Beware The Soul's Corrosion

Be aware, take care to distance
oneself from the soul-corrosive
presence of unregenerated
misanthropes lest the pathology
that destroys their humanity
seep into your defenceless
conscience, destroying that
treasured humanitarian perspective.

Yes, humankind is fatally flawed,
afflicted by its own drear and dreadful
fallibilities; even so, there abides
within us all that priceless spark
of mutual care, dimmed by events
beyond our reckoning but rekindled
when dire need presents.

It is they who find fault, sneer
and express their utterly belittling
contempt, who leave the world
embittered. Not those, albeit
flailing helplessly against fate and
humanity's failings who leave a
better place when they take their leave.

Combine an iconoclast and a
misanthrope and you have
that rarest of all thinking creatures
like Samuel Clemens who, while
despairing yet delivered a message
to posterity that the struggle to
overcome our baser instincts is
never over, yet never in vain.

Favour yourself and take counsel,
there are always ways and means
to be sought and ample needs in
thrall to conscience. Step away from
the dark, brooding hater who can
see no function in guiding himself
away from desolation of mind and
condemnation of humankind; leave
him to his festering soul's collapse when
reasonable and patient discourse fails.