Best Overachieving Poems
The last time I had seen this particular cousin of mine, I was still in college and he had a head full of hair. In between, there had been three funerals, two weddings and four births in our Trojan royalty of a family. I had been a university graduate for a year, and the prospect for a job, a decent one at that, had started to grow dimmer by the day. He asked, “Will you tutor my daughter?” “Yes!” I said. And we set out immediately. He, on his bike and I, on my motorcycle following him. We took a right turn at the famous landmark of the statue of demoness Putana, sitting on the grass with her bosom out and legs spread forward. He introduced me to his wife and daughter. Telling them to stand side by side, he told me, “She's only eleven, but look at her! Already equal in length and width to her mother, who is no delicate petal herself. Do you think you can teach her GK?”
The universe wasn't made with dissent. Plus, the chicken samosas were really delicious. I tried on a grin while the overachieving pre-teen bustled around the room showing me her accolades for painting, singing, studying. As I left he pointed at a tree, “Do you know what tree is that?”
“Bael?” I answered thoughtfully.
“Apple. That's an apple tree.”
“Oh! Does it bear fruits?”
“Not in this climate!” He laughed out loud.
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Date: 30 / 11 / 2016
Contest: James Tate
Sponsor: Space Cadet
An overachieving college student
with lofty ambitions.
Her education is finally over,
a completion of a complicated puzzle.
A summa cum laude graduate
with two doctorate degrees under her belt.
The sky's the limit, yet she struggles
to decide which fork in the road to take
She stands with her arms akimbo
on the cusp of destiny.
As her eyes search the infinte stars
in the sky, she's wondering "Now what?"
Crossroads Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Silent One (Winner: 3rd Place)
Date written and posted: 09/20/2019
A grief for the traditional ugliness we find in the season
To welcome the trees flaunting over again
Prompted to open our eyes to the life blooming
A free vivacious tune plays as the colors mimic a subtle happiness
Such an overachieving contentment spring hides
I hate perfect girls stuck in their little perfect world Obsessive compulsive
disorders. The one's with the perfect hair, perfect grades, perfect everything and they
can't stop overachieving. They go to perfect colleges and live and marry perfect husbands
who do nothing but give perfection to the tenth degree. It sort of makes me sick to think
of such perfectness, a nature that will most definitely be passed down to their children.
Who will in turn drive themselves crazy trying to reach their parent's expectations. The
controlling ones, the ones who demand perfection and the cycle doesn't break until one
child refuses. Tell them I can't be perfect, I won't overachieve. I will do my best and
you will just have to live with it. So here's to the people who live life beyond the
rules... Just being themselves is enough. Here's for the normal one's who have to get
tutored in math and maybe just maybe they have more depth than just their facade. A
person has to have a flaw no matter how tiny. No one's perfect and I feel everyone can
try to remain hidden behind this jewel but eventually it will crack and shatter your
perfect world leaving you sinking.
(“Shadow Puppet”, 2023, original encaustic)
What Is It About the Jews?
We live in a time of irrational fear and phobias
From fear and loathing towards one’s own body
And parents (about as basic to hating life as it gets),
To the rapid rise of anti-semitism
After the Oct. 7th massacre.
Now, as it was in Europe in the last century,
Jew hate is all the rage
From college campuses to the halls of Congress
And still it’s the same old same ole.
The problem is the Jews are the hyper rational ones,
The ones with a whole standard deviation higher IQ.
And this may not seem like much to those who cant understand
But it becomes oppressive to have them always overachieving!
And this oppression in academics
Business, entertainment and science
Makes the self-oppressed feel the victim
And so they, as they have always done,
Project their fear (in the form of hate)
Onto the Other.
Do the Jews sometimes play their own victimhood up
And so manipulate the less intelligent all the more?
Of course.
But that is the way of the world
Those who can, do
And those who cant, teach
And those who cant teach, just complain.
Even if the Jews didn’t exist
We’d have to make them up
To have something to complain about.
Maybe that is exactly what we do.
(9/8/25)