

for he knew I was him.