The rock star for all time
stepped onto her stage 
just as it broke and disappeared
from underfoot. Falling
toward death she began
composing a final song
to tell at last her full tale
of how having talent and will
and luck got her here —  
it opened with grand chords,
shifted into slim-fingered picking
in the bridge, had of course
a singalong chorus, a fist in the air, 
cadence building to catharsis —
it had everything
and she wrote it in her head
in the two seconds before she died,
probably for the best as it sounded
like all her others — all that drama
and urgency as she fell translated
into her being there anyway,
sprawled in the ultimate cliche,
her last song utterly ordinary
and thankfully unheard — making it
a song just like the one
we all sing upon telling ourselves
for the last time:
this time, finally, I’ll get it right.