Savagery of 

the Sentimentalists

Uncomfortable with sentimentality,

experience had taught him

where others were concerned,

mawkishness masked cruelty.

That said, he was himself

a melancholy person,

his sentiment rooted in

a beatific 

apprehension of pain. 

Vulnerable to a fault

he had embraced 

bewilderment as religion,

making himself a reluctant savior

for the rabble’s patent disregard.

Oh, he had his integrity,

but it was of a kind

that sealed him within

a self-sustaining terrarium.

His aloneness, an ache

that generated it’s own faith

as his failures and discomforts

made him more vivid.

He had to remind himself

everything absent

was not lost.

To his mind,

the sentimentalists, blind
and prone
to find him through smell,
appearing out of nowhere
fascinated by 

his lonely strength of purpose

would first hold him up,

place him on a pedestal,

praise him beyond reason

then, when he proved to be

merely human

pull a 180 

and condemn him

with all the vitriolic

accusations railed

against a false God.

He saw through projections

 like an acrid taste of fetid air,

yet only yesterday he'd been

ambushed by sentimentalists

clinging to their dewy idealism,

un-transcended,

mama’s boy versions

of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Such sheep are the enemy

of art and artist alike

as their stunted emotionalism

insists on dividing

up their shares between

friend and necessary foe

 based on a wronged child’s

vengeful autonomy.

Inclusively Indulgent,
they worshiped

at the corner altar

of their own preferences,

full of precious memories,

clinging to emotional spoils

embracing their fantasies

with utter lack 

of imagination;

as violent

as the color white

and just as chronic.

Whereas, his kind was

pure fertilizer

juxtaposed to their 

antiseptic mud;

his every leap of faith

a human sacrifice,

their faces smeared

like young savages

with the blood

of common
house flies.

Peter Valentyne

July 1st, 2019