Because - James Franco

Because

Because I played a Knight,
And was on a screen,
Because I made a million dollars,
Because I was handsome,
Because I had a nice car,
A bunch of girls seem to like me.

But I never met those girls,
I only heard about them.
The only people I saw were the ones who hated me,
And there were so many of those people,
It was easy to forget about the people who I heard
Liked me, and shit, they were all fucking fourteen-year-olds.

And I holed up in my place and read my life away,
And I watched a million movies, twice,
And I didn't understand them any better.

But because I played a Knight,
Because I was handsome,

This was the life I made for myself.

Years later, I decided to look at what I made,
And I watched myself in all the old movies, and I hated the guy
I saw.

But he's the one who stayed after I died.

James Franco. Directing Herbet White: poems. Graywolf Press, 2014.