Succeeding Alone...

When you try alone
it will be merely tolerated
monitored with mocking shuns

If you prevail on your own
it must be evaluated
amidst resent and puns
Your work will be discredited
and you will be despised

If your work holds-up
You will be discredited
despite what you've devised

If you don't give-up
they'll shower you in praise
and welcome you in their embrace
claiming you among their own

If you decline them in their ways
they'll swear and spit in your face
exile you, banish and disown

If you welcome your abandon
and remain strong in isolation
they'll truly hate and fear you
and surely seek to kill you

After desperate defamation
they'll recklessly abandon
their every truth and virtue
to justify to hurt you

If you live on
they'll just ignore you
until they do forget

If you're not gone
they'll conflate you
with impostures, fakes, clones

and when they do erase you
if you're alive or under stones
there you'll have succeeded
and become your very own

from there those that would join you
must learn to walk alone
and somewhere else they'll find it
the only thing to truly own
succeeding all alone