[This is a poem I wrote a little over a year ago…It’s about a mountain in Tibet called Kailas that is worshipped by three of the main world religions over here. I think primarily Hindus, Buddhists, and one other. I know it’s wrong to blame the “idol” for man’s flaws, but I think putting it this way gets the point across…]

Kailas

hey mountain, are you the top head swimming in our atmosphere. centuries ago we were not hopping you like today, my sumeru holy head water of aqua gang of four, three great religions herald your divinity (aren’t you proud) but what do they know, disagreeable fundamentalists, polytheists, primates, they should prostrate and fall even flatter because you put up with it, the squabbles, pilgrimmages, hordes, they miss you when winter wilts their veins and smoke rises from hunkered tent lines, when offerings infrequent fall at your plateau shins, you’ve been here–long haul, dined on bones, mantras, and libations, chewed ’em up, spit ’em out like Shiva Pac-Man, stirred up their gods and titans for cocktails, left them, the devout, gasping for more, ecstatic, fearful, dreadfully impressed. your reputation precedes you; big K, you don’t look a day over infinity, your wish is your command, how many worlds are swimming around inside your guts? how much reality is left in your diet? i saw you, in their eyes, monstrous, waiting, eclipsing horizons, levitating on the earth’s core, promising fulfillment, paradise, and understanding, and the closer your shadow falls the less we see them quivering beneath your brow, shaking off their coats like their yak shedding lice, dust, and dew. Intimidator, you demand their respect, you regurgitate their reverance and awe, you bathe in a healing brine and yet
God knows you, too…
(and when will the rocks cry STOP!)
how you shrink and fall, how you bend low longing for them to come, insecure your arms grasp, withering over time, the unneeded parent, the altered friend, the object of obsession turned in on itself.
where do you go, Kailas, when all human eyes have closed and your Creator looks down from heaven?