NOTE: Two long exhausting workdays meant poems were written on Tues & Wed just not posted. Aiming to catch up now.

Inspired by reading about one of the greatest failures in human history … 

*****

failure 

i.
useless bachelors degree.
unemployed, unemployable.
career going nowhere,
sabotaged by professors
who dislike the class-cutting
cocksure student.
deeply depressed.
burden to his parents.
contemplates suicide.
even worse ; considers
becoming insurance agent.
unwed girlfriend pregnant.
illegitimate daughter.
can’t afford marriage.

this is Albert Einstein 1901-1902

special

ii.
sits in dusty patent office.
daydreams about riding
his intergalactic beam of light.
publishes first paper on
special theory of relativity.
— inverts perception of universe
world turned on its head. 

1905, just three light years later

BONUS POEM: April 9, 2018

An accumulation of titbits I read while researching this high point of western art.

*****

David’s Achilles 

decades ago
on the instruction
of Nani (a 16th-century
Venetian painter’s model)
a deranged man
hammered the foot
of a master
damaging the giant
giant killer’s toe

every shattered fragment
collected & restored

moral outrage aside
the attack enabled
scientists to learn
the Carrara marble
was full of tiny holes
causing speedier degradation
than other marble

but the giant slayer’s
own demise might be
those who love him
endless microvibrations
created daily by the million
footsteps of iPhone raising
selfie-stick swinging
aficionados