To the Top

The sweat, the tears.
The abuse hurled at your ears.
Years,
And years of hard labour.
Despite the fears of mistreatment from your peers
You make it, to the top.

Coursing through your mind,
Smoothing out the grind.
You train and gain and strain to attain
… Greatness,
Maintaining complaining and explaining the ingraining of your talent,
For if you weren’t tearstained, overtrained, drained or lamebrained
You wouldn’t make it, to the top.

You want, to make it.
Not to fake it.
You want to take it; your soul is consumed
With the fear of being exhumed
By the fires of failure.
So you keep your dreams alive.

Because the ladder of success is a long dark climb,
And it’s easy to get stuck in the pantomime.
A sideshow act,
In a grimy circus.
Stuck in the vice of an addicted life, your character enveloped in spidery webs.
Time rich - but money poor.
Yet the candle in your heart lights the way.

So you climb the ladder all the way high; up into the sky before
Snap!
The ladder breaks and you fly.
You swoop and you dive,
You’re the king of the sky,
You’re really so high that you sigh,
And you wish.
You wish, like a tired wretch on the streets
Like a golden boy with expectations to meet
Like a social outcast, or a thing of the past
You wish this new phase was better than the last.

Because you can’t fly far,
Before you run into a bar
Of the gilded cage in which you are stuck.
You live in a glass house,
You are the media’s mouse
And the beautiful views that your new house commands
Is just putty, in the palms of the public’s large hands.

But congratulations.
You have made it, to the top.