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Aug 2013
The curse of a great, well-known or (at least) culturally interesting family.
Heralded at birth to mimic similar (or even, surpassing) social feats of achievement/wealth/renown.
Instead manages to underpasses evenΒ Β mundane non-impressivenesses of second-generation parentals.

I
See them, smirk or folly with time, silently.
....which they seem to quite often.
Biding weekend with multitudes of varying categories of "friends"
and sweethearts who never seem to stick around too long
All aware, of course, of the famous family lineage
Themselves, instead
after lifetimes where first words, senior infants homework,
cheerful accusations of mischief and certificates of age-appropriate health
were lauded as signifiers of a future onslaught of fulfilled capabilities
emerge as providence's lackeys– and meekly, to be
Written out of History
One by One by One.

II
Talent is frequently a despairing life-cycle
for people who witness
and go without.

III
But what price success?
Is it to be counted in public
or left behind in wreaths?
Stern evidence
of favour, fought for and won
or shaky good fortune
One life's profitable fluke

IV
Does the cost of success itself
admit backstories of other kinds of loss
that children
without the chance of ever knowing
or changing their inheritances of fate
are powerless to cease the flow
of their own anonymity
all for the insistences of the unarguable
and for merely treading the average?
Written by
Westley Barnes
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