Starlet
Fame is a pill we give to our most beautiful.
We want our loveliest to hold hands with tragedy.
Stars turn into supernovas only after they burn out,
still sending light into the universe
even though they die in the dark.
Fame is a pill we deal to our kids.
Flowers only wilt after they have been cut to be put on display,
neatly trimmed, petals dyed and thorns ripped off until
they are acceptable for our viewing pleasure.
Fame is a pill we love to take.
We are fascinated by the sickness under the glamour, the pallor under the makeup,
You know, no one will love you until you bleed for them.
Write your autographs in gunpowder and watch them put your name in lights
Fame is a pill we sell to ourselves and as
we worship loaded guns and empty houses, we lust for the darkness after the camera flash, that momentary blindness that saps our soul of its empathy.
Popping paparazzi prescriptions, our morbid obsessions.
We have tattoos of skeletons and corpses,
we paint pictures of burning cities lovelier than the bones breaking inside of us,
we get high just so we can see God and we fuck like our bruises are proof that we’re alive.
We suck death out of the bottom of a bottle,
swallow it down like it is our mothers milk, fed to us only because we cried and screamed for it.
Fame is a pill you can’t unswallow.
We hate that we love them.
We can never be as perfect as them so we make sure they pay for it.
Bodies are most beautiful when you can see the bones they will leave behind, and that’s why our stars carve out tiny waistlines. They are larger than life but if they don’t cut an apple core figure we put dynamite in their guts, a tick tick tick of expectations and reputations, ticking til their ribs are sticking to their stomachs and we fall on an altar of their vomit and tears.
They have brilliant white smiles stretched wide like the summer sky, but we hate them for it.
We want hurricanes and train wrecks and razor blade angels.
We want knives behind their teeth and poison in their blood.
Fame is a pill we give to our most beautiful.
We light them up and watch them burn until they crumble like ashes from a cigarette. We want them crazy. We want them sad. We want them to be as fucked up as we are, so we can laugh at their headlines and scribble out their faces on magazine covers and forget that they are human and trying, trying, trying
not to choke in the pill forced down their throats,
trying to keep their names out of the mouths of those that would devour them,
trying to keep their names on the marquis
and not on a gravestone.