Notes About The Poem
Lucky and Unlucky are two highly animated, deeply flawed brothers locked in a bitter verbal duel, but they cannot live without each other.
Prefix
They met right where the ink bleeds into the margins,
where Lucky and Unlucky share a border but live in different worlds.
Both capitalized.
Both carrying the weight of their names like a badge or a bruise.
Act I: The Collision
They met right where the ink
bleeds into the book's margins,
where Lucky and Unlucky share
a border but live worlds apart.
Both capitalized. Both carrying their names
like a badge or a bruise.
Lucky steps out first, spinning
a four-leaf clover between his fingers,
smelling like fresh rain on grass
and a lottery ticket you forgot.
"Good morning, my shadow," he says,
flashing teeth too bright for anyone.
"Did you fall out of bed
on your face once again?
Because I just saved a man
from a runaway city bus,
while you look like you’ve
been run over by three."
Unlucky doesn’t look up at all.
He’s adjusting a heavy permanent cast,
wiping dark soot off his jacket
from an engine that blew up
just because he walked past it.
"Shut your mouth," he spits out.
"Just… shut your insufferable, gleaming mouth.
You think you’re a king
because you find pennies face-up.
I’m choking to death on
a chipped plastic coffee cup.
You’re a fluke, man. An anomaly.
A glitch in the cosmic system.
"You’re a cheap casino cliché
built to keep the desperate brave."
Act II: The Divide
"A glitch?" Lucky laughs, and
it sounds just like wind chimes.
It’s completely, utterly infuriating.
"I’m the reason empires don't crumble.
I'm the second-half winning touchdown.
I’m the beautiful, accidental typo
that makes a writer famous.
But you? You’re a parasite.
You’re the heavy, iron anchor
pulling down people who are
just trying to swim.
If I ran this vocabulary,
I’d edit you out completely.
You’re just a comma of panic.
A syntax of absolute doubt."
"Edit me out?!" Unlucky screams.
He stands up so incredibly fast
he knocks his knee on the table.
Of course he does.
A black cat walked right across
the back of the room,
and he pointed at it like
a witness in a murder court.
"I am the meat of the story!
I am the actual, living plot!
Without me, nobody cries, nobody grows,
nobody learns a damn thing.
You’re shallow. You’re a Hallmark card
that rots in a trash can.
Go hang out with your horseshoes,
you privileged, boring snob.
I’m the only real syllable
on this cold concrete floor."
Act III: The Breakdown
"You're a curse!"
"You're a total fraud!"
"I am destiny’s absolute darling!"
"You're a statistical, walking nightmare!"
And just as Unlucky breathes in
to completely tear his brother apart,
to call him a beautiful,
lying, dirty thief—
the old ceiling suddenly cracks.
A rogue piece of space junk,
old satellite metal, comes screaming
right through the broken drywall.
Thud.
It misses Lucky’s shoulder
by less than an inch.
It lands squarely on Unlucky’s
poor, already bruised foot.
Lucky throws his hands up,
cheering. "See?! The universe knows!"
While Unlucky collapses to the floor,
holding his toes, laughing through
the very real tears.
"You see?" he whispers, looking
up from the dirty floor.
"The metrics are perfectly clear.
You’re a snob, I’m a martyr,
and we are completely done here."
They turn right around and walk.
One steps into a bright spotlight
that just happens to hit him,
the other steps into a puddle
that wasn't there a minute ago.
Forever divided by a tiny,
two-letter prefix.
The loudest, most dysfunctional words
in the whole damn book.
Act IV: The Aftermath
And that’s how the dictionary leaves them—
one nursing a broken bone under a lucky star,
the other counting his blessings in the back of an ambulance.
They are two sides of the exact same coin,
tossed into the air over and over again, never allowed to land on the edge.
They need each other to exist,
but God help the poor human caught in the middle when they decide to stop shouting and start making perfect sense.
Act V: The Victor
And the winner is... Unlucky.
By a landslide of catastrophic proportions.
While Lucky might have the universe rigged in his favor,
Unlucky wins the entire argument the moment that rogue piece of space junk crashes through the ceiling.
He doesn't just endure the chaos—he owns it.
He proves his own point in real-time: without him, there is no drama, no conflict, no story to tell.
He is the ultimate martyr, laughing through his tears, leaving Lucky looking like a shallow, privileged snob standing in an accidental spotlight.
Lucky gets the fortune, but Unlucky gets the crown.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment