I keep my walls swarmed with photos
Of faces I no longer see
And places I no longer go
The things I loved I now grow to hate
As always I realised too late

There's such an irony in seeking happiness
From what is now distant memories
And I've been torn away into a loop
Into the isolation of being alone
Who I've become now is still not known

I find humour in the worst times
In the sudden realisation that the best times
Of my few years has passed
And I feel myself fading away
When I can't keep the thoughts at bay

I've been waiting for someone to say
Anything to show that they know me
And I end up alone here again when
Even in a desperate attempt to feel
There is nothing that feels real

The pictures on my wall
They aren’t mine
Made in a previous life
By a man who used to exist
Pictures of places and faces
That shouldn’t mean anything
But glance by glance
They have replaced
The drab scenes of my own life
Familiar strangers stare at me
And I stare back
Jealous of the way
These black and white phantoms
Gracefully fill the room
While a colourful man like myself
Is doomed to play the second fiddle

The unlikeliest place to find confidence
A boosted self esteem,
When others tore and ripped my mind,
My body image,
Bullied as a child and fourth it continued,
It never seized to amaze me,
The comments they threw,
Like stones they did harm me,
My name was ugly
I named myself unique
My name was freaky
I named myself limited
My name was what many thought I was then,
I named myself what I would be now.
I grew then to be the same as before,
Or so I had thought,
One day arrived at my college life,
Your camera flashed and I began to feel
Different...
They named me ugly
You made it feel as though I wasn't
They named me a freak
You used me for art
To this day,
Years after that,
Thanks to you,
I don't feel so ugly
Don't feel as much like a freak,
You showed me,
I can be infront of the camera and not always behind it.
Thank you,
For being more than a photographer,
More than a friend,
You were a boost to this bullied little girl's self worth and self esteem!

-Kathia Mariana Landeros

Why do poets and photographers love fleeting things?
Angled shafts of sunlight piercing a mass
of clouds. A rainbow flashing from dragonfly wings.
Water drops beading like shards of glass.

The fluttering shape of a sycamore’s shade.
The sun sinking into its reflection
In a purple bay.  Smoke’s shadow. The rayed
Curve of a finger reaching for perfection.

Whatever churns, bursts, rocks, flies,
Foams, flickers, roils, evades
In pigments of impermanent dyes
We try to fix before it fades

Once I mourned the endless dying  
Of here and now, the present always past
Elegized each moment, sighing
Beauty is loss and can never last.

But now I think I had it wrong.  In fact
(I learned this from an artist’s eye)
Fleeting beauty reappears faster than we react,
At the speed of a daydream flashing by.

All around, light coalesces into form,
Form explodes into light,
And we live lavishly inside this storm
If we can learn to see it right.

Beauty multiplies, tapering, swelling:
Reshaping, reforming, now familiar, now strange.
This gaudy blur in which we’re dwelling
Is the permanence of change.

(Villanelle)


It takes patience to wait for the perfect light.
Glance away and the image can disappear.
And sometimes the background isn’t quite right.

The moment missed is like a face out of sight
That against all logic we hope will appear
From around a corner, bathed in perfect light.

Or a pause in the music on a moonlit night
When hesitating lips touch, and love leans near,
But voices whisper that something’s not right.

Technology offers consolation in its sleight
Of hand:  Digitally correct the analog here
And now, counterfeit the perfect light.

Yet we want more than the mastered byte.
We want the flash between the waiting and the souvenir,
The instant when self and spectacle fuse, reality felt right.

And so we hold on to what’s passing out of sight,
The collision between soon and too late, the sheer
Thread connecting to the perfect light
In which the background is precisely right.

dozens of lamps on a string, flashing
bass and **** yous hurling in the air
"Cheese".
fifty applications out, no cashing
cold apartments and lots of life's not fair
"Cheese".
lotta pills in my veins, teeth gnashing
at this point, i just don't care
"Cheese".
brother comes out, plates smashing
parents won't share a prayer
"Cheese".
walked outside one night, two guys dashing
bones cracking and small tears and a big tear
"Cheese".
eviction, no help, no compassion
just another Kodak moment
**Say "Cheese".

Some days we are but noise
beneath a silent sky,
Waiting and wanting to be heard,
The creek of an old machine still proving it's worth,
The light of a dying star illuminating the faces of people we love,
Framed, perpetually, by the world.



(Inspired by the Photography of Clive  Roughley)

Sometimes the photos with the least detail, come with the best stories.

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…
****