This is the product of a dull afternoon and a little pop history:
If you want to be famous
and have a name that’s
known near and far
You’d better take all your talents
and hawk them at a price that’s
the most the market will bear.
Once you are wealthy
people assume you are healthy
and know secrets beyond their ken.
You’d better fake it
on your merits you won’t make it
but with this, you have a good chance.
So write a few books
fill them with sales hooks
for your next round of dreck.
As your sales shoot upwards
scribble, scribble more words
and continue the wealthmaking trend.
Soon you’ll be noted
and read in Yale and Oxford
(all the places you never went).
Yes, you’ll get hits
from the media blitz
camped out in front of your door.
Take them quite sullenly
and complain quite loudly
how the cameras won’t leave you alone.
Never mind that you want them
and would surely die without them
complain far and wide just the same.
If you’re seen as an outsider
you’ll just get richer
and can market to sheep-like teens.
Get in a few short movies
soon, you’ll be on TVs
hawking your latest incarnation.
Writing was all fun
but there’s acting to be done
so ham it up, and steal the show.
The public will love it
the critics will pan it
but critics don’t make a career.
Once sequels have been made
and you’ve been laid
by a thousand starry-eyed models
you’ll have some accounts
with money in mounts
that stretch up to the blueness.
The public will love you
the IRS will tax you
and your fans will be dying to meet you.
Avoid a few gunshots
for they will hurt lots
and put an end to your rising career.
Say the loony’s forgiven
but be sure not to sit in
as he’s sentenced to 25 to life.
So you’re barely alive
your health’s taken a nosedive
but you career’s never been better.
You sell retrospectives
the public has new perspectives
on work that origninally bombed.
As your wounds heal
much better you’ll feel
but your pic will fade from the camera.
Your death would now sell
but your mind is too well
to allow you to pull your own trigger.
So to isolation you’re removed
and your films are all moved
to midnight crapfest showings.
Your name is now forgotten
the cash stops rolling in
except from die-hard fanatics.
So decades you sit there
and the style of your hair
is quickly going out of fashion.
But wait, there’s salvation
from utter stagnation
on old, forgotten racks.
Soon, you’re a classic
and people are nostalgic
as they read you, or watch your films.
Never mind it’s all shit
that won’t matter one bit
as people hoard what you sold.
This lasts for decades
before your image fades
for good from the mind of the public.
By then, you’ll be dead
and your books will be read
as windows onto the past.
They’ll be bought by snobs
and other show-offs
looking to showcase money.
Your estate will prosper
from images on phosphor
shown on antique TVs.
Your descendents will squander
all you worked so hard for
but then, you’ll be past caring.
So we leave you as a body
you were once such a hotty
but now, you’re just moldy bones.
I hope your life was enough
if it wasn’t, that’s tough
plenty were worse off than you.
So this poem ends here
but don’t have fear
I’ll soon write another.
It isn’t the best technically, but I made it funny. How do you all like it?