[your name here]

When have you yet lived up to your name?
you prodigy, you idol
whose household fame
whispers and worships your lifelong
claim--
You will deliver if they will receive
your love and soul, your heart in a pewter
locket
if they can consider, if they can believe
it wasn’t bought with a tarnished quarter.
If your name was shorter they’d remember,
but you insist size matters
as you eat a bowl of bullshit straight
and drink personality from a glass bottle
like the sincere pretender you are,
because playing guitar isn’t fun
without an audience,
and you don’t believe in an audience of one.
If your name was quieter they’d listen
but they can’t hear for all the shouting.
If you said it clearer eventually they’d come,
but you insist it should be harder and faster,
and you write songs like painted plaster among porcelain.
They claim vows of love and soul.
So blame your guitar
and shameless glass bottle
you’ve carried around for so long,
because the audience
heard. Even you
forgot the words,
when all you’ve
been singing
is your name

all along.