the losers shall inherit the earth
The world is filled with losers who never
amount to much.
We all try to avoid this fate.
To escape mediocrity is a universal
theme.
No one wants to be forgotten,
but just about everyone is.
To think you’re special is an
automatic disposition.
How are you to rid yourself of the need
to be important?
How do you just enjoy being one of the many
faceless people who punctuate Earth’s
history?
How do you live a meaningless life
with a brain that can’t help but see itself
at the center of everything?
You just eat and breathe and shit
and fuck, one day after another.
Drink a cup of coffee. Taste how
good it is, and say ‘fuck you, brain’ —
for thinking there’s anything better than
this.
This place was made for losers like us.
Let’s not forget that we’re no better than
any of the shitheads who came before us.
“The conflict between the subjective centrality of our own lives versus our awareness of its objective insignificance. (…) this was the single great informing conflict of the American psyche—the management of insignificance.”— David Foster Wallace, Oblivion
Garbage Notes:
I want to say this poem was inspired by the accompanying Wallace quote. But I really don’t remember if I wrote the poem first and then found the quote or vice versa. Either way, mediocrity and the threat of insignificance is something we all deal with.