Once I undertook a journey,
upon the very face of our entire world.
To view for myself the many pictures,
and written descriptions in all the geography
books and History Classes, National
Geographic magazines and movies seen.

A Quest to see with my own eyes what
I had only experienced second hand.
In my mid twenties, like a dream,
one foot in front of the other,
I went about exploring.

I sniffed and tasted the scents of foreign lands,
Incense, Sage and Frankincense, fish curry,
fried snake and even monkey brains.
Walked in lush Jungle Bush and Desert sands,
Along the shores of Islands and the coasts
of many lands.

Heard the voices of 30 divergent Dialects
and cultures, smiling and laughing with
the families and children of all of them.
Set beside the fires of primitive tribal men,
heard their chants to their gods above, the
moon, stars and the sun, the ocean, the land.
Clapped my hands and moved my feet in
their ancient mystic dances.
Drank their tea, Kava or whatever they shared
grateful for their offered unselfish brotherhood.

Stood on the flanks of the tallest Mountains
in the world, on my toe tips, to try to see the
face of the God of my youthful teachings,
disappointed when I did not see him, or Her.
Found instead an inner tranquility, imparted
to me by Red robbed Monks from within their
chants of Peace and wise earthly enlightenments.

Strolled the cobbled streets of two thousand year
old Cities. Walked among the ruined remnants of
nearly forgotten once great Civilizations.

Explored Modern European Citadels' of wealth and learning.
Over time rode on planes, ships, buses, backs of open trucks,
Horse pulled carts and human drawn rickshaws, taxis, subways,
rented motorcycles and cars.  Walked perhaps 1000 miles.
In all a journey of the mind and heart lasting three years.

And why you might ask, "What qualifies you as a pilgrim
of any kind, to travel so far, and wide?"
"What was I looking for, what did I hope to find?"  
All indeed, fare questions.

When a boy, I read a simple five word line,
“Seek and thee shall find". Curiosity and
Horizon Lust compelled me.
 
The next obvious question you might
ask is, after all that; “What did you find?”
That answer is very simple,
I found myself.

Deadbeat
Smelly feet
Walking across its own callouses
Creator of worlds
Perfect inscriber of nameless wonders beyond mere
Conception and discrimination
That permeates the minds of men
Misguided across the arc of ages
Leading only to cycles of
Hollow pain repeating itself
Lacking substance but appearing
Like unmovable boulders perched
Atop greener mountains
That whisper using their voice,
The wind
Carrying its message in its form
Disappearing but never gone
The homeless,
Not content to trap two sided
Ideas of being in overflowing
Homes filled with the true
Forms of out sourcing
The spirit, torn for
Perfect packages to be sent
To faceless names to further
The collection of vessels
Unused.
The wanderer,
Unhappy with goals
Moving towards the never ending
Journey of perfection
That ends nowhere but travels
Everywhere leaving no quarter
Uninvaded and sadly ringing
In transcendental ears
The lonely,
Unwilling to spread their
Personal pain
From personal failures
To any one but themselves
Using the compressed aggregate
Sickness in scientific lobes, only
Representations, to create faucets through which representations
Of the unrepresentative
Eek out an existence
Among glaring, modern edgy
Movements in endless circles
That sear images into retinas
Working their way to ******
Thoughts, deflowering the only
Worthwhile virginity in the sad reflections of experience
Called man.
The ******,
Never fulfilled from false conceptions
Or the self materializing aspect as
The passage of time
Looking to capture the eternal moment and ****** of the Now
Lasting forever but done long
Ago
Chasing the end of self
And forgetting the body for
Higher realms untouched by lazy
Thoughts and repetitive notions
Creating the mundane
The un-mundane is furthur up than most of us can see
Even if touching it is
The experience
Not different from the life you will
Live for a million regressions
The contemporaries
Never travel the
Path of the Mountain
First camels, then lions
Finally to turn into godly offspring of
Flowering being at the peak
Standing above ubiquitous faces
But contact on level planes
The mountain of self
To create a new identity divorced from the diseased blockage
Flowing through humanity's veins
Only to tumble down
Into the pulsating
Heart filling, disintegrating
All in one undiscriminating
Destruction unborn from the
Young universe only
To lose the conception
And absorb the absorber
Forgetting that once,
A young man carried all the
Pain he had handed to himself
In shiny packages
Pretending that the others
Ever even existed.

There's a candle burning nightly
In the window, on the right
The house has long been empty
But, the candle's there each night
The house in old and ancient
I'm sure it has tales it needs to tell
Like, why the candle's burning
And why the house won't sell

The candle shows up daily
As soon as dusk begins to fall
The drapes are drawn so closely
In each room along the hall
But, in that lonely window
Burns a candle all can see
It's been burning there each evening
Since nineteen forty three

They say the house is haunted
After all, the candle is a clue
Someone lights it nightly
The question asked is who?
The house has been abandoned
No one lives there any more
They say the last survivor
Left in nineteen forty four

The story is as follows
If I get my rumours straight
The house was built around
The year eighteen eighty eight
The family that did own it
When the candle came to light
Were wealthy, and reclusive
And they all kept out of sight

The story goes, their oldest son
Signed up and went to war
He was a pilot in the air force
He shot down 15 planes or more
He was shot down on a mission
But  his plane was never found
They never found the wreckage
Where it crashed into the ground

The candle started burning
The day the message came
It's always burning in the window
It's always lit, it's all the same
The candle shows when it is dusk
It goes out just past three
No one knows who lights it
There's no one there to see

Is the candle lit by spirits
Waiting for a missing son
Is it lit to help pass over
To make his journey done
No one knows the exact story
If the plane crashed and he died
But, even in the daylight
People don't pass by on this side

The house is an enigma
Is a ghost there waiting for
A son to come home to them
Marching through the old front door
All I know is that the candle
Has been lit for 60 years
And there's a ghost up there just waiting
Crying quiet , ghostly tears