ascend

CREDIT: Rahul Lal's images
chomolungma. she is giving. palm up. cupping velvet jewels, prayers. the men—gulping steam, frost, milk-ice—gag. here: the red beryl-tipped crown—dented, polished tin. everest. mountain. mount it—swell flesh, peel temple; let the rest—the edges (meat) wax—drip in blistering puddles. here: the crown. here: the universe. the frame: black opal—eyes, balled/sunken/drowned. our prayers/confetti. here: the universe. here: the eyes—jeweled cosmos. here: tanzanite whiskers coiled on wrists. come to the foot hills, to the spun silk threads—they, bodies of a blue-violet variety, are all spent blood & slush. cold lips. flushed, emptied, dead. here: the frills. here: that painite, that red-black, iron rust, that beady, strung thick drop. let it crumble. let it crash into its core [implode mid-palm, consoled, confined]. let the surface steal the reading, steel the nerves, still the slow slop, the bloodletting, then make it stale. here: the pressured tip of staves. here: a head of alexandrite to puncture the sides. men: tucked lips, furrowed brows, clean-unclean geometry, bone structure crushed. here: against blue-green/green-red/red-pink—alexandrite—the eyes: a hue of lies & light, but transient. close the lips around it. here: loop the tongue along the mineral. then here: take it to the heart. take it through. here: the musgravite mask—the black-purple beast—the coarse-cored creature—watch the lines align by sun on bouncing snow—how rare. here: she touches short strands—light—life—gravel/textures/rays—then houses it in molars. here: the mask of decay calls. palm up, cupping velvet jewels, prayers. she is giving. reach for her.
straddling— top-top. it is not remarkable that chen died. the traffic jam, the six bodies, the search. i say thank you
for telling me that chen died. down the mountain he went. thirty feet below. four hundred above. another hump of rock and ice, and sherpas who smile into snow-crusted beards. they call them the icefall doctors. they are paid for everything: for the ladders laid over gaps, for the rods with rope, for the trails. if it echoes, the ice will give way. if it echoes, do i run?
there are icefall doctors in the icefalls, frozen, folded
into glacial
gaps
underfoot, crackling. loud, like trees popping out of place. staring down steep-steep ice straight down, there is a static rope to hang me. a tether with tension, ready to fling me. a neon noose. the both of us shattered: the ice and i— eyes rising & such— the shattered between us are marked by anchors, mocked by pickets, stabbed and twisted, screwed into ice.
the slopes are filled with dreams, or dreamers stuck in corpses, or dreamy scenic frames, or no dream at all. the englishman and the indian are both dead. so now we inspect. compare frost nipped fingers to incipient frostbitten toes. the cold chop-chops. “i’m fucked,” then takes bare structures frozen flesh, frozen black on the inside, frozen pink white tendon, until the whisper out is half hot breath, half chilled frost, and the blood crystal to veins. pull the sleeping bag over and bite the wind, or take the winds bite, or swoon. “once you recover,” the bits will melt away, the larynx will shake free, and on and on to the next camp until the radio breaks. so chen is dead.
mountain madness to people who don’t climb mountains is the inhale-exhale. the right foot, then left. the whistling suction of empty lungs filling, spilling over, burning trails from chest to biceps, thighs to throat— not the rush! not thrill!
what i was doing was recognizing the seriousness of purpose. halfway up, side to side— jammed— slamming ice-ax to ice a sixth, a seventh, an eighth time. i pause. wait-wait. at camp i chop ice. axe to ice. rusted metal to old mountain until old mountain gives way, or packed snow can be pocketed, bagged in packages, melted to purified water, bottled and boiled and stewed. “more, more.”
four breaths, three heaves, two grunts, a swallow. burned chest, singed muscles, a lift, a fall, then a crash and a sweep, then slashed, then ice. it is dry everywhere and everywhere is filled with water, and everywhere is mounted on rock until snow creeps up our boots swallows our knees, bites into our thighs, warms the fat in our hips with the chilled kiss and promise of sleep. even the water welled in our eyes freeze. captures us in mid blink, sticks lid to mucus, holds mucus until hard, makes hardness sound like ripping, rips lashes till they transplant, then hum and vibrate from shut to spastic to desperate, then free.
the canyon fills with cloud. the mist and fog return. fluid pushes the brain, rushes up and touches every bent angle of cartilage/bone with no warning, little fuss, until it wakes a day late: drunk, inversely flipped, from the harness and the buckle down.
this is an empty understanding, a sweet loss, those garments, those ropes, those coats— discolored, varicolored—downward. this cuts the slope pushes choked white bruises into gory knots of mummified, glorified vessels. vassals of summits, of steps. stop stay here don’t move listen. the collective voice:
i ride the slope, the storm. then shiver. i stumble over a man. not a man, but a body of the mountain. i whisper: solitude
but something stranger watches: is it the masses? are they the climbers?
they stop. they speak. they glance. they preach. their breaths: haggard and short. they school me, scold: fool. their eyes say: fool.
i wonder: where lies the softness of man? is he too busy to lend his warmth? are his limbs too short to reach my knee, my knee, now black, and nubbed.
i say: come, come touch me. of his oxygen: is it too sweet to share? of his gear: is it too heavy a burden? and the bonds, are they tight and stifling? do they jerk and choke?
my brethren are where? i say: passing me! on to the top! on to the world! passing me on.
is the frozen indian in the green boots my new brother? compare us as so. as such, you pass us on.
on to the top.

The Mountain Everest