The popular imagination Lives for roots and cuttings, grafted dreams; Collects the relics of the famous, Learns by heart to incantate the names, Makes a pedigree of references: Holy saints, celebrity bizarres – Bowery’s performances and kitsch, Buddha’s tooth in Kandyan parades. The memorabilia of those Who danced, sang, wrote, killed, or just researched, Used as heraldry, or to redeem Ordinary lives from being themselves. More than that: Nureyev’s ballet shoes Sold for the price of a terrace house In nineteen-ninety-five. Rich and poor Addicted to this magpie disease – A need to decorate the living To turn them to museum pieces: Jack the Ripper here is equal to Cumming and Orlan; eccentric lives Treasured for their circus freakishness - Father cults of the dictatorships, The Virgin Mary as a model soul; Holy Books’ “authority as all”. Though expressed through clichés of the past Novelty becomes the highest good – Life as drama, crisis, “like a film”; Cults of random persons usurp God.
Rob Lowe
Rob Lowe has had approximately 50 poems accepted by editors since 2017, online, in print and as spoken word. Recent pieces are in Lucent Dreaming, Aromatica Poetica, Squawk Back, Abridged, Seventh Quarry and in anthologies. He particularly admires the work of Edith Sodergran, Emily Dickinson and Ted Hughes. He shares a home in Milton Keynes with a niece who is an epidemiologist.