Westward Bound Part I - The Lantern

With time's passage, though, what worth would such things be
without a pen with which to write,
nor a voice with which to speak
if I found you gazing back at me
as the second night descends?

For time steals us all away one day, does it not?
It robs us of the things we want to hold onto the most.
And believe me when I say
that it lies in wait for no man or woman to make their haste.
Just as easily, a thousand years would go to waste.
The work is all the same before the eye of God,
is it not?

Perhaps it is the plot I've lost?
Perhaps I've lost my Way?
At this point are they not the same?
Am I not treading the One and only Pilgrims' Westward Way
to do the workings of the One and only Thing?
Have I not come this very way in search of higher things at stake?

I have seen it manifest, I have seen it ache,
I have been the squander, and I have been the mirth
as their eyes avert from heavens sent to guide them to their birth.
As they foster their impurity and mock the very Way
in which the lurking and the murmuring
shall speak from night to day
will they choke upon their poison and speak the poison word
while not manifesting the purity they sought.

O', what a shame,
O', what a tragedy it is for these words to fall upon deaf ears
doomed to never reach their subject.

O', what a fool am I to have laboured and believed
in such petty human things,
when it was clear from the beginning;
that we are westward souls?

I pray the night might take me.
I pray the night might take me westward bound.
To confront who we are, to confront the shadow self,
I pray the night might take me.

If I must die a thousand deaths and die a thousand more
as nameless, faceless, restless men
who nightly reach deaths door
then pray this lantern lays still lit to adorn my very soul.

She told me once...
"This is what happens in the mountains
where the light can't reach."

So I go westward, westward bound.