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