The Great Writer's Fate Poem by David Welch

My name is Bedford Schiller-Smith,
and you've probably seen it before
on the book racks in airport shops,
usually just inside the doors.

I've made a career of writing,
tech and spy thrillers are my bag,
but if you don't' recognize me,
you've certainly heard of my dad.

Robert Earnest Schiller-Smith,
yes, the great one that millions have read,
who was so driven by his art
that folks hung on every word he said.

The critics claim he ‘changed the game, '
he even won the Nobel Prize
for his most acclaimed novel,
The Angels with The Lying Eyes.

Ten other books, also big,
got critical, popular acclaim,
they study him on campuses,
since him writing's ‘not been the same.'

He has so many imitators
his name has become adjective,
some claim he was the greatest writer
that ever drew breath and lived.

Maybe that's why they're hard on me,
always give me middling reviews,
can't help but compare me to him,
they're expectations are skewed

They saw I'm nothing but a hack,
that I ‘only write to entertain, '
talent skips a generation,
I'm ‘work-a-day, stilted, and lame.'

They can't understand why I will not
strive for the masterly and sublime,
but if they could see my memories…
If them could peer inside my mind…

They'd see my father, drunk and rambling
about the ‘inner reaches of man, '
secluding himself for whole weeks,
executing literary plans.

They'd see him swinging to extreme,
one day jovial, the next enraged,
see him chain-smoking cigarettes
while staring blankly at a page.

Forgetting his children's' school and sports
because he was ‘defining the world.'
couldn't be bother to tuck us it
whenever his ‘vision unfurled.'

Always mumbling about ‘his muse, '
how he followed where it dare take him,
usually to a woman's bed…
again and again and again.

Cheating so much, my mother left,
sued the ‘great man' for a divorce,
on which he based a best-seller,
A Love-song Written In Court.

They don't see the missed Christmases,
the parade of new step-mothers,
or the fact that I do not know
half of my sisters or brothers.

And they don't know the madness
that was lurking just behind his eyes,
it was a ‘tragic artist's death'
when my father chose suicide…

They still praise him as some hero,
but I sadly know whole truth...
I myself felt I should create,
I've known this ever since youth.

But from what I've seen most ‘great writers, '
all the others besides dear old dad,
seem to fall prey to the same vices,
half of them were just as bad.

Is impressing some professor,
or some critic with pretentious airs,
worth telling my own children that
their father will never be there?

Is acting like a profound wit
that can 'peel back deep mysteries'
worth not seeing my daughter laugh
on her birthday? She's turning three.

And for all my father's insight
has mankind changed in the slightest?
He always claimed he'd ‘inspire them, '
but still all of our flaws persist.

Maybe he will be remembered,
but to me that seems a small gain
for living a life in madness,
and causing your own family pain.

No one will read my pot-boilers
and proclaim me as some great sage,
but if it means I keep my wife
I'll pot-boil into old age.

And if I never have ‘a muse, '
I'll not cheat and take a lover,
never will I say to my kids
come on out and meet your half-brother.

Though critics may look down at me,
it is I who think they're insane;
you give people needed release
from real life when you entertain.

If they declare that is a bad thing,
it is they who've got it all wrong,
Shakespeare gave the masses drama,
and he's reigned supreme for so long…

They'd have me give up life for art,
that's what they think makes a man rate,
but I like life too much to leave,
I will not share the great writer's fate.