It always makes me smile
To see them fawn over you.
I know it is a joke to them
But it's an even richer joke to me
Because I know their poetic words to be truer than they imagine
And their exaggerated awe more appropriate than parody.
Maybe it's gauche, but that doesn't make it false, and
That fills me with laughter, quietly.
They don't know the truth
And you don't know the truth
And yet it is being told to hundreds, unabridged and unexaggerated-
How delicious!
How thrilling, when reality is revealed
In such a way that all but the most observant may think it a lie.
It makes the knowing of it somehow more special, I think--

They kiss your hands and compare your eyes to stars
And I wonder if it ever occurs to them
That they should.