The Attention Seeker
The stage is set, the curtain parts, a practiced breath is drawn,
He stands beneath the spotlight’s glare before the break of dawn.
A master of the grand design, the architect of noise,
Who trades his inner quietude for hollow, gilded joys.
He wears a mask of many hues, a kaleidoscope of skin,
To hide the silent hollow where the dialogue begins.
For in the court of public eyes, he plays the frantic clown,
Terrified that silence might eventually pull him down.
He feeds upon the gasps of crowds, the whispers in the hall,
He’d rather be the villain than not be seen at all.
A scandal brewed in morning tea, a tragedy for show,
He waters every drama just to watch the garden grow.
The truth is but a canvas, often stretched and pulled away,
Until it fits the narrative he needs to win the day.
“Look at me!” the spirit cries, a beacon in the night,
Shining with a fevered and a self-consuming light.
On digital horizons, where the pixelated glow
Dictates the ebb of status and the rhythmic social flow,
He counts the heartbeats of the web, the metrics of the soul,
Giving up his privacy to pay the psychic toll.
A filtered face, a curated and artificial life,
A sharpened edge of vanity that cuts like any knife.
He measures worth in "likes" and "shares," in comments thin and brief,
A momentary harvest that provides a false relief.
He’ll feign a wound, he’ll boast a win, he’ll dance upon the ledge,
Always walking narrow paths along the jagged edge.
He interrupts the speaker with a laugh that’s far too loud,
A desperate, lonely lighthouse trying to dominate the cloud.
But when the party flickers out and guests depart for sleep,
He’s left with all the promises he didn’t mean to keep.
The echoes of his own applause are ghosts within the room,
As shadows stretch like fingers in the gathering of gloom.
Beneath the desperate longing and the hunger for the stare,
There sits a frightened child who thinks that nobody is there.
He fears that if the world looks left while he is standing right,
He’ll vanish like a vapor in the middle of the night.
So he paints his world in neon, and he screams into the gale,
Constructing every morning a more frantic, ornate tale.
The Attention Seeker wanders through a desert made of mirrors,
Reflecting back his triumphs while ignoring all his fears.
For to be known is not the same as being truly seen,
A distinction lost in static and the flicker of a screen.
He’s famous to the stranger, but a phantom to the friend,
Chasing after vistas where the circles never end.
The tragedy of seeking is the finding never stays;
It’s a hunger for the sunlight that consumes the very rays.
And though he claims the center, where the heat is most intense,
He pays for every second at his own soul's vast expense.
