Theme for English 9

Mr. Geib said,
Go home and write a poem tonight.
Let the words just flow onto the page,
your verse will be all the rage,
and everyone will see how well it is made.

This story was told to me
By the voices list in my mind
I am but a scribe
To this tale:
And now you are walking, your eyes to the east, to your home.
You are unarmed.
The sun sweeps down, towards the desert, and as it sets you start to jog.
the sky is turning brown.
There is no more contrast,
The ground and sky, one.
Your home is close now.

But then you see him, the lonely man, from the north.
Everything about him is dead, deserted.
Tan, gritty rags surround him. 
You see the handle of a sword on his back.
And he steps towards you.

He appears mute, his throat- could it be?- torn from his neck.
And you know his soul has escaped through the many holes in arms and chest. 
But still,
He speaks:

"No, it is not gone, not forever.
It is on a short visit to my eternal frustration.
It is merely...shall we say,
Calloused?"
He cackles, then continues, with a suspicious grin:
"Never mind these either"
He points to the gaps in his arms
"Just war wounds...just war wounds... war..."
He trails off.

You begin to shudder.
You feel an urge to move on. 
But he snaps back to his full consciousness (and insanity?)

"Don't think for a minute I'm the Messiah!
Tee-hee!"
But then he grows soft, saddened.
"...Only to the ones I left behind... the ones that left me behind. Or was it the world?
Please,
Help me."

And you want to.
Because now you see past the battered,
near-dead soul
and the bloody wounds and his tattered body.
You see his loss and want -- need - to salvage his destination. 
(But, within, you know the destination doesn't exist.
But you cannot change the goal of one such as him.
You know you cannot.)

You raise your head as he speaks again:
"Just... just... answer this."

He asks, "When you stare into my eyes, do you see -
Do you feel darkness? O r see you there a shining beacon of love?
When you gaze far, far into my soul,
Do you sense a grisly hellfire, or a heavenly aura of light?
But then why, why all this in such a terrible method?"

And you try to respond, to assure him, to even smile,
But he drifts away, as drifters do, to some dull light, on the horizon.
But you shift your head, and turn your eyes to the west,
And you begin your own journey.
You have already forgotten your home, and you cannot have further thoughts for him; 
He will never reach the light.
He drifts, as drifters do, and you wonder (and wander), as wonderers do,
And your paths,
They will not meet for some time, 
And should the world never end, the paths will not meet ever again...
Never again.