Photography,
Photo journalistic,
Everyday, realistic.

Commercial, architecture, landscape, artistic,
Industrial, fashion, ethnographic, pornographic.

Big Brother, fallace, stealer of souls, vouyer.
News seller, instant gratifier, man pleaser, woman abuser.

Barthes, Sontag, Cindy Sherman,
Virginia Woolf, Warhol. Weegie, Francesca Woodman,
Leibovitz, Adams, Arbus, Tina Modotti,
Nan, Evans, Hoffer and even the Paparazzi.

Cheap *****, digital manipulator, image poser,
Center fold, coupons, Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe.
Where did they go:

Lifeless paper product, painter's picture mess,
C-type, digital archival,
Sepia, black and white, hard drive retrival.

Image addict,
Image taker,
Image maker,
image seller,
image buyer.

Newspaper, magazine, graphics and ads,
TV, dreams, even the trash.

Billboards, subways, phones and buses:

Utopia:
Surreal, crop, stretched and air brushes.

Modern ideal.
Surface manipulator.
Brain conditioner.
Consent manufacturer.

Oh Photography,
I got you in my eye.
A few thousand dollars,
A BFA, A critical scholar.

Or maybe a nerd,
Just boys with toys.
Telephoto genitals, with motor drive action.
Studio lights, umbrella traction.

Oh Photography,
You proprietor of obscene.
Detailed, de-sensitized.
Court ordered, jury analyzed.

Click, image, copy, edit, paste, print or post.
Myfacespace, twitter, flicker,
An internet media overdose.

Pry, spy, your friend's friend's acquaintances.
Parties, picnics, reunions and shows.
Visits, vacation, style, shoes and clothes.


Pics, photos, images, jpegs and giffs.
Snap shot, portrait, panoramic, Kodak kiss.

Exacerbate:
Divorce, break-ups, jealousy, envy, love and fears.
Devour and captivate society for years.

Slaves to Western and Capitalist desires,
Destruction of Earth with psychological, monetary empires.

The art of the geniuses
is packed like overstuffed crayons
in the alleyways of my city.
That one is picking his nose.
There is the bench-sleeper.
Here comes the nomad with the stroller.
I watch them carefully like
a soldier on an ambush,
bayonet at the ready,
a little drunk on
self-worth.
They approach and I pause.
I put the camera to my face
and press the shutter.
Turning to me their eyes
beam sorrow.
The nose picker slept alone last night,
the nomad is still lost.

In black and white they
will forever navigate the crawl spaces
of my mainframe.

A four-year-old was perched in front of
a boxy TV with eyes only open to
sugar-coated Cheerios and 80’s Transformer heroes
on the screen.
Fast forward to age
thirteen where she flipped through
dusty photography with
eyes searching
for substance
to prove reality from almost-forgotten dreams.
Scrapbook memories aren’t
all that she sees
because,
honestly,
she loses things.
Summer Saturdays and
Fall Fridays and
Winter weekdays spent too wrapped up in her
own head to notice, silently, spring rising
from its deathbed.
Honestly, she loses things.
She
loses
things that should be important
and real, but all she can feel is
the guilt of lost
and faded photography.
Scrapbook memories fabricate times of
color and scent and sound,
of spilled milk and Diet Coke,
of words too far gone to seep from
pen to page because
honestly,
she loses things.

I FIND IT KIND OF FUNNY
HOW I USED TO SIGH OF PHOTOGRAPHY
AND YOU GAVE AWAY A CAMERA
BEFORE MY VERY EYES

ALL THE PHOTOS I HANG
ABOUT MY ROOM
TO REMINISCE ABOUT SOMETHING
THAT MADE ME FEEL SOMETHING
PERHAPS PURPOSE

I TOOK PHOTOGRAPHY FOR TWO
YEARS
AND I TOLD YOU OF MY DREAMS
OF MY VERY OWN DARK ROOM
TO DEVELOP MY PHOTOS
AND DEVELOP MY OWN FILM
BY HAND

NOW YOU ARE LIVING MY DREAM
AND I SAW YOU GIVE AWAY THE CAMERA BEFORE MY VERY EYES
WHEN I ALWAYS WANTED TO BORROW IT
DID YOU LISTEN
DO YOU NOT FEEL MY PAIN IN THE AIR
HAVE YOU DISCONNECTED YOURSELF

poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul

it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.

if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.

as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.

and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.

yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.

then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.

if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.

Photography last
Need you to be here
But your not
You’re working
Having a good time
While I’m here in school
Stuck in boredom
I need you to be here
To be my photography model
But you’re not
Well…
****