Honesty Endangered

Nurtured with a diet of fear and greed,

Unlike non-sentient life

The populace that surrounds themselves

With a cacophony of distractions and negative voices

Seldom discover they’ve lost their solitary sentinel,

That quiet whisper known as truth.

Among the stalwart

The world that beckons with siren-like noise to get their attention

The soul of integrity resists

Even by a flickering flame

Standing tall against the tempest of deceitful pretense.

Such bravery knows well their convictions,

That like the tenuous fragility of glass

Such pressure may momentarily shatter under

The heft of delusional pretense

But among shattered shards,

There remains a reflection

Of a self unyielding,

Inviolate.

On paths less trodden

Such humanness walks alone, embracing the silence of authenticity,

Clad in armor of honesty,

The person is unaffected by

The masquerade of interchanging masks.

For…

When the disguised crowd disperses,

And the reverberations of falsehood fade,

Veracity remains a steadfast companion,

A flame undaunted in the twilight of the spirit.