"cropping" poems
Selfies,
I can smell the desperation,
from here.
odors of worry;
rippling anxities of uncertainity.
two dimensional,
instantaneous impressions,
pixelated presentations,
and
Teenage frustrations.
up tilted camera.
held against the light,
Illuminating eyes ,
and eradicating spots.
that looks like a good one.
Vicarious representation;
of how good
one could look,
fallible and hopeful.
big bosomed dame
showcasing blessed cleavage,
pulsating the adolescent
bulges.
delivered to
metal passenger,
thereafter shown
among peers.
networked to unknown.
Friends who'd never
met eye,
or
touched skin,
or
even spoke.
self conscious
cropping of images.
fat and fearful.
wasted hours,
dying for love.
False dream of
captivating the messes with her selfie.
The very ugliness
of impressions.
Oh, how shallow we've became.
The denial
of the impact of aesthetics.
laughable,
torrents of judgement
Skinny,
fat,
ugly,
behold their desperate eyes behind the selfie.
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 4:35 PM UTC
There's an awkward thrill I feel
like wicked-wet rabies –
Oh. Ah. Oh.
To gaze over photos of the woman I created.
With my warped perception,
saturating and cropping everything into delicious
oblivion.
I am the knife as well as the ingredients
that sauteed her together in a camera flash.
She sits hot like heaven.
And I want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.
The woman I created, I hang up like perfected rotisserie
and fall in love with her accidentally every day.
Looking into those precisely underlined
tiger-sex eyes of startling navy. Knowing their true dullness.
Hissing at the free-swinging curls
and the hours behind them. Loving the lie.
The flowy top and sleek trousers gliding down lovely as Niagara
over chaffing chub; all hidden. And thighs; unshaven.
And that topical smile everyone likes to see, waiting to plummet
into suicide like a kite hanging in one tight second.
Her image is my greatest
False accomplishment.
I hang my portrait up on a wall of the internet
for people of the world to migrate to
the photo exhibit, my little show-off room.
They make offers and toss compliments
with their “I like this. I like this." nonsense.
They don't know that the girl in the portrait, she
isn't organic. They seem not to notice
that she is something of a chemical flower.
Her face is my face, only with whiteout poison-paste
smoothed over twice.
And they want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.
Gazing upon her believed-to-be beauty, as I hang my paintbrush,
she bites her body still as a painting,
bruised and needled
into perfect frame. She cries
like Jesus Christ, as she is stared at, but not seen.
I am the artist as well as the object.
And the woman in the portrait is
nothing,
but dot after dot of manipulated color.
And we want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 9:52 AM UTC
Spilled ink.
Old film.
Crumpled paper.
The click of a shutter.
Pens dying.
Wiping lenses.
Flashlights under the covers.
Struggling with a tripod.
Daydreaming.
The Rule of Thirds.
Tattered pages.
Beautiful sunsets.
Coffee shops.
Skittish animals.
3 am.
Cropping.
Always thinking.
The horizon line.
The frantic search for pen and paper.
Frustrated with trying to capture the beauty of the world In a small package.
Jun 30, 2018
Jun 30, 2018 at 6:57 PM UTC
Hashtag my soul away, so many can see it
I’m waving my hands saying hey look at me
Posting pics, statuses and videos
Can’t do it quietly
I want them all to See
Envy me and make me their fantasy
A few likes on this post is not enough
I deserve to get liked like I’m roylaty
adore me while you stare at the pictures
I spent hours cropping, adding more filters to guard my insecurities
Before I hashtag it, I dress it with perfection
Cut out any ugliness, clean up the mess
Show the world purity
because if they see the negative
their words will expose my insecurities
Behind this screen I found a secured me
That is the side I only want them to see
So I hastag popular tags so they can all see
The better side of me
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 11:31 PM UTC
Every day around me I realize how lonely my life is.
Lonely in mind. Lonely in heart. Lonely in my loneliness.
Surrounded my muffled happiness of others and blurred out faces.
My eyes a camera, only focused on the terrible places.
Only focused on the things that hurt me.
Cropping out even the slightest of positivity.
And I suppose from a certain angle my eyes will see some light.
But I'm so accustomed to the angle where the room's not so bright.
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 9:58 PM UTC
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo's calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying.
Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples' dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing
For sweet things dying.
3.2k
Two antagonists
joined and evolving...
prevailing scarcity
far rarer abundance
a forked pattern
through millennial time
new century
visions holistic...
technology sightings
viewing through lenses
holographic
wholeness appearing in parts...
promises of science
now simply profound
clear water and plenty
hungry billions soon fed
innovations cropping from
the boisterous crowd...
standing robots astute
heavy labor performed...
global nervous system
growing and formed
by the web...
residue and waste becoming
power transformed...
optimism breaking long
history's confines
questions
large and looming give pause...
the antagonists mentioned
are they soon to transform?
abundance and scarcity
new parents
new consciousness birthing...
awareness with awe
in one simple moment?
ancient spiritual light
is it now flowing
holographic vessels to fill?
what might the
newborn be named?
should she simply
be called... enough?
this name also naming
a bright center glow...
daughter scarcity now
absorbed and lining
her abundant light...
new strength
new vision
a new fork
in our road?
Jun 2, 2012
Jun 2, 2012 at 11:27 PM UTC
fragments of life
scattered on the photoshop floor
discarded moments
deleted before fully developed
urgency depicted as living for today
overexposing the instantaneous
cropping a disjointed existence
from the bitmap of impatience
why the aversion to time's darkroom
where future's blur slowly comes into focus
giving clarity to the contiguous
splicing realization from potential
cut to ending...
a panoramic view of destiny's horizon
where paths converge but never vanish
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 9:07 PM UTC
shakin like a bacon eater
takin down a bird feeder
cedar creatures rollin up a doobie
they be suing me for truancy
I shoo a flea from chewin me
a wrap of lettuce fed us
said us fellas sellin head amounts of coke
we oughtta **** a bowl of hope
my soap and rope fill up my closet
I deposit positively. Stop to mop it
cropping photos,potting soil,oil spotting
wrapping lettuce wraps and leftovers in foil
I'm American and spoiled
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 1:05 AM UTC
On the long continuous bench in Audobon park, New Orleans, I sat watching the Siren statue. Her hand high with proud strength of her metallic near-immortality. Her cherub children sitting on bronze turtles, holding separate items of ritual in their hands, perhaps a conch, perhaps a lute. As the Siren stood on her globe, a murky green orb of a thing, there were lovers and birds, children and historians with photographic memories in their voguishly composed hands, crouching, cropping, and framing images as infinite as the bronze statues.
I wondered.
If our memories were as sound as granite, and our hearts as pure as the water that froths at a Siren’s feet, would we enjoy and enjoin our attempts, our passions, to act as our own scaffolding to our existence? Would we appreciate the small things, pleasures of love, photographs and amazement that only those bound to and cursed by time could possibly appreciate? Have you actually seen the faces of these bronze castings, once earthly golden in hue, but now terrorized with their own emblems of decay in sheen of turquoise tarnish? Those smiles of the Siren on her globe, her frolicking cherub chums with eternal infantile fists and oceanic paraphernalia, are not the smiles we should ever want to understand.
There was a breeze.
Somewhere in the leaves of an old photo album, across the globe beneath the Siren’s feet, sits an island I call home. Amongst them, the photos of the young boy who always questioned and liked answers all the same now was by and beside himself. His smile eternally saved for the memories of souls yet to come, and no less by the loving eyes of a mother, with voguishly composed hands.
Apr 6, 2013
Apr 6, 2013 at 2:46 PM UTC
the sun burns red in the west
The lovers meet in secret
Following their hearts
in the cropping darkness
It is big and brave
For the passionate lover
He would hand it to her love tonight
Hoping that she would cherish it
Even when he will be away
She gives him hers
Tells him "be strong and intact
Return safe my love
I will be waiting for you"
The heart,
That little body part
habouring all issues
Makes all decisions
The heart,
it strengthens the soldier
in the battle front
Singing to him songs of courage
Reminding him of his sweet love at home
Love from the heart is true and passionate
Its different from lust
and is bound to last
The battle is love
Even though the war is different
He kills for love
she is the only thing in mind
She gets broken a few times
taunted by sociopaths
Telling her 'they will never come back"
She has waited for times and times
But the heart stands all the tests
Most of the times
The heart that
lordship of mind and body
Guides everyody
Decisions of the heart
You can trust
He thinks with the mind for tact
but nomatter what
He follows his heart;
even though he is bruised and hurt
The mind fills him with doubt
but the heart tells him to fight
Reminds him of heroes
and sweet **********
Turns him to a matador
the eyes give him sight
but the heart fills him with insight
Hugging him tight
it neutralises his fright
He marches right
Into enemy territory
She is barely making through
They think she should remarry
News of fallen soldiers devastates her heart
Man's strength is from within the heart
Courage is not from spears
Not arrows and swords...
That small body part!
Emperors and conquerors
Lovers and soldiers listen
Fathers and Mothers
They listen to the heart
He creates devastation
Wrecking the enemy camp
As his battalion joins in
His heart moulding him
Into a hero
That small body part
Endures all in patience
As she waits
Saying its never late
...a time of jubilation
Victory cries are heard
Those back are few
But they removed the enemy
By conviction of their hearts
He is a legend
The man after everyone's hearts
She is joyous
As she runs into his embrace
The heart
That small body part
Endured it all
A soldier's heart...
Dec 22, 2015
Dec 22, 2015 at 7:48 AM UTC
I seem to have aged twenty years over the last two
especially since turning seventy - a personal view.
From the outbreak of the ****** virus two years ago
there's been a gradual decline in health for this I know.
Although testing negative in the last week of November
other health issues have been cropping up in December.
I somehow think that my time may be coming around
for where the body is to be laid to rest in the ground.
Morbid thoughts such as the above are dominant today
and with some people they don't easily just go away.
In my particular case my right side has been affected
and hobble around like some disabled person detected.
I wonder how long it'll be before I won't be able to cope
with doing all of those various things that range in scope
from washing and cleaning to the other domestic chores
which need to be done on a regular basis and time scores.
Unless I can afford to pay for someone to help with it all
if circumstances don't improve and my back's to the wall
I may have to consider going into an old people's home
or in some place where you're restricted to freely roam.
Another possibility would be to invite someone else in
that's compatible to shack up with and share the 'load-in'
or even perhaps the other way around that is practical
without being negative and deemed unjustly skeptical.
Someone in whom similar interests and ideals are found
all those things that are decent, life enhancing and sound.
Already it's getting to the stage when I'll need to cut my hair
something I used to be able to do by myself in the past there
but now I can barely raise my right hand up to my head
and the whole thing is a procedure I'm beginning to dread.
-------------------
As everybody gets older and experiences the change
they may notice their movements are becoming restricted in range.
_____________________
Apr 7, 2023
Apr 7, 2023 at 5:52 AM UTC
#I'm as lonely as a station at night.
The december mist and the moon
peaking high over the iron fence
dulled the low volt into weird halo.
But like bats I reap the rewards of night.
The buzz of the crickets rose in crescendo
from the undergrowths around the track
sounding as unreal as the silent platform
abruptly cropping up on nowhere land
doubtful if ever a train would notice it.
*Days are dull actings dancing to strings
yielding nothing to let you know you.
I'm in full vision before the lightless mirror
opening up alone but with the many faces
the dreary day ruthlessly hid from me.*
The mist was engulfing the iron railings
and when a distant engine whistled
there was no track or platform
but only the lone flyer hung on the moon
like a bat glued to the scent of night.
May 9, 2018
May 9, 2018 at 10:39 AM UTC
Grace Before Meals
Sunday afternoon, a year ago.
Early but late afternoon, end of July sun still high enough
to provide a loving and kind warmth through fractus clouds,
But doing double duty and
Supplying continuous eye candy via
riots of razzle-dazzles glistenings upon the prima facie of
my friend, my boon companion,
my bay.
Sitting on a weathered Adirondack chair,
grayed like me, a solitary outpost,
our third Musketeer,
it so belongs where I find it, in the corner of the yard,
hard by a white picket fence and footed by
an out cropping,
a patch of wild grass uncarpeted, we are aligned,
the chair and I, in so many ways,
we accompany each other
beach-facing, one unit,
designed by man but
nature-made of, and signed by her in a cursive, gentle script as follows:
**Quiet, please, for this is
a place of our mutual
quiet contemplation.**
These regal chairs are tinged with green moss stains,
as I am tinged with silver streaks
so we laugh at each other
and we laugh together,
delighted to share
the grandeur of the pleasure of
the exactness of this precise moment.
The bay claps its waves
in honor of the symmetry
of the trinity of man, wood and water,
a more perfect union
My woman calls to me,
supper is ready and
I smell the onions and the raisins
and the love that singes our shared salted air
With deep regrets and promises solemn,
Adieu, Adieu my friends, bay and chair, sunlight extraordinaire,
wait for me!
This poem but my R.S.V.P.
an oath of return sworn,
for I am man, placed here only
to sing the praises of my earthly delights,
my truest friends,
I sing of thy grace,
Grace Before A Meal
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 4:06 AM UTC
Before hearing about your death
I began a novel inspired by you
and your struggle with the truth--
The truth of who you were,
what you wanted of life and of me.
And it became a journey
into the past, into a life
that had happened before
we met, decades ago,
and after we parted for good,
I wove a new life out of remnants,
of things I knew or just supposed.
And like a good researcher,
I told of your parents' failings,
the darker side of love.
Of your grandmother and friends,
and even your cousin who
brought you to me,
Luring you out of the homogeneous crowd
and into our perfect valley--
"the land of spires and dreams".
I even spoke warmly of our artless love
and our drifting apart like ghost ships.
After our second parting,
when you left the mortal coil,
I tried not to reminisce about us,
for the story was yours, not mine,
But I fear that a mirror kept
cropping up behind me and
around corners, erasing mystery.
Narcissus caught me time and again.
Even so, I created times for you
that I had never seen or heard.
I have you swimming off La Jolla,
traipsing on mountain paths
in the wilds of British Columbia,
or arguing with your wife
in that mansion you dreamed of.
I invented a girl you would like
and two kids who loved you
in spite of everything.
Your memories of me became
less urgent, locked in a chess box,
in songs or on film, hidden away.
I analyzed your youth, your vanity,
lust, boredom, mistakes and age.
And when it came time for you
to make a decision: to stay or go
again, either west or east,
I stopped and looked over your life,
rolled out flat, like the American plain
from western crags to eastern city
and like a broken record,
the choice shuttled back and forth,
not letting me decide for you.
Glancing at a photo
of your childhood home,
I realized at last,
not that you had died too soon,
but that I really never knew you.
Apr 10, 2022
Apr 10, 2022 at 6:00 PM UTC
I cut myself
to see the blood
the contrast of red to the white
surface
to check
if there is still a heart beating
underneath the smooth
finish
I cut my children
but they don't notice
it is more like mental cropping.
I cut emotions
into bitesize portions
they can play with
and learn to become good
cutters themselves
My husband is a cutter too
he cuts attention
into little appetizers of affection
and serves it around
wearing a big generous smile
the biggest pieces are reserved
for the screen
and the xbox controller
I cut myself open
online
words gush out of the open wound
luring predators to feed
on dangerous conversations
inviting the Devil to join
as I don't trust the angels
who once lured me into this...
Mar 31, 2013
Mar 31, 2013 at 7:29 AM UTC
Wee little moors, giant over bog,
Sparkle in the lilles, loll within a frog,
In a flash of dragonflies - fires the sun,
All the meadow rising, spirits overcome!
Wee bright moors, cropping round a meadow,
Songbirds singing dear, hummings in the nettles
In minnows of logged pools - reeds set fire to sun
All the gold of fens rising, spirits overcome!
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 12:44 PM UTC
Dear Abba,
To spiritually photoshop, or not to spiritually photoshop: that is a recurring question. I’ve gotten pretty good at cropping and resizing to keep an impressive façade, but the emptiness behind it is the telling thing, telling me that something about the life I’m living is off the tracks. I’m not the biggest fan of mirrors but I realize they do serve a purpose: showing me the reality, the real me. I’m a ragamuffin, always have been, and yet You love me, the real me. Amazing.
Aug 1, 2016
Aug 1, 2016 at 2:16 AM UTC
She’s a walking beauty
I fell in love with her extravagance
Every moment is magnificent
Her innocence is my perfume
Just her presence alone lights up the whole room
So picture perfect
I’m zooming in for a better view
Cropping out the background
Centering my focus
Her mind is so open
Her thoughts are so outspoken
This girl is not me
This girl is who I want to be
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 7:59 AM UTC
She knew so well, she was broken
Grazed by the dark episodes of her life
But for a reason not well spoken
She bottles up her pretty lies.
Too soon, oh Heaven. How do I despair?
Should You becalm the sea, why not seemingly fair?
Questions and tempest, in just a minute stare
All, in a trice, turned out as an awful nightmare
Hovering over the memories, hearts are still in pain
Tears are carefully hidden, sore wounds she'd rather feign.
I knew I wasn't dreaming, but for once I'd like to know.
Can we still dream much further despite a losing show?
Such a lax image, she tends to portray
Religiously, so patiently, she never goes astray
At the darkest edges of her discernible universe
Beyond our keenest senses, she buries a pitch black curse.
Shame on me, my steadfast wishes, I can hardly collect.
Another revolution yet; oh, how do I deflect?
Like a western avalanche, her days came rolling by
As if they're going out of hand, over her head, we can testify
She can just give up, or give another shot, no one seems to know
But in her mind, she knows just why she was there all from the word go.
I know to whom I shall only concede, never to a ruthless battle.
Disjoint, unarmed, I could always be; but my faith, no one can throttle.
And so the tale of this one staunch damsel never ended wrong
She might have had some tough good byes, but that made her strong
Cropping out the tragedy from the frame, she tries to recover from drama
Star-crossed, perhaps, but not til she stops becoming the one tough Andrea.
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 5:11 AM UTC
Man vs. Man at each other's necks
Eight and a half million living now wrecked.
Hero defined as a medal and a grave.
How many souls did those deep pockets save?
So by the end, of those lasting four years,
Many men fought while living in fear.
Did action gain comfort for all your misdeeds,
Cutting and cropping to get what you need.
What does choice mean to men that have all?
Is it just a lark, a game of cup and ball?
Or is it power that comes into play,
To corrupt younger minds and all that they say?
Will the wealth of the world help in the end,
When you're drowning in the ashes of a million dead men?
Your lily-eyed soldiers won't keep you afloat,
As you sink down slowly on your small lonely boat.
So while you sit and wait at those pearly white gates,
Your judgment now chosen, thus sealing your fate.
Blind, controlled and tortured by all those you wronged,
The master now puppet, in hell you belong.
Apr 18, 2010
Apr 18, 2010 at 11:55 PM UTC
I was going to write a poem
about how I stood on the corner after
work, gripping a squishy handlebar with
my left hand and holding K’s flip phone
in the other.
My stomach flip-flopped across JFK blvd, down 20th street, and to that little alleyway where I stood alone for a while.
An old lady stared at me...
did I trigger a happy memory of her
youth,
or was she just smirking at the beads of
sweat on my forehead and disintegrating
soles of my ballet flats?
My black dress slouched over my body
like I was going to a funeral.
And even though my acro class was yesterday, I still felt upside down. There’s no way I could stay in a handstand that long, but I would’ve done it if it gave me a different explanation for why I was so sick.
Inside of me were those cropping rainbow scribbles that I used to make on Paint, you know, the ones that seemed like they could create a picture but ended up turning into shaking lines?
I could feel the lack of your presence, I could FEEL your not being there. As the minutes passed and I kept standing and waiting my face drooped and it was hard not to cry right there on the spot.
It was just past lunchtime but there was still a steady flow of businessmen filling the sidewalk.
They glanced at me but I just looked
away because they were my father's age
and gave me familiar half-smiles.
I said that I was going to write a poem because I didn't have enough energy to do anything but list words,
but I guess this just turned into a ******
one.
Jan 11, 2017
Jan 11, 2017 at 12:56 PM UTC
i never understood why people decided to couple such symbols into images esp. in fictional narratives rather than see the sound in lipstick smooched for symphony; how hard you try, the a to z will not provide you with a mental cinema image of a giraffe; more like a gaff, and what's a gaff in photo? leopard on giraffe or a giraffe on a leopard, because it's all very fine telling the narrative of traffic coordination evolution coming back from africa with the zebra to suit pitchfork stoppages in hay on the redneck lazed walk. the sole reason why it's understood: fiction is the use of lettering for the creation of images, poetry is the use of lettering a bit like a waterfall for a bored emperor apprehensive of the sound of thinking; and philosophy is the reverse of all that, strike two flints together, and enter the realm of ideas with the onomatopoeia of the image - given that onomatopoeias act like surgical scalpels, or a miscarriage of ideas bundled up for something else by kandinsky; actually, saying that, onomatopoeias are images in motion, prior to the movies, when all you had was a painting embraced by a fancy rim - still life of decay of the royal flotilla on the thames with a mouth moving: chatty chatty boor of a bloke who talked.
i see the dead sea when i cry,
and i wager
a salmon with other sea fish cropping up flying
into a butterfly net:
before the assemblage of bacon
into the mouth watering eye.
i see the dead sea when i cry,
and i wager
to have seen a thousand flamingos
strut invoking tide -
on a boneless march into marsh of
a bubbled gill of fish popped for whatever name alive,
or dead in the disco crescendo for a nixon:
tears of a robot had always the glory of man laughing akin;
since annexed was the dualistic ambiguity
of the theatrically mistaken two masked.
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 8:27 PM UTC