FADING STAR

Whitney Houston’s sister-in-law, Tina Brown, recently claimed that Whitney is hooked on drugs and living in squalor. She said the singer spends days locked in her bedroom amid piles of garbage, taking drugs and using sex toys. She also released shocking photographs showing the star’s bathroom littered with drug paraphernalia, including a crack-smoking pipe and cocaine-covered spoons.

Listen:
the tabloids creak with betrayal
as former friends
suck money from your veins like leeches.

Listen:
the Hollywood hills
are alive with the sound of money;
the gossip orchestra
is warming up.

Listen:
a camera shutter
snaps in the bathroom
like a jaw locking shut.

Listen:
five white fingers fat as caterpillars
creep across the mirror
singing Why Does it Hurt So Bad?
as stars fade into mediocre night.

Listen:
the ghosts of songs are rustling
in the bedroom amongst coke spoons
and last year’s trash, un-cleared.

Listen:
you can hear octaves
slipping away through a pipe,
the delicate, autumnal sound
of skin falling into disrepair.

Listen:
I Will Always Love You on the radio;
that voice of glass and honey
reduced to a husk of wax.