The Last Novel

Struggling, he poured layer after layer of words

Across the pages of the last novel.

He fought the modern urge for brevity

Acknowledging what was so obvious-

That his consciousness had already been

Sliced and diced in so many different ways

Just like everyone else in this fast age.

So what should he bring his talents to write?

Apocalyptic? It was not his stand.

Humorous? Much ado about nothing.

So it became a tragic tale of love

With apocalypse laughing all around.

“Why do you keep on writing,” his friends asked,

“No one reads novels anymore.”

He would smile sweetly and knowingly-

His father still consumed book after book

Burying his grief for his dead wife

Beneath the fiction of another’s life.

His girl from a short and torrid romance

Left him saying, “You are so an hour ago.”

She spoke as if each word burst with meaning.

The door slammed irrevocably behind her.

He continued to write through blinding loss

Even when Dad, his only reader, passed;

Even when the most recent sweat stained pages

Seemed both doomed and literally lifeless;

Until he finished with 30 chapters

Of no more than two pages each,

To him a Tolstoy-like accomplishment;

To the literary time he lived in-

Simply the last long, boring useless book

Not worthy of the popular Twit Notes,

The newest condensation of modern life-

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