Underachiever in Ascendance

Underachiever in Ascendance

I don't have the personality
for any of those
monkey pile
dog eat dog
type of jobs.
I got Darwined out
before I got sprung
from high school.
Grade school really.

Sort of slowly
flunked out
over a period
of about five years
or so.
Which made it
kind of confusing
when the Rhodes people said
I had this enormous I.Q
and volunteered
to help fund
my "Graduate studies"

I still have no idea
what that might
mean.
If I am
so smart,
then smart is
of negligible value.

Better to be
morally flexible
and insensitive
to anything but
one's own internal vanities.
For which
I don't seem
to have the proper
talent.

I like to think
that everyone has
their own genius
and that it is
to be honored;
even if not
understood.

So I continue to be
a low class bum
in the eyes
of the "official" world.
And just another
misunderstood genius
in my personal fantasy world.
A legend in my own mind.
I'm alright.

Face it,
we are all in this
alone.
Our knowledge
of others
s only an extension
of our own vanity.

Trying to find
what there is
to respect
in others,
even though,
one cannot possibly know others
is why
it feels good
to try
to practice
that respect.

It is,
after all,
just a matter of vanity,
ego,
and self indulgence.
We all star
in a play
which we make up
as we go along,
assigning others
roles
as suits our
own imagining.

Doug Palmer