A Perfect Monster

What produces its own energy
Cannot be unplugged. What has no pulse
Will never suffer a broken heart.

What burns from the inside but is not
Alive, feels no hunger, sheds no waste,
Cannot be needy, starved, or debased.

You might want to shift your metaphors
Toward something less fragile, benign,
A brightness more heedless, enduring.

This is what it means to be a star—
Not a charmed center of attention,
Vulnerable in multiple ways,

But a monster of local orbits,
The furnace burning of its own weight.