Bill Zavatsky

Look to the Stars

 What stars should I look at?

Paris Hilton? Nah, she's no star,

maybe a drunken driver, but I don't care

how many hotels she and her sister own

(and what happened to her sister?)

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, well at least they

don't seem to want us working the plantation

of their fame, where all we get to do is hoe

and stare at them as they come and go

to the Big House. Every month we get to go

to the Big House and claim our allotment.

Hey, there's Frederick Bailey! He's not a star yet,

though he will be. Now that's the kind of star

I'd follow! Remember how he watched his sons

march off with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment,

so proud, and how he wrote that neither of his boys

could get a job when the war was over?

The clock is ticking in more ways than one?

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! See if you can find

out on Entertainment Tonight what Paris Hilton is doing

right now. Heading in or out of the Big House Hotel,

I'll bet. So why do we worship her?

Why do we stare at her from afar, as if

she were a new planet or a nebula some cross-eyed astronomer

just discovered? Why do we bother with outer space

when inner space is hard enough to farm?

Seven forty-three and counting down.

Do I get more poetry points if I write more lines,

or is it simply enough to watch the skies

until a new planet swims into my ken?

Lots of questions tonight, but I suppose, too,

that that's also what the universe does.

It's staring at us as well, for good or ill,

measuring what we've done

and what we're about to do,

testing the radiation from our brains.

And speaking of brains, didn't we leave

Paris Hilton around here somewhere,

slipping on a new pair of sunglasses,

the ones made of that expensive metal?

She's watching us, too, from her perch

among the stars, wondering what we'll do next

in our infinite search to please her, wondering

how dumb we really are

if we've followed her this far.

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