Ode: On The Intimations Of Literary Immortality Or Seeing Your Book Being Removed From The Shelves At Barnes & Noble Poem by James P. Roberts

They do it all so dispassionately! Copy after copy
of your book - the holy of holies - all your condensed thoughts
and dreams, the tangible evidence of your blood, sweat, and, yes,
even tears, mostly shed during the sleepless midnight
when the words would not come!

Now you see strange hands collecting your beloved book
(how many copies did your friends buy?) and thrust them
away, like battlefield medics doing assembly-line surgery,
moving on now to the next patient, the next hemi-demi-semi
best seller. A 'bargain' book!

They stack your book - a dozen copies - onto a v-shaped
metal dolly with squeaking wheels, careless of fingerprints,
talking and chewing gum, making dates and joking - ha! ha!
There! It's done! Wheel them away to the back room
(Ignore that poet standing at the microphone.)

where the bar codes are stripped (shall we mention the covers?)
rendering your lifeblood's dream into a grave marked 'Returns'.
Where is my coffee? I need solace.
I need to begin the next masterpiece so I can fill up
that empty shelf, that hole in my heart.