THE POET LAUREATE OF ALBANY

THE POET LAUREATE OF ALBANY

Someone once mistook
Me for some kind of celebrity

A celebrity
Without money

Only words

But thirty years
Passes by with each
Passing obituary

The death of family
The death of friends

The death of moments
Of highs & lows
Drunken sonnets & love
& Unemployment woes

And if anything
Poetry is made of just that

Broken love
Broken souls
Broken relationships
Songs of protest
Angry souls

And jealous haters
Of things that their
Own egos can’t even
Begin to comprehend

To have a gift
That you know will
Never make you rich
Or famous, beautiful or
Amazing

And the list goes on

Like a poem badly
Repeated over & over
Again to the same
Boring tune because they
Can’t grasp the idea of
Originality, their words
Struggling to fit in that
Makes them like every
Other unknown poet with friends
To become
Part of their little click
Or fan club

But never
Never with their own
Authentic voices

Born out of destruction
Born out of struggling
Poverty. Death

That’s real
That’s said

Out Loud

Up on a big stage
Under the bright lights
Of the here & now

So they can call themselves
Whatever they wish
Here in Upstate NY
Never making it to LA
Or NYC, never even trying
To publish a decent book
Or speak out against all the
Wrongs that they can’t make

Right

For writing
Doesn’t truly equal fame
Just because your social media
Posts make you the king or the queen
Of the entertaining bullshit prom

And once upon a time
A long time ago
Someone mistook
Me for some kind of celebrity
At the end of the bar

A celebrity
Without fame
Or fortune

Standing up on a stage

But I’d rather be a real writer
Sitting alone at home writing
In a world full of inhumanity
Saying what needs to be said

Instead of the “Poet Laureate of Albany”

Or for that matter
Anywhere fucking else

~ R.M. Engelhardt
Albany, NY ©2025
From ” NO KINGS MF”