WEP October Contest Piece 2023

This is the first thing I have written in a while as I attempt to balance my literary and culinary creativity.  Along with trying to start my own small business selling hot sauces, pepper jams, dry rubs, and whatever else my mind comes up.

However the particular theme of this challenge was irresistible. Especially given my love of older black and white horror movies. Taking inspiration from the brilliant and frightening portrayal done by Lon Chaney, in the 1925 adaption of the stage play. His performance reveals the tormented,  and fractured persona of the phantom. A man who attempts to cope with who he was and who he is becoming. That was a large influence on how I wrote this rather brief poem. Along with taking some more personal understanding of how life sometimes creates divides, and shapes us.

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Phantoms are representative of the past.        

They are  born of our mistakes and growths alike.        

   Each one acts as a lesson we have learned from experience.                                

Regardless of if that education was positive or negative.        

Eventually the phantoms of our lives gather about on the grand stage known as life.

All of a minor manifestation of who we once were. 

Another living and expanding the present. 

The one of future selves lurking hidden amongst the shadows.                                   

In a way, each person is forged of  metaphysical phantoms.       

Along with scars brought about by living.

In a way, we are all phantoms casked in senew, flesh, and bone.

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Critique level: Comment. Word count: 106