Horror Story #71,603 Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

Woke up this morning
realized
I was almost 55.
When Shakespeare was this old he was dead
quite dead.
and had already willed to his wife
his secondbest bed.

I'm almost 55
and have not written
Hamlet, MacBeth,
As You Like It, A Comedy of Errors,
Or Much Ado About Nothing.

By the time George Gershwin
turned 55
he had been dead 18 years
and had already written
Porgy & Bess,Rhapsody in Blue,
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,
and,
oh
a whole SLEW
of tunes.

By the time Alexander the Great
turned 55
he had long before run out of
worlds to conquer,
had wept,
and was,
yes,
Long Since Dead.

I,
on the other hand
am still alive.
which is the one thing
I've got
on those other
guys.

I'd settle for one Hamlet.
one Rhapsody in Blue.
one conquered world
one measly conquered world
before
joining
the Long Since Dead.

I'd settle for one Moby Dick,
one Long Day's Journey Into Night,
one Huck Finn,
or Guernica,
one Oslo Peace Accord,
one Nobel Prize
In ANY categorica
-even economica.

Failing that
I'd settle for a Pulitzer
a Tony,
a Grammy,
maybe even an Obie.
No.
You can HAVE
my Obie.

I'd settle
instead
for one son,
one daughter,
one career,
one wife,
one life.
One measly life.
Before joining
the Long Since Dead.