On a hill in brightest days does stand,
A Manor, a House, a Home,
With its richness and glory a testament to success,
Of colors most inviting, finest marble, smoothest oak,
All passerby do gawk at the luck owner
With the richest hearth, boldest paint, cleanest windows
And of course its air of perfume,
And they smiled,

But in the darkness when all eyes are closed,
A thousand thoughts are left to wander,
To wonder, to search, to seek,
And bumble through the twisting,
The climbing, the ruined, the crumbling,
Passages of that mansion,

And there in the pure and utter void,
The real solitude of self-discovery does,
A door pop to show, to unfurl, to unmask,
And allow us to brush by that which we,
Cannot hope, dare not decipher, fear to find,

When realization reveals the hollowness,
The emptiness within the confines,
Of the depths of the castle, they wince,
They pain, they bruise, they bleed at knowing,
It is empty, lacking, worthless,

But sunup, sundown they trudge,
Displaying a burnished and gleaming treasure,
Without substance, without value, without reason,
Each day is a struggle to rise and continue,
To persist, to maintain, to survive,

And in the course of every life does temptation rise,
To call, to beckon, to bargain,
For that which only the most philosophic,
The most reverent, the most literature, the most desperate
Can dare to even consider,

To dash down that which already is empty, inside,
With hacking saws, smashing hammer, burning oil,
And make a choice once it is gone to build anew,
To rise and flourish, not merely survive,
Or sink down deep where the neighborhood has discarded them,
They now naked and bare to the eyes of the world,
To depravity, to depression, to darkness,
And there rip up the foundations