​How to be a Star or a Dictator with More Than Just Fifteen Minutes of Fame, by Jocelyn Ajami

Mao, by Andy Warhol (USA) 1972

​How to be a Star or a Dictator with More Than Just Fifteen Minutes of Fame

The art of consumerism (or is it communism, I forget)
is well understood by the capitalist entrepreneur who hammers 
you with slogans and images, devouring your brain with stentorian 
decibels and relentless repetition. This is how you shape and sell a star. 

If you grasp for power, embellish your spare charisma with a tint 
of red lipstick, blue eyeshadow and rosebud blush to detract 
from your drab demeanor, your dull green apparel. Affirm your 
celebrity with splashes of color.

This is how you sell personality, soup cans and ideology, hamburgers 
and tyranny. Become a seductive, persuasive commodity. Place millions
of prints over mantelpieces, kitchen sinks, playgrounds and bedrooms.
Hang billboards from skyscrapers, temples and grocery stores.

Initiate a bombardment of video clips and blither. Paint a giant canvas,
large as a museum wall, because bigger is better and louder is supreme. 
Give yourself a ten foot head, so it never has to swell. 

It does not matter if you are homely or good looking, saint or sinner, 
chairman or pawn. It does not matter if you build bridges or destroy lives, 
ban beef and burn books. What matters is the shine and polish,
the insistence of the stroke.

You must amplify, multiply and promote with trickery and gimmickry.
You must propagate and promulgate until you master the cudgel 
of ubiquity. 

Jocelyn Ajami

Jocelyn Ajami is an award winning painter, filmmaker and poet. She turned to writing poetry in 2014as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness.  She has been published in several anthologies of prizewinning poems. She is presently working  on a manuscript of ekphrastic poetry based on masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago.