Accomplishment
Now
don’t go around
thinking
you’re special.
In retrospect,
we are all insignificant,
except those
who made a mark
and it stuck.
Plato,
Einstein, Van Gogh,
Emily Dickinson,
sure, but not you, or me,
or any of us out here
short on luck.
It is our
responsibility
to hold this thing up,
this illusion,
this pastiche of
immortal
lines and lies.
Go ahead,
make a mark,
we’re all free to try,
even if luck is in
short supply.
On the
walls of this prison,
write large,
curve the words
into stone
and sense.
None of us
are special here,
and none of us
will be remembered,
not like Walt Whitman,
Robert Frost,
Pablo Neruda,
and the other lucky
talented ones.
In five or so
billion years, the sun will
run out of
hydrogen cookies
and everything
will disappear without
a sound.
Star dust
is an impressive
accomplishment
even
if poetry
is not.
