Clustered

The ways of through darkness
once lead past fun houses and candy stores
they burned so bright by their illumination,
like beacons in the blackness they glowed
lured after sunset to be seduced on their fantasies.

But it never lasted as long as the appetite
didn’t have the pure power of potency
to bewitch and beguile as their torches hinted,
slowly left stumbling outside in the cold,
disillusioned, disappointed and stained by depression.

Wounded and bleeding from the stab wounds
encountered in those thorny corridor
thickets of feigned fantasia,
slowly staggering out away from the deception
where other bruised and broken seekers stand.

And in that chilled, silent avenue of disbelief
inside you grope for a lamp to shine on the confusion,
then strike its flame by what is remembered
as the radiance of truth that once kept you warm.

Quietly in the flare of inner radiance
finally noticing the candles of other hearts
that like your own light now shining,
happily clustered with those of like iridescent
as the circles of insight the beam their clarity
deep into the shadows of misconception.