“With photographs in metallic

*

high-gloss: full-on or in profile
this first-folio album of Personalities
is in great demand /
Fame can affect a celebrity in various ways…
most notably…”
I’m taking in this tosh
from some magazine in a waiting room:
glossy pages
of beautifully posed banality
while

*

outside
where real fame shines and splashes the deliberate
mountain pines on the lawns /
colouring the white walls of the museum
I realise that the real is immediate
and performs
without hang-ups
or angles
but is right there: tossed in front of us /
I walk through its integrity
see its smiles
illuminate glass and aluminium

*

taste its microbes
on my tongue /
feel its little emergencies of rain
and all the while the honest and poor
on Locust Street wait for something to say
or for someone to die or to be born
/ for some bollocks to entertain
them or for something
to carry them away — —for something
to feel grateful
for

Photo by Alex Maloney on Unsplash