The Ballad of The Writers Three

A poet swore to unmask the world
And a pitiful man was he.
But in his youth, this man of truth
Was one of writers three.

A novelist was one of them,
An earthy-moraled guy.
One found esteem in academe.
The poet, he is I.

Our stories draw a tale of paths
Spread wide about the earth.
Now look upon the space between
And see what you can learn.

That first friend chose to print on pulp,
A pragmatist was he.
He wrote of violence, sex and mirth,
That holy trinity!

The word is work he would not shirk
As long as it would pay.
And at his keys he'd sit and type
All through the live-long day.

So many series he did write,
Of sexy youths and dames.
The stories were old, those tales he told.
He only changed the names.

The names were those of soldiers, cops
And pirates, pilots, ghosts.
In romance, danger,war or crime
All parties might get lost.

His pen he wielded swift and true.
The market was his lord.
His novels sold 'til he grew old:
The value of his words.

That dough he made, it could not pay
A loyal, loving wife.
He went through four and a string of whores
In his long, prolific life.

But wealth and fame and honored name
Have been enough for him.
The doctors' drugs will ease the pain
For one whose time is slim.

The second writer stayed in school
And dammit, he worked hard.
He studied novels, films and plays,
The poets and the Bard.

His studies drove his writing on,
To subtlety complex.
There is no abstract knot of meaning
A suffix can't correct.

And thus he wrote his thesis,
Unblemished and unflawed.
He plead his book, his written case,
Before the ivory god.

To class at University
He took his expertise.
The books of Homer, Shakespeare, Frost
It was his joy to preach.

This doctor was kept writing
So tenure he would gain.
In class or journal articles
Gilt texts he would make plain.

His pay's a modest sum at best
For house and kids and wife,
But somehow on those green-lined streets
He made himself a life.

He's with his family now, you see,
As he looks to the sky.
And in their warm embrace he'll be
As peacefully he dies.

The poet chose his honest art
Of no apparent use,
After a moment of raw experience
And years of drug abuse.

He cast his pure ambitions wide,
Like some poetic net,
Searching for some greater truth,
Or the closest he could get.

He wrote of friends and wild woods
And matters of the heart.
His ego and his motives pure
Were with him from the start.

He always kept his mind alert,
His notebook, just the same.
He felt that if he wrote enough
He could those wilds tame.

His writing, great in quantity,
Was read by very few.
Not many hear have heard of him.
I haven't.  Now, have you?

He should have seen that coming,
But was surprised instead.
His writing grew by length and breadth
As rarely it was read.

Into the metered rhymes he wrote
He poured his heart, his brain.
Until he felt his essence melt.
Onto his page he drained.

Now all that's left of our poet pure
Are notebooks on a shelf.
In pulling the mask off the mortal world,
It seems he removed himself.