by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

They’ve only ever followed orders – poorly so – in life’s institutions.

At School they were mediocre,

At the office they forced you do all their work,

While you slowly burnt out,

Punished for your ‘Voluntary Pseudo-Parentalism’.

They hate you because you helped them.

They must always ‘bite the hand that feeds’.

They hate that you can create – something impossible for them,

For they have ventured so far down into the abyss of ‘the banality zone’.

They could be 23, 38, 53 or about to retire at 64 –

It doesn’t matter because they cannot emotionally mature.

They the denizens of 21st Century offices everywhere are time warped.

They are the inner city everyman, whose ancestors were exactly the same through the ages.

They are the personification of the adage ‘No good deed goes unpunished’.

And you can’t escape them.

They are around you by design.

They’re there to drag you down to their level –

They are ‘The boring, The Mean, The stupid & Uncreative’.

They are your punishment for living, for not being born to the right bloodline.

In there own minds they are ‘cool’ – & definitely to good for you.

For they do not see the wealth evidence to the contrary –

Ignorance is bliss & it fuels their ‘backward cognitive dissonance-land’.

Where all that is good must be bad,

Whereby anyone emanating anything good, original, or interesting is to be marked as ‘the enemy’.

This the everyman in the urban wastelands that about everywhere.

They are your curse.

Befriend them at your peril.

Unfortunately you must learn this the hard way.

With age you will learn to keep them at arms length,

To varying degrees of success.

They do not give up on their prey easily.

And if you’re not on your game, in your quest to combat them –

You might end up becoming one of them yourself.

Which incidentaly – they will not like either.

For they are so perfectly debased – that they also hate their fellow ‘soldiers of the abyss’.

And p.s. – becoming a total recluse is no solution.

You can only carry your wound-full arrows as a badge of honor.

You must at all costs remain you.

For surely that is all you really truly have.

I repeat:

Always beware the ‘soldiers of the abyss’.

They are everywhere.

And remember – there is one ultimate enlightening Truth

True Darkness will not and cannot prevail over all that is Good.