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“The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice – Part 4 – Take the Fork in The Road & You can’t not be a Soldier”:

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

….Back to the analogy of the Apprentice-to-Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful mountaintops: Remember you’ve now come a long way, relaxed to much & have seemingly tumbled back to your starting point.

It was a dramatic event. Before you knew what was really happening you have stopped falling & are no longer tumbling downhill. Now you are still at the bottom – where you began the journey long ago. You notice it ‘looks and feels like’ the psychological state many have called ‘rock bottom’. It feels that way.

But now you have dusted yourself off, checked you’re bruises and broken bones over you can now see you seem to indeed be back to the ‘randomized cultural abyss’ where you started your journey between ten and twenty five years ago. You at this stage of your development (Not yet a Master) trust your immediate surroundings far to much – or should I say the ‘meaning imbued’ into your surroundings.

This natural for most for remember – you are not a Master (of Life) yet, you are an probably an experienced Apprentice – perhaps you are even a mature Journeyman. A Journeyman to a Master is of course a seen as a more primitive state than the Apprentice who can become a Master (of Life).

For the Journeyman lacks the constitution (tools) to ever become a Master (But of course we need them still & a Master knows this intuitively. But let’s say for simplicity you are not so ‘bad lucked’ to be a forever Journeyman – let’s say you can become a Master (of Life).

Again let’s go back to where you found yourself at rest after falling back from your journey to the fabled path where you spotted the peaceful, Masterful mountaintops in the reachable distance. The truth is when you woke up from the tumbling down, you were now no longer the exact same Apprentice you were immediately before the fall. Your history precludes that possibility. It must do as the inputs are much different, so must the output. You are not the same person, you are not the same Apprentice. The Master looking from the future knows this. But a forever Apprentice or a forever Journeyman will not know this at all – for his mind is not at t ha level of being able to see through surface appearances.

But this situation is where Life throws up a ‘fork in the road moment’. It is by nature a psychological fork as much as a physical one. It’s of belief. It is akin to the ‘what you Think becomes you’re Actions and what becomes your Actions becomes your Reality thesis (that saying is True – but of course Life Coaches/Internet guru’s have twisted/murdered all these good old type fables). The (psychological) fork in the road goes like this: From that point after the fall, you can either ‘roll over & die’ (do nothing at all) or ‘load yourself back into the stock barrel to be fired back into battles-scape (of Life)’ and possibly towards being a future Master (of Life).

If again later in the journey you chose the wrong path in the road (i.e. you agree to stay an Apprentice or at best a Journeyman) you also choose a path of not being to ever become the Master. If you choose the ‘path of the Master’ you are on the ‘right fork of the road’, I.e. the path to possibly become a Master (of Life).

Of course it’s worth mentioning that Yogi Berra (the famed American baseball coach) also said wisely “if you see a fork in the road ahead – take it”. So in truth you can take the right fork (towards being a Master) the left fork (An Apprentice or Journeyman) or (as Yogi Berra warned of, & p.s. to the non-American’s – Yogi Berra is his real name & he is not the ‘Jellystone Park’ Cartoon Bear that steals pic-a-nic baskets) you can sit the grass next to the fork in the road or back at where you fell back too (falsely) avoiding the stress of making a decision.

But let’s assume your smart enough to “take the fork in the road” as Berra said. What is the difference between the two situations he talks of – ‘the barreling towards the forks in the road of life or the ‘roll over & die’ situation where you avoid life entirely?

The one that ‘loads themselves into a the barrel again’ and then also chooses the Masters path at the key ‘fork in the road’ has proven they are future Master material’ – for they intuitively know not to trust their kneejerk feelings after waking up from the fall backwards to what looks very much like that old randomized abyss of the beginning of life’s adult journey (perhaps) ten to twenty five years ago.

The future Master chooses not to take the ‘beaten down, in-the-moment, go-to advice’ – that is of choosing the options that stop

You from becoming a ‘Master’. The future Master has (psychologically) a healthy ‘dissociation’ between themselves and their minds ‘chatter’ (bad superficial advice).

I hate to admit it, but life seems to be indeed akin to a War (and I would contend is at least as much ‘attritional’ as vs a series of ‘shock & awe’ battles). Sun Tzu (The Art of War) had many fine points on the matter in fact. In wandering the wrong forked path after a blow to the mind and spirits, anyone can easily forget life’s ‘War-like-ness’ – & I think even a future Master (of Life) can even still fall prey to ‘aimless wandering’ – but perhaps I am being to optimistic, but that’s also not a bad strategy in itself, so long as it’s based on (Enlightenment like) philosophical reasoning vs blind reasoning. I’d like to think that twenty years in a psychological rest area is not also a metaphorical black hole of mediocrity (as eighty years as an Apprentice would certainly be).

The War of life is about embracing the rough & tumble, showing your battle-scars with pride. Then you are reminding yourself that you are at (some various kind of) War – with at least large attritional aspects. While a soldier in the ‘War of Life’ (hopefully to be a Master) you then must agree (as a soldier does by definition) to ward off the often ‘beaten down part of your mind. After all – a soldier worth their salt doesn’t like a ‘chatterer in the ranks’, especially while under enemy fire (to act like this would be seen as Treasonous or at least Court-Martial-able).

Isn’t it sad we don’t always hear of ‘Life’s battle cries’ hidden amongst the rest areas of the mountain’s foothills, and in the ‘randomized abysses’ we all came from, and in particular after a ‘heavy fall’. But then again if everyone was a ‘Master’, then it would also be true that no one would be – for ‘without shade their is no light’. Whatever the Truth is, Shakespeare was onto something, for life as it is and has been lived here prima facie on Earth, is surely some kind of weird alchemy of both tragedy, comedy and history – and we all need to create genuine meaning out of it all, much to the chagrin of the future-present-past slings & arrows that abound.

THE END

This writing is owned by Martin Smith Creations Ltd (NZ). For Commercial use contact Martin A.Smith at martinantonsmith@gmail.com. For non-profit Educational use, please share freely.

“Heartbreak I Miss You” (A Prose Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

I have never wrote of heartbreak in any of my poems.

There will be a day when that comes – in fact now is as good as any.

I am probably a coward for not doing so earlier.

Their are many heartbreaks in life – but these are the three big ones:

Heartbreak of the Romantic kind – for the one you were ‘supposed to be with’ but it ‘seemingly cannot ever be’.

This type will not fade as the years and decades pass.

Next is Heartbreak of the Non-Romantic kind – perhaps the most common is the ‘disappearing/invisible parent’ of the seven to seventeen-year-old.

It might be a divorce thing, or they may be there but not present, or deeply betrayed the child.

This kind of Heartbreak I also believe does not really fade.

Next – the third type, another Non-Romantic Heartbreak is (as Jung famously mentioned) is that of the ‘unlived life’

Or more specifically it is:

‘The dispair of the Adult who realizes that their life is now proven (without a doubt via the ‘condemnation of the years’ effect) to be an an unlived, unfulfilled, un-potentiated one.

Jung mentioned that when a parent suffers from this, they take it out on the child –

‘It is the child that suffers most for the unlived life of the parent’.

But of course, this adult sufferer will also take it out on themselves in their inner minds – a personalized hellish torment.

The interesting thing is someone can suffer for not just three of these Prime Heartbreaks – but four if they had the additional wrath of an ‘unlived parent’ experience as a child.

And now I wonder if that ‘sufferer of four concurrent Prime heartbreaks’ is me.

And I wonder if that is also true for the other side of the Romantic Heartbreak – her.

Perhaps we had six Prime Heartbreaks between us both, and when we split together we created seventh & eighth.

And I wonder if that is why we resonated in a cosmic energetic unity for that short ‘lit-fuse year’ we were together.

All Theory aside, how does one keep ones aging chin up under these circumstances?

And of course I know their is no answer to this question –

There is only a half-answer:

Only the traditional only-half-working-one,

To remain stoic in the face of you forever falling down the ‘black chasm abyss’ for eternity.

i.e. The same one they used in WW1 – when you saw your best hometown mates head blown off by howitzer fire from one foot away.

And I think if one were to suffer all four Prime Heartbreaks, that would certainly qualify you for the analogy.

Yes Stoicism can’t actually truly save you if you suffer from three or four Prime ‘life-concurrent’ Heartbreaks.

Unfortunately – as the saying goes – ‘you’re on your own’.

And in closing I will separate out just one of my Prime Heartbreak’s,

The one who signifies seemingly forever romantic lost love.

She is surely the most important one of the different types – it feels that way.

She is after all why I wrote this poem right now, after so many years in mourning.

This is the one where my brain settles on only three bare words:

I. Miss. Her.

Or another song title way to put it would be:

“Heartbreak I Miss You”

‘The Brain’ must know that that’s all that really matters.

The-Professor-in-my-minds-eye says:

‘Heartbreak 101: Torment can make for good art and writing’ – by the way this is a compulsory paper’

“A Catch Up with Pete The Wanderer” (A Poem/Prose)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

And so I walk down the town.

It is Friday @ I’ve taking half the day off.

I have allowed it, as I have finished a block of work on the studio ‘reno’.

As I walk past the cafe – who do I see?

It’s Pete the 50 plus dreadlocked wanderer/rough sleeper who hides it quite well.

Pete has nice hardy shoes & outdoorsy clothes that almost gives a middle class trampers appearance.

That’s no accident – Pete ain’t stupid – I can attest.

We have met a few times before by the ‘bridge rest area’, where he stops over a lot.

He stays for one night – as else the ‘freedom police’ stormtroopers mobilize.

In the past I’ve shared a few beers with him, & talked of the rigged world the satanic shadow elite have created,

And how the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ was coined to malign the pesky people who dare hold democracy to account.

And we talk of how NZ has ‘completely lost its way’.

I sit & have a coffee with him – it’s great to see him – for he is confirmed as being alive.

He’s embattled, downtrodden but the glimmer of hope and knowledge still resides in his eyes.

I haven’t seen him in perhaps six months.

He tells me he’s been walking the Te-Araroa trail, & he recently went to his rich mothers 80th in Queenstown.

Having a haircut to get to I have to cut the catch up short.

Haircut done I’m walking the streets again – I then see Pete walking with a six pack he has acquired.

I agree to quit the day for work at 2pm, buy a six pack for myself & we toddle down to the bridge rest area.

We again talk of the of the rigged world the cabal shadow elite have created,

And how NZ has completely lost its way.

The convo is peppered with latest news items confirmations of this – The Epstein files, Mass emigration to Australia etc.

Pete is a good conversationalist, but mostly broadcasts – you can’t tell him much on something you don’t already 100% agree on.

The time flies & I finish 3 of my six cans to his 6 plus two ‘big bots’ of Aussie made Coopers Red.

I’ve already given him one of mine an hour ago, on saying goodbye I give him another one, which leaves one for my pocket.

I walk back home via the main street of the town way having some Chinese food before home.

I tell my Chinese friend who is a server there what I’ve been up to with Pete – she warns me about doing that kind of thing –

That is – ‘hangin’ with vagrants’

I tell her that if no one is friendly to the most downtrodden, at least once in a while – we’re sowing more seeds of destruction.

I think she half-understood.

I am glad he’s still alive & kicking.

After he wakes from his “illegal” night by the bridge in his tent, he’s hitching to Dunedin then Marlborough.

I guess I’ll see him again soon & good luck to him in the interim.

There are more & more Pete’s in NZ these days which is sad on one level (rough sleeping) and good on another –

‘How Pete gets treat’, tells us where we are at, & what we have become as a nation.

The week before the news said they’ve given more powers to police to move rough sleepers on.

As usual they didn’t mention where they would move them on to – because clearly they don’t give a shit.

For we are ruled by vapid new money ghouls: If they person isn’t their snobby dinner parties they can die.

I guess this is why we celebrate ‘Guy Fawkes’ – for with coldness like this coming from the top ranks –

Who wouldn’t want to ‘blow up Parliament’?

See ya next time Pete.

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice : Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey – Part 3 The Pain of Resting Too Long” (A Serialized Essay)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice : Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey – Part 3 The Pain of Resting Too Long” (A Serialized Essay)

……continued from https://antonmartinsmith.com/2026/02/26/the-journey-of-the-masters-apprentice-part-2-personalized-abysses-the-start-of-the-journey/

A ‘eventually Bad’ thing can take the same look. When ‘beating your own path’ to find meaning – It’s annoying that it is not always obvious that your doing either the right or wrong thing. I was listening a a 50 year old writer who wrote for 29 years with no success, & then finally at age 50 it ‘suddenly all fell together’. He said that during that 29 years every ‘normal person’ thought he was an idiot for wasting his time. He won because he knew he was good & had a thing called ‘faith’. I think the Apprentice – to Master process is like this. A budding ‘Master’ of (something original) will probably usually be known as a failure to most around them.

For people on this journey (hopefully if of meaning, originality, Mastership) – perhaps after a decade or two of adulthood (if you are lucky or not forever willfully blind) you see that the trail has changed & looks less ‘abyss-ie’.

A quick surveillance as you look around shows that you have now arrived at a new location – the foothills of a hazed but surely very real, and at the least ‘partly beautiful’ towering distant mountain peak.

As you realized the improved conditions, you recognize you have ‘come a long way now’. But then you being an Apprentice (of Life) instead of a Master, you chose to celebrate and you tell yourself to take rest.

That’s what feels right. But there were risks in that decision. On this ‘celebrated rest’ you relaxed too much thinking you were enjoying yourself – that which is happening is of course the ‘Masters test’. For you don’t know it, but you’ve done something wrong by resting (too long) & psychologically celebrating too much.

The future Master-self (if you become one) who is looking on from the future, knows this is where you let your guard down (against Life’s tripwires).

The (future self) Master is watching you (as him/herself in the past) as a greenhorn Apprentice (of Life) making schoolboy/schoolgirl errors.

The future-self-Master see what the present ‘more foolish you’ has done – in choosing to ‘rest too long’ Apprentice-you has allowed a random unvetted element to sit beside you while you were resting.

While you patted yourself on the back about ‘how Far you’ve come’, some strange force came to distract you, perhaps it was a person pf a ‘collective of people’ that appeared in human form (common), but perhaps not (perhaps the destructive force was simply an obsession with electric guitars or a psychological addiction to cynicism etc.).

Because you as the Apprentice (of Life) only within the ‘adult game’ for perhaps ten to twenty five years, you have so much to learn yet to become literally ‘Masterful’.

In taking to rest & the distraction that was ‘served up’ while you were relaxing in the ‘rest area’, you lost sight of the main goal. You lost sight of the hazed covered mountaintops & the less beaten path that leads towards its peak.

So, of course in these conditions you are as the famed Roman border-guard-soldier who has over successive generations became en weakened to be casual about taking off his uncomfortable helmet while on guard/lookout duty. He is like most the other Roman guards of The Decline – he thinks to himself ‘it’s been quiet on the ‘hun invasion front’ I can relax a little”. He trusts the bad chatter in his mind, instead of being like Marcus Aurelius the stoic Roman Emperor who would dismiss the minds weak defeatist chatter with ease. That kind of creeping malaise they say is what really made the Roman Empire fall.

Thinking like that can make disaster easily strike just like an asp might strike someone ambling dreamily through the long grass on the savannah. The disaster bites, you are snapped out of you’re seemingly-always-getting-a-little-better-journey. Suddenly you’re rolling back downhill fast, tumbling, sweating, having no rest, losing parts of yourself piece by piece. That’s what they call in the vernacular a ‘rude awakening’.

Back to the Apprentice to Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful……

“A Short Poem About NZ” (A Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

New Zealand:

Both A ‘Beautiful Place’,

And a ‘Failed State’.

I would find that all very amusing,

If only I didn’t live here.

Oh well – I guess I shouldn’t complain.

I mean it is largely a ‘Gentile Form Of Poverty’.

As we all wake all up each morning from underneath our various bridges, gutters & alleyways –

Cold, wet and saddled with delirium as is characteristic of the early stages of pneumonia –

We all take a deep breath & then shout out loud:

“Oooh the crisp clean Mountainous air! ain’t I lucky to be alive in New Zealand!”

“The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice Part 2: Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey” (A Serialized Essay)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice Part 2: Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey

This is a continuation of the prior link https://antonmartinsmith.com/2026/02/21/the-journey-of-the-masters-apprentice-an-essay/

…..On that, if I was to speak as a English person from the 20th century I might say that “just because the ‘working classes’ & the ‘middle classes’ hate each other, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just on different sides of the same coin”. I once said to a long term childhood friend of mine, who I talk of sociological matters to, “the working classes take their profits in sex, & the wealthy forgo sex to get the cash”. A little crude but it was a good analogy. We like to think talking of upper & lower classes as a old fashioned – but I ask if you – is the world we see really more egalitarian? Or is that just a polite and weathered façade?

But back to the story of ‘climbing out of the abyss’ – which from the last paragraph’s explanation – really is a task for everyone (Yes – even though the ‘trust fund baby’s life’ seems a total lark). It is a task for the child of the ‘crack addict parents’ and the child of the ‘CEO dad & Lawyer mother’, and all the children (who then of course grew into adults) in between. If you are born of a human being, you will have to face a personalized ‘abyss’ at some point and quantum science also implies it will also look back at you.

In short we are all tasked with crawling out of our own ‘personalized abyss’ (for the ‘modern organized world’ designs so many traps casually) the child given everything by wealthy highly networked but emotionally distant parents has to crawl out of their own ‘personalized abyss’ too. This experience of life’s casual pathology is something that the ‘boarding school syndrome’ sufferer is acutely aware of. We all need to create our own healthy and true ‘meaning’ in our lives – a cliché but a true cliché.

So as you as an adult (emerging from the standard & various childhood traumas already mentioned) start to ‘crawl out of the abyss’, you see the light is getting stronger. You continue walking towards the light. It is like a ‘near death experience’ if things are good the light should increase – if things are bad the light will diminish. But real life is complex in that something ‘eventually Good’ can have this iterative journey:

Bad, bad, bad, no so bad bad better, bad, better, not so bad, better, good, bad, GOOD.

“Poorly Written Personified Latin, Only Partially Saved” (A Poem)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

My name is “Et Cetera” I things like all things in the same vein or theme. 

My arch enemy is the evil “Inter Alia”, who likes to live amoungst other things that need not be mentioned. 

My neighbor “Ipso Facto” is a bore, obsessed with only dry facts leading to unarguable conclusions. 

However my delightful alter ego ‘Cognito Ergo Sum”, I cannot think better of! – a better man surely does not exist! 

The less said about “E Pluribus Unum” the better – that old flame is too obsessed with simplicity, always boiling things down. 

And finally a mixture of both good manners & schoolboy humor stops me from about “Annus Horriblis” at all.

This “stock” or “filler” Poem is worth a written apology it itself,

Which cynically can then be cut up & disseminated as seven individual “stock” “filler” poems,

I’m sorry dear reader but this is what you must put up with for the good,

For to get to the payable gold you have to shift at least a tonne of dirt.

Alas there will be no refunds at you local poetry dealer store –

The one that opens at 1pm and shuts at 3am – (standard liberal arts hours).

“A poetry store at the end of every street?

Surely this is just a ‘pipe dream’.

Sad the man who was ironically also smoking a pipe & unwittingly in the middle of a lucid dream.

I said “you are probably right, a poetry store on every corner is a pipe dream sir – I’d have to sell sewerage pipes for that”

To which the smoking lucid dreamer woke for his lucid dream & fittingly said

“Shit – where am I”

I said “you’re up caught in the middle of a shite poem that you can’t get out of”

To which the pipe smoking man looked up & said – “I agree that Latin shit up there that you wrote is totally stock, filler if you will”.

To which I replied “Don’t worry Sir, I’m belatedly putting this shite poem out of it’s misery”

To which he queried “Does this also mean I die?”

To which I replied in the affirmative.

He then said “Oh well, I had a good run”.

I promised him before brought the hammer down, that I might revive him in a future poem.

He said “ok, but next time can you write in a ‘hot mrs’ half my age?”

I said, hey hey sonny, I’m the hero of my own poetry ok – if anyone’s gettin’ that it’s me!”

Just as I hit save on the computer screen he managed to squeak out a nominal; “F you”.

I love it when characters come to life, saving a very bad poem from abject artistic obscurity.

I only hope some future critic will review it as

Poorly Written Personified Latin, Only Partially Saved

“The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice Part 1 : Crack addicts & trust fund babies have more in common than you think (bad parents)” (A Serialized Essay)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice Part 1 : Crack addicts & trust fund babies have more in common than you think (bad parents)” (A Serialized Essay)

You can shore yourself up slowly & surely for a decade or longer. You can definitely do that. Upon doing so you begin to climb out of that whatever that form of randomized cultural abyss you’ve been programmed by as a child and a teenager. Most of us came from various shades of cultural abysses.

This is especially those of us who have lived ‘Downunder’ in NZ or Australia – both countries still suffer from our difficult pioneer/penal colony beginnings. The ongoing generalized culture is the amorphous blob that bears the scars of these difficult beginnings and also transmits them into the future. This is why it is so hard for a society (or an economy) to ‘re-invent itself’. The amorphous cultural blob has it’s own interests. You

The child of the crack addicts & the child of wealthy on the hill are different, but I contend it is still a matter of degree, rather than form. The child’s crack addict parents were addicted to temporary chemical highs while the child of the rich-on-the-hill parent is addicted to the imperfect feeling – also a ‘chemical high’ – the random ‘neurotransmitter hit’ that money, & it’s close cousins called status & security can give.

The crack addict vs the money & status addict adult share biologically all the same ‘brain machine’ of the same species – Homo Sapiens. The difference, as I was saying is one of degree in terms of programming – morays – culture, which has rules for which ‘objects’ of the world (tangible & intangible) get focused on.

The child of the ‘crack addict family’ at root is neglected in a similar way to the child of the “CEO dad & the Lawyer mother who sent their kid to boarding school” – In both families they minimized the true social needs of the child. If those children met at a bar & talked of childhood neglect, they’d most likely see eye to eye. There are many false divisions in this world’s journey.

(Part two to follow soon)

Copyright Martin Smith Creations Ltd NZ

“The Unrecognised Jungian Shadow Of Being Too Depressingly Positive”

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

Yes being a depressed person is not good.

But so is being ‘always positive’.

Neither cases are good.

The overly positive types are likely to seed chaos with a smile,

& not even know that they are doing so.

They’ve juiced their brains to say “everything’s great”.

They are embodied in the real-estate-agent-attracting-fake-uneducated-life-coach-guru.

These types are indeed WMD’s in their own right.

They’ll keep whooping & hollering together in a big room,

While they raise the rents on the supermarket worker, the nurse, the, mechanic –

The ones that lubricate a functioning society.

I’m no Marxist – I love entrepreneurship the kind that shows human human birdsong,

But the smoke & mirror economy is all because of imbalanced boom in untrammeled sh*t talkers.

We need positivity mixed with respect for knowledge and systemic harmony,

We need positivity that ‘lifts all boats’.

At least the depressives are too lacking in energy to destroy the world quickly,

For you have to be an go getter & an early riser to create a Great Depression.

Let us be a people with both our heads in the clouds and our feet on the ground,

Who are also not afraid of their own long trailing Jungian shadow.

For there’s nothing worse that to be enveloped in & saddled by,

The Unrecognised Jungian Shadow Of Being Too Depressingly Positive”

“Disneyfication” (A Poem)

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by Anton martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

And to the lights-on-but-no-one’s-home-folk that recoil in horror about a poem about BO?

Or a poem about the life being drained away from the eyes of the the human cubicle dweller?

Can’t you see that you rose-tinted-glasses view of the world isn’t helping anyone, let alone yourself?

The San Padro Poet was right when he talked about the ills of ‘Disneyfication’

There’s dirt, grunge, & bad smells & much worse in this world,

So let it be described in all it’s uncomfortable rancid true colors.

Though let’s be frank – the leafy greens types in aisle 7 will never catch on.

But perhaps a few will walk by the ‘gutter poetry aisle’ one day,

And look squarely at one of our poems,

Lift up their rose tinted glasses and read the first line or two,

And after the third line upon raising a single eyebrow up high,

Instead of the their usual loudly dismissive herumpf followed by clomping getaway feet –

There is just a barely audible ‘pfft’ followed by gentle mouse steps to the vacuum-packed salmon section.

Mickey Mouse will slowly start erasing himself from his big stupid ears to his oversize shoes,

Leaving only a dancing hand in a white glove & a pencil behind (in true cartoon style).