#bw
Wǔxíng Category: Fire (火)
2-xx
The stainless tank sits heavy on the leaden bench,
Where spiral coils hold the latent, winding path.
In total dark, the fingers guide the celluloid,
A tactile dance within the light-tight steel.
The rhythmic pour of chemistry begins its work,
The metal lid contains the agitation’s pulse.
Cold water rinses clean the silver’s final ghost,
Before the drying rack reveals a frozen world.
The simplicity of where silence speaks in silver,
As one strips away the color to hear the whispers of the shadows,
Where black and white erase time from the equation of a life.
It is a soul where emotion is rendered in a raw texture of contrast,
A world of gray dancing on the fringes between truth and dream.
This art is the quietest form of noise, save for the shutter’s snap,
An alchemy of light where the mundane is converted to the eternal.
It is like reading the book and living it, rather than merely watching,
Finding a sanctuary in the slow birth of a memory in the dark.
Across the light table, the Ektachrome awakens,
A slide of vivid blue that burns the metal frame.
The pigment meets the grain in a luminous wash,
Like acrylic glazes layered on a sanded board.
Where once was only contrast, now the spectrum flows,
A saturated heat that melts the winter’s edge.
The brush of an artisan leaves a ridge of light,
Mapping the transition where the shadows turn to gold.
The world is reimagined through a lens of additive light,
Where the brilliance of the spectrum provides a new depth.
It is the bold stroke of color that shatters the monochrome chill,
Bringing a vivid richness to the structural truths of the frame.
The eye learns to seek the warmth hidden within the exposure,
Finding that the most striking images are those that hold the heat.
Beyond the grain and the chemical baths of the past,
A new clarity emerges, developed in the light of the present,
A masterpiece born when the shadow finally meets the sun.
刘嘉文
© 2026 Liujiawen2024. All Rights Reserved.
Feb 24
Feb 24, 2026 at 7:00 PM UTC
Broken shadows cut
against the corridors
A hand extends up
poetic, delicate, curved
She is leaning against
rigidity, structure, ancient
history, poised like
swans linking necks
In solidarity and confinement
a thin layer of water
is disrupted
by the pitter and patter of children’s
feet
Arms extended out
to catch the wind,
disappearing into the steam
Nov 10, 2019
Nov 10, 2019 at 12:52 PM UTC
whispers are just words in black and white,
so let your voice fill my ear with sepia-tone
paint my skin monochrome
let your words tint my blood with white-out
and my skin with ink.
touch my hair
and rub the colors of your heart
onto my split ends
like hair dye from a discount store,
stain my face
press your dyed fingertips
into the hollows of my cheeks,
because they lack color.
let your gaze
cast honeyed light on my shoulders
let it warm my freezing fingers
let it thaw my frostbitten lungs,
make my elbows lighten
with the heat of your palms
imprint the spaces between my ribs
with the marks of your fingers
like puzzle pieces, meant to fit together.
Apr 30, 2018
Apr 30, 2018 at 6:39 PM UTC
It was all white
Bright, ceaseless, full of possibilities
Then it turned just black for you
Nothing, too sudden, an ending
Now in the gray area
Here I still remain
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 9:45 PM UTC
Behind closed doors, there's something more; deeper than her personal art and healing heart. She's left only to herself. Her head that once was held head, fell and reality shook the room. The roar of laughter echoes and her insides shatter. Flaws are what make us whole. But for her, that's not how the story unfolds. Color leaves her eyes and she's no longer alive deep inside. The photograph that was once painted in color, faded to grey. -c. n.
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 12:13 AM UTC
There is no dust to settle,
Two days from land and we are not ready,
The whole year to prepare- poppy seed afternoons
6:00p.m. morning drunks to corroborate nightmare memories.
Where are the aches and the sick bending bone-like threads of
This corpse who romances sallow and pallid warlocks.
Interior flesh ministries unveil festering ****** horrors.
To not go out means chain smoking reds inside.
Plaster the monster over my face so I cannot breathe.
Then the unabashed words can take to the road with pitch forks and
Long, drawn-out misunderstanding. I eat salmonella for preference.
Ashes and soot and dirt and history sew its film atop every surface.
This is not what I thought they meant by life on a deserted island.
There is only me and I am still curious to see if I am advantageous.
Finally they do not wont of me. This is the sorcery I have been executing
In poor forms until this precise moment of lascivious loathe.
If you cannot understand this I am serving the greater good. It is worse to
Misunderstand than not know at all. Let your small hands to the sides of My face and your eyelashes rest atop my head. Lips inside hair.
With precision I extract pearls from your saltwater tomb.
I set the peas to our bed.
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 7:26 PM UTC
"my mind may be filled with dark thoughts and every turn may be hiding a new demon. and everything i see may be in black and white but it's not my choice. i try to make others feel like the universe is a beautiful creation exploding at the seams with color and concentrated happiness.i may be sick but at least i dont make others feel like the only way to see the world is in black and white. and the only way to treat people is to assume that everyone is a lying son of a ***** and that everyone wants to steal your heart and stomp it into the earth . i may be sick but i'm not sickening."
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 3:33 AM UTC
when mad girls are gone singing love songs
a lonely lass
whose eyes and lips dead shut
lost in a big fat gigantic mess
she lit a cigarette up and all is born again
to put up with the thing she's done
to remind her of who she was
and to take her mind off
like an ocean takes the ***** sands
like an empty bottle takes the rain
like an nuclear bomb takes clear air
like the scars takes time to heal
the world seems to drop dead
mad girls are gone to hit the road
a swift wind from the barley caresses her body
all the stars go waltzing out in black and white
and all the odds left within
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 1:48 PM UTC
I am going to buy a billboard
in the middle of some city
Big white words on a big black canvas:
"Stop romanticizing love."
City people in their white city shawls
holding their black city umbrellas
will stop and laugh or take a picture
City people will walk on by
I tried every piano key and
the door to your heart or soul or brain or
whatever, just won't open
One part of me wants to try my shoulder next
I'm going to start a support group out here
We'll play chess and read old newspapers
A circle of lovely, miserable silhouettes
Complaining about our animal instinct.
It is far easier this way.
It is easier to believe the stories.
We do not know just how wrong we are
But we are vaguely aware.
Someday I'll think back
forget your name for a sec.
Until then I will enjoy
Watching you dodge my gaze.
Aug 21, 2014
Aug 21, 2014 at 1:35 PM UTC