Along the path
to find at last
the house that all have shunned.
Through the gate
no longer wait
to walk without the sun.
Into its depths
you walk bereft
of any shame or fear.
For in your heart
all 'round is dark,
but in your mind is clear.
From his homeland he marched;
Proud son, fearless warrior.
For his nation he fought;
Through the mud and rubble he trod,
spilling blood, taking lives.
A righteous mission for the greater good.
In his own heart he marched for the love of his nation.
But in my eyes he marched for hate.
So I killed him. And as my gunshots rang out
and he fell before me,
with a dark pool swelling beneath him, I was proud.
I was the hero!
Defender of Peace, Soldier of Justice,
proud son, fearless warrior.
Because those like him, the soldiers of hate,
they must die!
Mustn't they?
For it is, of course, my righteous mission.
Clad in cloak and bearing mighty blade,
The Pilgrim treads the wild woods.
The churning clouds above
bring a tempest against an emerald sea,
And below, the shadows come alive.
From the branches, water drips
Into pools where dark things crawl.
His glass eye spies twisted metal among the roots,
Flat rock, up-heaved by Nature and Time.
The thistles, with thorns like devil’s claws
Break upon his iron skin,
but he is unperturbed.
Now hill he meets, and he ascends,
His iron grip marring rock, crushing twig and branch.
His cloak is tattered, and as the summit is reached
It is torn from him by the storm.
But the wind parts the clouds of heaven,
Flooding the earth with golden honey light.
The Pilgrim stands; his bones gleaming in the sun.
Ahead in view, is single goal,
The City of Glass.
He descends the ragged land.
As The Pilgrim walks between the towers
They seem to stretch upwards to infinity.
At the base of the tallest spire lies The Shrine.
Before it, he kneels,
And speaks the holy words.
As he mutters, from the shrine stares
an out-of-place oddity,
organic, rough, weather-worn.
A skull, like his,
but made of bone, like the creatures of the plains.
For it is the shine to the Creator.
The shrine to his GOD called MAN.
A fetter, in the lighted way,
unfurled of blackened course.
Seen in torchlight, dim and red,
amid the grand remorse.
Amid the fields of dancing green,
the stillness lays thus seen by he
who, to the grass, touches tenderly.