Sacred Games

As a follow up to my previous post about Michael Jackson, I thought I would share a poem on this blog that fits the theme of celebrity. I wrote it and posted it on my MySpace poetry blog last year, and reposted it yesterday because of its relevance to current events. For some reason, Blogger does not allow me to use spaces the way that MySpace does, so I can't reproduce the structure of the poem here, but the content should suffice.

Sacred Games

We play these sacred games
of cat and mausoleum,
of princess and pauper,
and ring around the razzi,
singing, Flashes! Flashes!
We all fall down!

We play these sacred games
Of photo shoots and ladders to the stars,
postures at an exhibitionist,
as the graph-eating artists
play doctor with their photographs,
seen only in reflections,
mirror images,
these ghosts that haunt our dreams...

We peer amid the secret lives
of King Congregation and Faye Raoh,
as they ascend to their imperial state,
only to fall, crashing
a beatified beast,
grist for the millions,
ripe for hagiographical haggling.
The King is dead,
asphinxiated,
a good career move
(so they say).
He has left the building
and is risen
to acclaim
his kingdom
comforts her
long live the King around the cozy,
for he is
extinguished,
embalmed,
extinct,
yet extant!
A face in the crowd,
a household name,
these fallen stars,
where are they now?

We play these sacred games
of monkey see-through, monkey hair-do,
copulations and disrobers,
hide and go chic,
rehab and recover.
And in these voyeuristic shines
no evil shall be seen, heard, or spoken
by these simul adams amid consumers' eves,
building block bodies
only to an'/or wreck/sick them down!
With whom/whose lies the bull-emetic blame?
You show and tell me yours,
why won't you tune in to mine?