Stanza two is my favorite. Brings to mind extreme sports one sees on the tube these days. Thanks for this.

"how deep you plunge the pen into your arm", indeed! deep enough to be deeper than passion, well said.

I think if we are patient and even if we are not, eventually everything will fall into place and click in the end, good or bad or indifferent. Of course, I could be wrong, which I am frequently. A far as passion is concerned, it has come to be expected of poets, from those who come to wean on the creative urge, who cannot locate it within themselves, which is a shame, to be so tame, to let lethargy rule the day. As far as mountains blocking our path, what is a poet but the ultimate Sissiphus, in that he is rolling mountains up hills the livelong day, only to have those mountains rolling back down the hill. And so we write, because we are passionate, because we have no choice but we are cursed to rolling mountains up hills. And so we roll them Chris, that a public could be fed of passions which they are sorely lacking in spades, which you are not cause you ain't public my brother, but poet.

Forgot to apply the filter, so this comment comes courtesy of my IV drip-feed; can't wait to read it on a plasma screen...

It is out of passion that much good and ill come. Thus passion must be controlled but is necessary to achieve the best. Your poem insightful and vivid in symbolism.