You choose a sepia filter
To match your timeless visage
To match the clothes you've wandered into today
But it is not a selfie.

Your eyes pierce them through their iPhone screens
Your smile is casually not directed towards anyone in particular
Your outfit is recklessly on point
And it is not a selfie.

It is a punch in the gut
to everyone who has ever
said you are not good enough.
It is not a selfie.

The wings by your eyes will go out of style.
The dye in your hair will wash down the drain.
The clothes will wear out and you will take pictures again.

But you have fabricated a moment.
You are smiling towards yourself.
Slap your image onto every social media you know
Next to the supermodels and Kardashians and words of self hatred
This is the fulcrum with which you will lever the world.
This is not a selfie.

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.

Sepia sheets of notes read
the blues, that rested over
corroded strings of an old
guitar with petals of roses
that once used to heal the
wet coasts of the eyes and
an unfulfilled dream of a
firm embrace, stays dusty
at the corner of my vacant
room with the memories of
the blue notes like an old,
obscured calligraphy with
the dry roses, murmuring
the tales of an old love,
penned on bits of old
and dusty sepia sheets...

Freedom rang,
bang   bang   bang
and we traversed the dense foilage
of my Sepia Jungle
Populated by Spirited faeries
Whose lives came and went with the blowing wind.
And Time dissappeared beneath the sublte sunshine
As we entered Apricot Village
Where twisted, sappy leaves gnarled between
Milky white blossoms that decorated fetal fruits,
Whose crowning golden heads pushed petals fresh,
From budding limb,
Now kidnapped by the wind, a lazy sloshing sea of air,
The ground garnished by its aged spices.
It was a village where cottages grew among the Trees.
Devoid of holiness & Dogma, but steeped in the rife Purity of Nature,
No Man was to be seen, rotting fruit about the feet of Trees,
The floors of cottages strewn with Apricot pits, fleshy fruit half eaten
By the Birds, nestled into fertile Earth, and sprouted Life
rising fresh from pichest soil.
We ate of the fruit, now rested in the Golden Afternoon, which
Reached beyond the fringe of Time,
The fleshy pulp of Apricots the strands of bygone Universes,
Which taught us how to slumber there among
The petals and the Wind.

. i'm not against psychedelics... ****... syringe in excesses of LSD... but memory is also a psychedelic drug... albeit there is no excess of colors, and it's not b & w, but sepia tinged... i like the notion of a sepia curtain... maybe that's why i have my head ******* on so tight, and a hardened heart, to be able to write this... while others write, having drunk as much as i have, like kindergarten 5 year old, children!

i'm not here for the 80+ years that don't matter,
lying lethargic, semi-conscious,
demented, in a care home bed
where i'm abused for ******* my nappies...
i'm here...
   for the 16 or so years that really matter...
hence?
   i like to watch the metamorphosis of skin...
i never understood women who
cut and wait for some"magical" revelation
of internalized pain...
   those four stumps worth of knuckles
upon which i exhausted the amber of
a cigarette burning?
   second look?
      nice to see the many layers of skins,
prior to, and not including the bone...
     liver damage, whatever, bring it on...
i'm waiting...
  i can't, but i'm hoping...
to sow unto my skin the faint tincture
of a gangrene tattoo to
boast ink in Frankenstein green...
mingling with tongue numbing
yuck of bruise plum, and a dash of
Vishnu blue...
       oh i'm waiting: i can't wait...
   death is such a farce:
like i explained to my mother...
  you know... sometimes you're after
the pain: since you've reprogrammed
yourself, to enjoy it...
                  no, no *****-whipping
wimp diarrhea -
   i want the "furry" liver...
              i'm waiting, and i'm waiting...
and...
            nose-bleeds are past my worries...
i've had one in school, during
english class...
    no problem...
  can you believe it?
my neighbor's cat, Bella,
an albino climbed roofs, climbed into
chimneys...
   was knocked by a car,
presumably...
               and is in need of an operation,
might have one of her hind legs
amputated...
but she's also anemic...
so she might die during the operation...
poor ******, she...
                    heterochromic to boot...
      the sort of beast, which,
if being a Saudi Sheikh...
you'd love to put an Afghani burqa
over...
            Fonz... eeeeeeeeeee...
why bother with a counter argument?
the European variant of the niqab is
already in place...
sorry... the women you see in movies
or *****? ever see the same quality
shopping for underwear?
      not once...
                 it's such a sad little world
out there, jealous men...
who can't afford keeping
            castrato men for their, "harems",
and, evidently, don't poke enough
****** to keep the concubines entertained,
whole strap-on ******?
well... they're just strap-on ******...
ha ha!
                  ha ha ha ha!
        oh sure, i'm a loser, honey bee...
point being: i much prefer the company
of whiskey to that of a woman...
oops... did i say something, sheepish,
i.e. b'aah b'aah b'aad?!
   couldn't figure out the stuttering A
in diacritical markings...
since there isn't one...

   as i asked my Jewish convert into Islam...
i don't mind the Quran...
but what's your opinion on the, Hadith?
no answer... dumb look...
akin to: how do you know about that?
it's my eight's in a row right
to know what i consider, hostile.

         well, given that in Hindu...
the H... is a surd, rather than an authentic letter...
e.g.? dhaal...           that veggie
curry made from lentils?
there's no H in the name...
it's not a letter... it's an orthographic
inclusion of: consonant (d), surd (h)
                      vowel(s) (a, a), consonant (L)...
unless you of course deduce
there being a microcosm of the macron
hovering about one of the A,
deducing the other A is not necessary...
i drink...
because my excuse rests on the argument:
i'm not here for the 80+ years,
a life filled with an exhausted memory
bank,
    that is of no use
when it doesn't allow itself an
immediacy of convergence in
    what bicycles are founded upon:
teeth and chain, overlapping...
immediacy of overlapping -
memory... that alternative to psychedelic drugs...
some people take this over-bountiful
drugs to exemplify colors,
hyper-inflate them...
i just remember,
   and i know what memory is,
compared to the educational rubric
of, say, learning the Pythagorean equation,
how modern schooling is...
primarily?
   a memory erosion tool,
of a personal life, but more esp.,
  a childhood...
                  you want a drug more
potent than the Amsterdam legal mushroom?
RE-MEM-BER.
               like i said:
i can do what others won't do in
80 years... i can be content with
the zenith of doing what i do,
within a space of what excess drinking
allows me...
      the rest?
   either nostalgia... or regret;
i don't have the time preference to entertain
either...
esp. if what awaits me is
a sober case of dementia,
   and bedsores (odleżyny)...
             but sure, **** me,
go for it!
                   i pray to god that i managed
to fulfill my "evil genius" plan,
of drinking myself to death...
**** it... i have to match the sensible
life expectancy of the poorest of
the poorest African nations...
    don't really feel like living up
to the European turtle, neck,
demands for glorifying medicinal advancements.

You are smiling in the picture
curly hair ruffled and a defined living jawline
teeth gleaming and soft wrinkles around the eyes

It is a warm and windy day
the sky a pool that is sepia colored
the squirrels dance and the birds fly
and chairs, picnic blankets and banquets
are strewn across the lawn
children's feet dart across the grownups
who are busy questioning themselves or falling in love

there is flowing tipsy music
musicians in gloves, suits and mustaches
a sole lovely flute woman in a silk kimono
two dancers: one with feet bound embracing the earth
and the other as free and light as the wind,
relishing in the sky  

for some unknown reason
everyone is united,
feeling free as air
and content as living life itself

and I clutch the camera
crouching down in over-sized denim overalls
messy bun intact, colorful painters' fingers
settling with a smooth anticipation to wait,
the perfect moment will be here any time soon

And the cloud lets out a special airy breath just for you
so when you glance up at the sepia colored sky
and float back down to the earth below,

you are smiling in the picture
curly hair ruffled and a defined living jawline
teeth gleaming and soft wrinkles around the eyes.

Summer never ends, these days
And days drag on until
     You spend all night just wondering
When Fall will cool off all
     this lovely strain
     and sweet distress--
Will just bed down in burnt sienna
     and sleep off sepia tone headaches
so you can sleep all through next Summer,
     store your dreams in sweet October
--keep them fresh while the rest decays.

Flip the card and snowy streets
can keep you company through winter--
Keep you smiling through Hot Summer--
     because we don't have Spring no more--
Until it's time to wake at year's bedormance
                                           once again.

All the seasons start to look eerily alike
     after so long at one latitude,
But at least there's still one as speaks
     with seeming silence.

He's looking at me again.
Eyes fixed like he was insane.
Clay pipe propped on lips, pondering,
seriously sepia wondering.
No name on the severe brown frame.

He stares but doesn't see me.
I don't see him for what he was.
I see a fictional facsimile,
conflation of another's fantasies
- comic working class
- salt of the Earth
- his own man
- hero or Caliban.

The time of the shining of
Wind-summered grasses, has passed,
-To the lark-breast mottle-
The harvested skin of the
Senescent land

The candle-****** gutter of
Hurrying wing sees
The last of the coin
That was minted in thatches
Of deepwood
Of latticing bramble
Of crumbling eve.

The mourn of the Moorland
Has  feathered a will
With the clot of the Ash,
Where a heather of cinnabar
Freckles the splash of
a simmering tarn

As gravelling Easterlies
Peel the cling of
The verdigris fades,
Some twilight of sepia
Musters the pastel
of Wintering calm.