WITH NOTHING MORE TO SAY

Some day
One day
You won’t reach out
For fame
Because it doesn’t
Exist never existed
Never came or stayed
or ever paid
The rent

True

Or real

Or yours

Or was ever
Truly

Like words

And then?

Someday
Sometime off
In a near distant future place you
Will find yourself standing up
On a stage older

And under the lights

All alone

Empty & Vacant
Like all the stars
You once dreamed of or
Wrote about

Yet still comparing
Yourself to all the
“Famous Ones” remembered & yet
Constantly complaining about how
Your genius wasn’t noticed &
Was over looked

By fools

As you wish to believe
You were a great part of history
The handful worth reading

When the truth is
Nobody & no one will
Even remember your name

Perhaps
In a month?
Even
A decade or just a
Year from now?

And they won’t
Recall or remember
A single word you said
Or wrote

Finding that all
The mingling &
Sucking up and the fake
Complimenting
Didn’t get you very
Far in life

At all

And that this will
Be the sad day the infinite
Day of all days
Future
And past

With no love
Soul or sentimentally

Left

But perhaps?
The artist was wrong

And the lecture
Has ended

But
In your version

You believe that
Your handful of
Blind followers

Will think
That you have
Mysteriously
Disappeared

Like Rimbaud
Or some other
Immortal legend

But instead
You’ll be found
In the drive thru

At McDonald’s

Surviving

~ R.M. Engelhardt

© 2022