Not enough people look up at the stars at night.
They wear rhinestones on clothes,
glitter on drunken lips,
closing themselves up in dance clubs,
twinkling inebriated eyes,
schmoozing with local stars.
They wear wedding rings resembling nebulas and cosmos,
where they were ripped from the earth
by people with severed arms,
and lost hope.
But don’t they look like beautiful stars?
A revolution unfolds under Middle Eastern stars,
a world cries out,
a tornado shreds apart lives and towns.
They stare at the newspapers front page,
feeling a tinge of guilt.
But it’s their turn in line,
snapping back into their rushed lunch
break of diet cokes and chicken salads
holding empty conversations,
over empty calories,
They will never know what the Middle East feels like,
or what blood and tears feel like,
splattered chaotically upon uprooted streets.
They sleep the night away,
awaiting their morning commute
under the dawn’s early stars,
growing agitated with traffic,
their dreams fading
under the wheels of their car payment.
They cut others off,
as they check their stocks,
ignoring the road
and the ghetto they drive past
where thousands are suffering.
They rush in and out of coffee shops
where sanitized counters gleam
and stainless steel sparkles.
But still something is missing
as they rush past the person sitting outside,
who at night has no choice but to look at the stars,
sleeping alone in the park.
The have the life of the stars
that play on their plasma screens,
in the houses that stars surely live in,
and their debt piles up and hope fades,
as the neighbors try to fool one another,
by living the better lie.
They buy disposable clothes
at pop-up chain stores,
made by mistreated individuals
in overseas countries.
But they look like the stars they see in magazines,
while the cancer of comparison
eats away at self-esteem and reality.
They punch clocks, and the clock punches
back taking a little bit of them with its monotony.
Time rushes by,
the ocean rises up and swallows lives,
the earth quakes
and in the end,
we all lay in the ground,
forever looking up at the stars.
