Transactional

These are the terms of the contract, they get:

• the money
• the adoration, power, glory, stalker
• the celebrity lifestyle, drugs, divorce
• more money
• the early, tragic death

—and we get:

• the new series, roughly once a year
• the box set
• the posters, action figures, spin-off novels
• t-shirts
• to pay for all of the above

...and pretty much the same thing applies to pop and film stars.  Who's to say who's getting the better deal?

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Transactional

What then, of folk like me, a touch
aloof in uncool sweaters.  If you knew me better
—or us, as I should say, I'm not alone—perhaps you'd like
the way we stir our coffee, too intent;
or fail to clearly speak and consequent
from that...  we give ourselves away.

What then, of how we misplace all our lives
to long-run TV drama shows?  What time
are you on?  Why are you out-of-sequence—
this episode's from Season One, when Joe
was not yet dead, and Lisa not yet gay.
You seemed happier then, so you also

have given yourself away?  Oh let me take
you hand in mitten, and let me buy you coffee,
from the van beneath the CCTV.  I watch
your eyes behind the steam?  Sometimes I dream
of one like you, tight-sweater ghost from a past
your writers don't provide.  And you dream too,

perhaps, of lives like mine, or ours—
as really I should say.  Ambiguous, we are;
not telegraphed with what to feel; not healing,
albeit imperfectly, between one story
and the next; not sent the text by courier
before each scene begins; we are—beyond all else—

not the one half-dressed upon the poster
whom we—not so aloof now—return to
through moments in our desperate night. We treat
it as our right, and maybe that is fair
you are repaid so many ways, and I'm always
your loyal customer, when you give yourself away.