Your eyes are what spoke to me the loudest, as it did when I first caught your stare. And I still fall for your wink and your lids' sweet fluttering, even right now, at 5:22, looking at your photograph.

I crave for the sound of your voice - gentle and affirming. I remember how each time we talk on the phone your words would slide its way down my throat right through my heart, melting it smooth. I still fall for your laugh, even right now, at 5:22, looking at your photograph.

I ache for every word you've spoken, smitten with tender affection, to again escape your lips. I think I've never told you before how your good-nights are more comforting than the softness of my bed. I still fall for your puns, even right now, at 5:22, looking at your photograph.

I sit here two thousand miles from you, sharing the same sunset view. I whisper to the winds to carry these words to you, and bask the air that you breathe with my kisses too. Then maybe it wouldn't be that far of a gap, even right now, at 5:22, falling in love with your photograph.

We revel in the artist's gaze.
See us, artist, we say.
Scale us in the geometry of your sight.
Objectify us, break us down
To our vital light,
The zero shade of being,
Our essential black and white.

But what if the figure becomes the ground?
Does the artist’s vision ever come to rest?
Does she halt the eye’s restless turning,
Instead hunger to be seen?  Fathomed?  Expressed
In basic hues, simplified, resolved,
Into the object deconstructed, the mystery solved?

Spotlight and camouflage,
Revelation and disguise:
The chiaroscuro of the artist’s eyes.
Then where does beauty reside?
In our eyes, beholders,
Invited in yet held outside?
Or in the starlight, sunlight,
Lamplight as it plays  
On the seer seen in beauty’s gaze?

So at that very moment
That very instance
Time was enclosed
Produced on film
Black and white
From an antique rolleiflex

Obsolete in nature
Yet, oddly charming
And on that very parchment
Time was encapsulated
Stored for reminiscing

This picture is not worth
        a       thousand      words
Only a simple phrase
             that  summed    up
    fractions of a second
      
Time was frozen
To a terrific photograph
From an antique rolleiflex

Photographs can't capture
The majesty of sight
The daisies in the rain
Cloaked in vibrant light

Recordings can't capture
The music of ears
Melody of wonder
All I wish to hear

Words can't always capture
Feelings I possess
Raging storms in me
Leave me as a mess

Do you ever just sit there
In your living room
Drinking hot chocolate
And listening to the rain fall on the tin roof?

Do you ever just look at him
And think
Man I'm so lucky
I don't know how I deserve you
But oh how I'm thankful

Do you ever just look at your family
And one minute
You hate them
But you really can't
You can't hold anything against them
You really just love them

Do you ever just flick through photographs
Reliving those memories
The laughter
The tears
The regrets
The magical moments

Do you ever just sit there
And think
Man life is pretty **** good
Your grateful
Thankful
Its all working out
Just the simple things

In my hand
is a photograph
A picture of a memory
A memory I keep clear
Cause it holds a picture
Of me and you

Old brown leather gloves,
Hung over the back of a desk chair
Leather on both, cracked with age
Horse hair stuffing protruding
Maps scattered open across the desk,
Edges curled and yellowing
Marks in the margin, scrawled in ink,
The pen dropped by the well, top left casually aside
A photograph of people unknown,
Smiling by the dunes, beach covered in wire
Box Browning, gathering dust sits on the desk, on top
Of a hard backed notebook, marked ’39 –‘41

A moment frozen in time

I tighten my lens to see her world
more clearly, tiny wild bearded iris
speaking to me in the morning breeze.

We converse in this unknown tongue
I learned on the morning path along
green hills by the sea, a sort of

way of saying things people have
forgotten. Philosophers make their
guesses, ask their fuzzy questions,

but iris will have none of that; just
posing for a day dressed in spring
best, and begs me to snap her photo

as she will soon undress, go brown,
weep in twisted forms of sorrow,
change in a way some day I'll know

You were the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,
so calm, compassionate, and loving;
there was just something about you that made me feel so serene,
you gave a reason for living.

Every move you made,
every word that rolled off your tongue,
words that never made me afraid,
but moved me and had me strung.

With every thing we did,
you always took me higher,
we kept nothing hid,
especially our burning desire.

I always keep your photograph with me,
as a friendly, hopeful reminder,
of what you used to be,
when your love was so much kinder.

There’s nothing worse,
than looking in your eyes,
god it hurts,
knowing that the old you died.

Having you on my side in life,
I felt like I had already won,
but now I’m caught in this strife,
and the fire’s gone.

Looking into your eyes,
I could see that they lost their light,
I told myself that it was a lie,
as if that would make anything alright.

I’m holding onto this photo,
because it’s all I have left,
of the one who made my insides glow,
and my senses deaf.

So this photograph of yours,
I hold it close to my heart and pray,
that you’ll be like you were before,
because I don’t want us to drift away.