He takes photos.
His books are filled
With spilled coffee.
Wavy sun ray hair
Lime green citrus eyes
Sturdy safe shoulders
Rich, melted dark chocolate voice
Pouty peony puckers
Stolen lenses
Quirky movies
Oversized sweaters to cover his quivering hands when he cautiously holds hers.
He reminds me of a child's desk
That was personalized by doodles dinged and carved into it over the years
The desk that his parents probably adore.
He is a collage of all the things he photographs.
He takes pictures of anything and everything
To make himself whole.

I avoid the camera not because I can't stand the way I look in the photo's but because I can't stand the way the photo show's how I look. Instead of presenting myself feeling true happiness, bliss and excitement it gives the idea of these pleasantries. It makes it look forced, not genuine. I avoid the camera because it doesn't show how I genuinely feel in that exact moment in time, nor does it fully support the display that I am trying to give out.

The crystallization of thought
leaves behind tiny granules,
like diamonds, reflective and
geometric to fit together.

     Sand to glass
        for a window or
          fun-house mirror.

Brain grains made of waiting,
                                 of watching.
Recognition of patterns recorded.
                Faces in old photographs,
                     "Look! That's me!"
  The big picture, stitched individual pixels,
                             light thru the film
                                     projected on a wall,
                                 fuzz of dust on the vinyl.

          Motes of knowing
                       floating
                                            but tough under pressure,
                                  and in the liquid of pure,
                                                           ­            transparent
                                                                ­       experience,

                                                    ­                     soluble.

somehow I wish to plant tiny cameras
surrounding you and your every movement
just to capture your sweet little crooked smile,
your laughter that aches you belly bottom,
your peaceful sleeping face at midnight,
and store them inside my heart's memory card

I was purchased, used, and thrown out.
I got to see a few good times. Usually blurry or something got in the way, but it was still sort of ok.

The cycle starts over.

I'm purchased, used, and thrown out.
Once again I see wonderful things,
but usually posed and fake.
It was still sort of ok.

Until the cycle starts over.

She scratches in all the right places
When she thinks no one's looking;
Doe the weirdest you'd imagine
In the kitchen, when she's cooking.
When she cleans a spotless house
She seldom wears a stitch:
How do I know,
Get the peep-show?
She forgot the video switch.

Used to be
Click and see
What comes next
Polaroid
Then came digital
Now we can see
What develops
Instantly

She has a bruise on her left knee
reminiscent of science-book nebulas,
and the veins reaching into her palm
look like the ivy vines wrapped around
the old oak at the end of my grandmother’s

driveway. But as she presses contacts into each eye,
her pupils dilate and contract like a camera
lens shifting to accommodate for motion
blurry as her unaided vision, and her wrists
crack as if made of ill-fitted cogs chipping away--

both a tempest-tide and midnight snowfall,
yet the sum of neither.