Pantheon of the Stars is a poem and song that pictures social media as a glowing temple where attention is the offering and fame is the promise. It comes from a Substack story about Maya, a young influencer pressured to give up her private life to stay visible in the feed.
The Poem
The dome catches light that never was,
its marble screens a lie
we scroll through on our knees.
The homily speaks of legacy,
of names that never fade,
and in the side chapel,
the kind face in shadow
names the offering:
the watching heart.
The screen is bright, eternal.
The address is a door
in the basement of attention,
a room the color of forgetting.
Down there, the air hums softly,
sterile of silence,
of quiet evenings, of the soft weight
of a life not broadcast.
The views keep climbing.
The algorithm turns.
And in the Tomb of Silence,
the young sit with phones and a new stillness,
having made the world a clear path
through the space where a self
once whispered its claim.
They do not speak its name.
The dome only glows,
counting its faithful,
one forgotten soul at a time.