Seth chased down a dream & the big city bright lights
All was going well, rolling on, steady as a stone
but it didn’t keep him warm at night
He missed his wife, and the life
they’d built together back home,
He knew it all meant nothing,
if he was living the dream alone
By:J.N.R Dutton
A kid packed his bags heavy,
threw them in his Chevy truck
Headed down to Texas,
where people had said he should try his luck
He spent his first months in Fort Worth,
staying w/a good friend of his,
Working days as a dishwasher
& spending his nights
playing gigs,
Being a musician it was a tough row to hoe
but even so, he was glad he made a go of it,
Years later when he’d succeeded,
He said “I’ve got to admit,
If I had to go back, I’d do it all over again”
By:J.N.R Dutton
Travis knew he loved music from an early age
Barely older than a toddler when he first hit a stage,
Every chance he got, the kid would play
Never cared how many dues he had to pay
He was sure he’d succeed one day
He had several good musician friends
Who taught & encouraged him,
Though there were other people
who at first thought he’d crash & burn
Eventually, even their respect he earned
He spent a lot of years working his training ground
Getting ever better, honing his unique sound
By:J.N.R Dutton
I’ve heard success stories of people
raised in ghettos
who have escaped it,
risen to the top
because they worked their tails off
come hell or high water
they refused to be stopped
By:J.N.R Dutton
Mark never graduated High School, not even a GED
He wasn’t on the path to success as far as anyone could see
but all that changed, in the Summer of 1983
He built a business from scratch quietly
w/scraped together money & some creativity
Despite how lazy some thought him to be
He was a hard worker, surprisingly
He just wanted to earn his way non-traditionally
By:J.N.R Dutton
All you do means nothing
if you don’t keep the soul in your success
anything done w/the wrong motives will leave you
with a cold, dark, emptiness
That is just a cold hard fact
The truth here I’ve laid down
You don’t want to waste your time
gaining a worthless rusty crown
By:J.N.R Dutton
It gets easier all the time to sit down at the keys
and just bleed reams of poetry,
but the questions at all times for me
is: Are they poems people will actually read?
Will they touch lives meaningfully?
Am I keeping the soul in my success?
Am I writing things of substance,
or some stupid rambling mess?
When you dedicate your soul to a dream,
& I’m not talking about a fleeting fantasy,
I mean something meaningful,
concrete…something you’re totally
driven to complete,
when you see it fulfilled,
success achieved, it’s amazing just
how much joy it can bring
By:J.N.R Dutton
He had many false starts, broken hearts
& broken dreams
He knew too well that the world could be mean
but he polished his talents until they gleamed
& worked like a dog, knew that’s what was needed
& finally at last, he succeeded
By: J.N.R Dutton
His art and rhymes taking off like a rocket
Putting a little scratch in his pocket
He believes greed makes people act the fool
but he will admit green can be a helpful tool
Keeps a roof over his family’s head,
keeps them all fed
buys a cup of coffee & a loaf of bread,
at least he’s not lying homeless, or in a gutter dead
By: J.N.R Dutton
