THE MASTER POET

He was a master poet,

But his words were never read.

No matter what he wrote,

He could never get ahead.

As a poet he bared his soul,

And put his heart on the line.

He hungered for success,

But even acceptance would’ve been fine.

Times grew lean for the poet,

He was getting rather slim.

His cupboards were all empty.

His muse had abandoned him.

There was nothing left to eat,

There wasn’t a thing to cook.

He hallucinated he was eating a turkey,

But it turned out to be his book.

He swallowed pages whole.

The words went down with ease.

He devoured that book in one setting,

And contracted a vowel disease.

The doctors had done all they could do,

But in the end it was too little too late.

The poet’s life faded like a pen run dry.

His last stanza had sealed his fate.

They buried him at sunset,

But the poet had the last laugh.

Before he died, he wrote one last poem,

It was to be his epitaph……

“Eating my own words,

Was certainly not the smartest.

Still there’s no mystery here,

I was just a starving artist.”

Michael D. Schafer

© December 1, 2019