I read an online news report this week of a famous person in the entertainment business slapping another famous person in the same business over a remark at the Oscars in Hollywood.

Their fame has not reached into my living room. I am not familiar with the two men. The report revealed the emptiness of the media wallowing in the insensitive and uncomical comments of one famous person and the aggressive reactivity of another.

Show business converts people into products. The business encourages them to draw attention to themselves, so the stars increase their market value. The craving for attention can gradually become a dominant form of behaviour.

I wrote this poem in 2014 for people to read aloud to themselves who want to be famous.

WHO WOULD WANT TO BE FAMOUS?

I have become a star of my own show,

I want to get myself a status high,

a possibility of what could be.

I rise and rise, then must fall, then I die.

I have no clothes to add to my person.

Why dress myself up seeking name and form?

Why does the cat walk while the dogs do bark?

Then all these thoughts become a hounding storm.

What will I be? How will I be? Will I?

What burrows down into recesses lame?

These dreams can act like sucking ticks on blood,

and scratch again on claims to gain and fame.

Is future life a type of running scared?

Why can’t we make desires come to stick?

I throw my thinking back and forth so much.

Are all my hopes and hooks a cruel trick?

This longing goes,

No more this clueless view,

I wake to this endless splendour at hand,

admit beyond is closer than I thought,

such completion does shatter dreams so bland.

Poems from the Edge of Time
Christopher Titmuss
193 pages
£9.95
 Published 2015. Available on Amazon.