Totem of the Chimera
A poem about the effect of bitterness on the spirit by Daniel Whitlow
I hardly ever smile anymore but not because I don’t want to —
I wash away long days of personal sedition
by scowling at distorted messages drawn in a scarred-glass face,
finger-traced constructs of mirror-reflected negativity
winding tedious epitaphs in cohering dust,
hanging from reproachful words meant to condemn and chastise,
to rebuke and renounce.
— I just can’t. I used to smile. I used to love laughing, but now —
I rinse away my perpetual litany of fallow principles
with the absurd belief that artifice is the voice of divinity,
compelling me to stumble up sanctified steps toward temples
of vast, concrete fallacies, shaped in the illusion of godless
piety, made wet by rain born of prancing idiocy, frolicking
beneath a victorious, fabricated, fictitious sky.
— it hurts more than it heals; it feels more false than real; I think —
Talking fails to ease my debt, so save your compassion for
other droning altruisms. Exert your humanity on the moronic
multitudes and leave me to my misery,
to the enduring legitimacy of my uninspiring legacy,
to watching as my deceitful inadequacies take full control
of my faded dreams; I deprive myself of everything.
Author’s Note
The vicious efficacies of bitterness and resentment evolve with viral prowess. They possess a single objective: the degradation of the spirit. We must prevail against such slow deterioration, against cynicism’s sullen whimpers. When the simplest joys have become redundant, we have lost.
About the Author
Daniel Whitlow received a life sentence at 17. He began writing and thought that no one would ever hear his words. He considers this opportunity — to share a part of himself he thought was lost to the indifferent, unhearing void of razor wire and concrete emptiness — to be life changing. His gratitude is beyond expression.
