The Royal Road Poem by Robert Burgan

Sit and wonder why I'm here, questioning my purpose
Demons hurt my pride and pulled me through the currents
They marched the Royal Road and stormed the Persian Gates
I was in a burning castle desperate to determine fate
But I survived by all means of survival
Call it grace of God or just call it another mile
Been walking through cities since the kid in me depleted
I was watching from the rafters as the rapture completed
Saw it with my own two eyes, lonely, broken, summer skies
Idolized, over analyzed as I romanticized
The side of me you never see is haunted by the reverie
The memory of everything I had blown to smithereens
Infamy is not my creed
I don't want to be a villain
Part of my downfall now be a part of rebuilding
Instilling knowledge, fulfilling progress
Killing perception, replaced with promises
Can I be better than the weather I created?
Can I ever escape reality I jaded?
Empowered by the coward in the hours of the night
Who used to think his strength was superior, he wasn't right
All his songs scream for help, can't you tell?
I'm the coward, I'm the writer, I'm Persepolis; I fell
The fall from grace was scenic
The wall I built with weakness
The winter was my catacomb the summer showed my demons
Involving my family in all the wrong I did
That was wrong, I can admit it
How do I go on from here? Another conquered year
I'll never get back to normal, normal is a phony fear
What is normal, what is fiction?
What is death, what is living?
What is forgetting? What's forgiving?
'I'll never make it'
Only myself I'm kidding
Ridding the attic of the addict who adapted
To the habitat he crafted to act out and seem erratic
He was rabid, he was savage, he was manic, he was free
He was what I knew I would always come to be
But the fact that I became that guy hurts my soul and burns my mind
Learning over time to accept the facts and pass it by
Pacify obsession with lessons, do sessions
Write until my fingers break right into a new dimension
This is a second chance actually it's my third or forth
But for the first time in my life I believe I've seen the worst of war
Live in peace don't decrease your dreams, don't ever think you're through
You're a new beginning, you're a miracle, you're something true
Storm the Royal Road
I'll be hanging plaster
You can keep your wreckage
Take it, swallow your disaster
I used to be the actor now I'm the master
I don't control you; I control my own ever after