Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire
— Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, L’Art Poétique (The Art of Poetry), Canto I, l. 232 (1674).
… and would you choose to grab one anyway?
Before taking that leap into the unknown… not me!
I’ve been around middle-aged people
who have proudly never read a single book,
who hope Dostoyevsky isn’t something catchy,
their only hobbies are smoking cigarettes,
and playing reams and reams of Lottery scratch cards,
whilst their only structured interests
are shoving their noses into other people’s business.
If you plucked out their collective ‘Souls’
and placed them side by side inside a matchbox,
you’d still have plenty of room left
to stick your thumb in there quite comfortably.
narcissists and sociopaths (I refuse to capitalize them)
sound Halloween scary, don’t they?
Well, they’re not, they’re weak cowards,
who got hurt as children (Didn’t Most Of Us)
and didn’t have the necessary strength and fortitude
to recover from it, they broke inside instead,
and emotionally handicapped they remain.
They’re parasites, imposters, empty braggarts,
sadists who cannot take the slightest criticism back…
superficial charm hiding toddler-tantrum rage,
they have no souls, they imitate, and mask,
they are beneath you, pity them their petty patheticness,
close a door upon the delusional fools,
then move on to greener pastures, and real people.
Sycophants, they’re an interesting creature, I jest,
they don’t even know what they are exactly themselves,
without someone ‘wiser’ and ‘cooler’ and ‘braver’
to tell them (And It’s Usually The Wrong Person).
I prefer ‘Outside-The-Box’ Adventurers,
those up against it all, and who still take a chance,
those who do not succumb to envy and jealousy,
do not care about pecking orders, or The Joneses,
and are far too busy blazing their own trails
to bother with childish thoughts of competition,
there is NO competition (Unless You Play Sport),
the only competition should be with your very own self!
Life is Beautiful, Life is Pain, Rain and Sunshine, both…
and a million different Horrors, Excitements, Miracles,
and chances for growing that Soul, and learning…
Me, I’ll be off that Deep End until the very End,
and Defiantly Hard-core and Individual until my Death.