The free-form poem “Star-Stuck,” was written in January 2025, inspired by a time when I lived just outside L.A. and took a friend to Hollywood for the first time. Things didn’t go as planned. A moody singer-actress was having a “moment,” and we were told we couldn’t walk on the sidewalk until the VIP finished wandering from a club to a limo. I didn’t wait. Instead, I walked down the Sunset Strip with traffic rushing past, shouting, “You aren’t more important than us little people. We have rights too.”
The feeling of awe in the presence of a personality greater than your own.
Someone great, important, not of your zone,
Different from you or anybody back home.
A feeling of foolishness, an overblown sense,
Putting another’s importance above your own.
How does placing someone high in your mind,
Leave your own worth behind, undefined?
Strolling down Sunset, where everybody roams,
Heavy-handed citizens ensure no one goes alone,
Muscles in uniform restrain, detain, refrain,
Public walking curtailed, free movement barricade.
Distinguished importance, yet void of essence,
Must pass before you, demanding presence.
“What authority dares to deny my own space?
To travel freely, to walk at my own pace?”
Starstruck? Hell NO, far from it – star stuck.
In a world where significance is dictated by schmucks.
.
.
.
“How much there is in the world I do not want.”
– Socrates
Perfectly Human 