I don't want to name drop but
I saw a famous comedian on the street today
It was Louis CK, on my way home
from work. It’s strange, isn’t it,
how we react to celebrity, dumb
and giddy like a puppy on mute
welcoming a new friend. We feel like celebrities
owe us something, acknowledgment for knowing
their first album or birthday. We contribute,
after all, to their fame.
It’s democratic, really, the way I wanted
to shake his hand, but he was with his daughter
and I didn’t want to be a bother. It’s strange,
isn’t it, that impulse to shrink out of the way,
the uncanny desire to fit flush
in a cupboard. In a lonely drawer in the corner
I keep all the scraps of paper containing
all the nice things anyone has ever written
about me, and I never read them.
I sit down alone to dinner
beside a stack of books and I pray over
my macaroni, when there’s nothing left to say
will everyone just shut up? I want to
apologize to everyone I’ve ever spoken to
for the things I said, the way I behaved. Except
Louis CK—I just walked right by and
didn’t say anything, even though I’ve seen him
talk to his fake daughter a thousand times
just like that, on television. I didn’t owe Louis CK shit
until I wrote this stupid poem.
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