I Am a Modern Day Poe.

I am becoming a modern day

Edgar Allen Poe

a man of woe

I press my tales of

sorrow and unquenchable love

with twisting, gnarled hands

that wield 26 keys that open my mind.

A wordsmith hammering out thoughts

that set my soul to quivering

with anticipation

much like Poe's quill quivered

in the sling of his hand

as he embraced what was

unthinkable then in his mind.

Likewise I must embrace

what is surely unthinkable

in the minds of my readers.

Not here at the hub I have had

sweet fellowship with learn-ed minds.

But the hub is a closed avenue

one cannot repost what

strikes them as brilliant

down the thousands of other avenues

where readers could peruse

the neon flashes of one's mind.

That opportunity brings on censorship

and good work being

unpublished here as well.

My work is read by the masses

but alas I remain un-renowned

in this age of 10 million poets

all bleeding ink

Jetting from the arteries

of their brains acoss the web

that stretches the girth of the world.

My tiny percentage of contributions

are lost in the shuffle.

The web is a massive machine

scrolling on daily

there is no table of my contents

to feast on daily

therefore I am anything but content.

Poe was a poor Poet

given to drink

after sucking on the bitters

of his minor success

during his short life.

He was a wit and

I am reduced to a twit

Just a handful of words

to entice the reader

to click with me.

I make impressions that seem

shallower than the footprints

of a passing vagrant

across the beach at high tide.

Washed away far too quickly

by what comes by next.

Over 50,000 impressions

in the last 28 days

but few links to my readers

and even fewer comments.

Over 2 million hits on one site alone!

The Poe in me wails for higher recognition

But the world at large is deafened by

a 20 second or so attention span.

text is no longer digestable

unless it is abbreviated

into a sentence or two

by the youth of today.....

tommorrows readers

of paragraphs reduced to epitaphs

This then is my pre-obitch-uary

for that hopefully distant

point in time

when I finally accept the fact

that my work will be part of an

archive of unread poetic works

among billions of like words

or of lesser works mouldering

in a website file

of deceased writers

somewhere East of any despair.

I suppose I should construct

a large time capsule

of heavy duty aluminum

and bury all of my writings and songs

in my backyard

for posterity with a marble stone

that reads:

For curious minds only.

Then perhaps some

Hungry literary

hearti-ologist will

excavate my cherished thoughts

several hundred years from today

and publish at long last

the rantings and the outpourings

of a long lost species

Honoring decades from now

the humble outpourings of my soul.

I have become

a modern day Poe

a man of great woe.

Born too long after my time

and gone too soon to be remembered.