Old Artists

Old and in a way
supermen, in a way
lint, the artists
who came before
are never comfortable
among their younger
comrades. Something
revolutionary stuck to them
like a tobacco stain,
a badge that pins them to their time
and it’s not now,
more’s the pity.  They’re
all romancing their own youth
and it’s not coming around
anymore, so they grouch
and slouch and grumble
because no one talks to them
when they’re like that, and they’re
always like that.  So
they go home alone and say
I could do better, and sometimes
they do but it’s lint like them,
picked off because it makes
the new kids’ wardrobe look pilled
and shabby, or they get pointed at
like supermen up in the sky far above
when all they want
is grounding and for some of these punks
to say come on, let’s have a beer
and talk, I like what you’re doing now
and I don’t want to dwell where you do
now, but they aren’t ready
for that.  Instead they claim
superiority
and say
damn these kids these days,
we aren’t lint or heroes, just wanna be
honored for journeyman work
right now, fuck the damn pedestals
and the dismissals alike, we’re still
just another sack of artists
doing what artists do, failing as often
as we succeed but not caring as long
as we can work human.