"photographers" poems
We want to see ourselves
see ourselves
because we're afraid that nobody else will
ever want to capture us
in a camera flash- so we take our own pictures.
Click. Our front camera becomes
the one minute we had hoped our fathers had for us
when he wasn't busy on that same phone, speaking,
not clicking. Without us.
Or it becomes the one minute we had hoped
that our lovers would hold us
before they settled on to someone
with more likes,
more comments,
more friends,
more happiness...
than we could ever wait for.
We are impatient
like the frequency of data on our profiles:
here are our feelings now... here
are our feelings again, five minutes later,
performing for social algorithms
in place of photographers
besides ourselves who
see ourselves.
But our ignited pixels,
and overstuffed inboxes,
and masturbatory statuses,
and glittering timelines,
and social everything-
are popularity contests
that all of us are losing.
Yet still we want to see ourselves
see ourselves
even though we are afraid
of what we know is true...
...Because what difference
is a poem to a tweet
besides the number of characters
that we wish we had to populate our own stories?
Please let us be different,
just like everyone else.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 3:42 PM UTC
A landscape devoid of transparent eyeballs.
When did we all become photographers?
Freeze fleeting things,
filter clouds, endless beauty a simple effect.
Funny how enclosures feel obsolete—
the graves, the houses, three-sided mornings—
when I am a share, a like,
self-simulacrum selfie.
I stand on a fascinating algorithm,
Below that it’s reposts all the way down.
Share, share a like,
share a googol of happy lives
better than yours.
Are we saying yes
to starting off yet again,
absent this time?
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019 at 8:24 PM UTC
Okay turn
click
Lean back
click
okay let your hair down
click
now show your back
click
Hey Mr photographer,
can I see the camera?
okay here you go,
be careful though
knocks him down
okay now your my model and you'll do what I say!
see my ****
yes?
well start to lick
licks
more in that place
**** it I'm riding your face
and when I pull it out your **** better match my pace
;)
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 7:31 PM UTC
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.
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 8:32 AM UTC
five pm, mid-winter
i thank Sky for taking sweet time.
Sky sets her thumb on the light-switch of the land.
she stands still, she waits.
for the hour, she meditates
on her day.
Sky hopes her skin
becomes verdigris the next day, not grey, but
verdigris to clothe **** trees. Or perhaps she will
hurt soon— Sky scars in
rainbows. Her change of thought: the small folks who have traveled
through her this day. She wonders where
they all
go.
Open your eyes,
do you hear Sky’s mute call?
in her meditation, hour of magic, all
wakes.
on the earth, photographers peer from their windows,
then rush through their doors to catch Sky’s dancing gleams,
beams flash through the tip-top’s of the Sugar Maple family,
their shadows splatter onto pot-hole streets.
Sky brushes her grass and her roads with paint of a gold hue,
fresh Rorschach tests while her thoughts try to rest.
i spot a leaf sleeping in the street, deep wine and apricot,
twisted from months away from its Mother
the wind levitates the leaf—lightly—and the sun
creates a squirrel of it, he climbs the tree, and scrambles over
to me. in short squeaks, he explains his political theory,
“why do you let your peep el let a few rich folks control
all others? why don’t you follow me
into the woods?”
he grabs my skirt with his sweet little paws
but i look up and notice the darkness,
i look down and see only a leaf again.
Sky’s savasana has ended,
candles ignite in the houses, Sky and Sun crawl into bed.
i’ll wait now for the selenian Sun, but i can’t rest my eyes. soon
i will escape with my new friend.
bittersweet magic: “the moment” lost in the sock drawer.
five pm, midwinter
the afternoon is reaching an end,
Lady Sky decides when she wants to change for us.
as the sun sets, she meditates.
some call it the “magic hour”
but how can you truly tell magic from reality?
go outside and see.
radiant beams do the tango on the trees
(a leaf in the street becomes a squirrel as my eye blinks)
a squirrel who runs straight up to me.
“get outta the system while you can!”
he squeaks, then nods at me to follow his path, another blink
the sky darkens, the squirrel disappears.
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 7:31 PM UTC
There is nothing more than a photographers dream
than a sunset over a blue clear river.
Its just on the beauty but the peace you must feel
Your heart melting to the golden glow of the sun.
But its not of the view
to some anyone could a have a a van to take the love of art
But must don't feel the fullness of the work
There is nothing to a sports players dream
to win every day
The fans yelling your name and calling you the because after every goal
Its the beat of the music to get you going
Notes after the other and tap of your foot to keep the play
No story to write itsself but the holders mind
The wonder on the world and people that say its home
The teaching of each lesson to the kids that have brains
The thinker to the doer.
You see there are more to what it seems
It all has its flaws
But they are all the same
It makes you happy.
By Me
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 1:14 PM UTC
"io sol uno."
-Dante, Purgatorio
There I was,
the comic-tragic star of my own motion-picture,
bold beneath the springtime Italian sun hung high
--a heavenly fixture,
illuminating the gold-leaf enframed frescoes in
kaleidoscopes of colours,
baking dry the pigeon droppings upon the flagstones
they smothered,
where I, in all my self-serving recreation,
posed proudly in a costume of my own creation,
an operatic villain clad in a billowy blouse of black,
the Campanile Tower like a sentinel behind my back,
as movie cameras panned and zoomed,
paparazzi photographers capturing me
and freezing me,
in all my wicked, medieval glory,
floating and gloating in the dank aroma of the Venetian seas,
*"I'm the shining star!
--Look at me, look at me!"*
-the super-special star I always knew I'd be,
a painted parody,
a harlequin of displaced passions
for all to laugh at and see,
before slipping silently
into the ornate basilica,
dim and dark as night,
thanking Mother Mary (for nothing) as I sparked
a votive candle's light,
not really sure or caring
where my life would lead,
just as long as the Azure Queen
shed Her Grace on me,
me,
me,
...until I fell
and fell
to the mockery of a home
I made in Hell,
hard and forever and fast,
the only fool left alone in my solo cast,
adrift with no direction,
****** and lost,
me and my frivolous theatre,
squandered an an extravagant cost.
_____________
"io sol uno" means, "I, myself, alone."
This poem is a true-life story.
__________
See the Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy:
http://www.carfree.com/design/pix/sqlg110venice_piazza-san-marco.jpg
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 11:01 AM UTC
There were six horses,
Abaco Barbs - black, white, tan -
enclosed in my Olympus's lense.
The camera reached through deadwind
that whipped the Huey's window,
painted a staggered line where the herd had been.
It was fall 1977,
Abaco's Independence Movement had ended;
Oliver and WerBell were gone,
having run off like photographed horses -
distant, almost ignorant of me (at some point,
they must've assumed there were wildlife
photographers inside Abaco). It was fall
1977:
the ornamental Allamanda still rustled in deadwind;
the starfruit still ripened and fell. It was fall
1977 and that country
was nearly the same as it'd always been.
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 9:23 PM UTC
i got a second hand film camera
a pentax k-1000
already it was slightly rusted
and stained in some parts
but i didn't mind
it made me think about its story
and the stories of the ones who've owned it before—
where has this camera gone?
what has it seen?
did the previous photographers behind it
love it as much as i do now?
whose very hands have twisted the lens,
fixed the camera's focus,
and pressed the shutter button?
who else has meticulously loaded and unloaded film into it,
time and time again?
and more importantly,
will i be able to capture wonders of life
through its lenses
in the same way others might have done before me?
Oct 30, 2016
Oct 30, 2016 at 12:58 PM UTC
I have never been to the snowy peaks
Of sitting stones that pierce the clouds
Cutting strange patterns in their
White vaporous forms
I have never boated through the muggy swamps
Deep within the borders of our southern states
Dark marshes that seem to be made of moist jungle green
With camouflaged gators lurking just beneath
Ready to gobble you up
I have never seen the center of an ocean or a sea
Never been lost with only water on the horizon
The only life left to see swimming deep beneath me
I have never walked the tundra
Seeing nothing but winter’s frosty sheet
Awestruck with my dumb luck
But becoming snow blind
Alone with my mind
In a vast white wasteland
I have never and perhaps I never will
For lack of opportunity or depths of fear
But in your photos and words
I have seen this world
What a gift you have given me
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 9:21 PM UTC
Never Neverland is the place where dreams come true
Where you don’t have to be serious, don’t have to grow up
Where Peter is the one to follow and ensures that the everlasting imagination is forever
You can run around in your underwear and no one would notice,
Go get worms by the fireside and tell them to come play
Astronauts, doctors, photographers are all dreams reachable
In Never Neverland you are safe from teenagers torment
Or weight weighing you down, every time you count the calories of a *******
Never Neverland is a place of wonder, a place of intrigue
And where memories don’t fade, everything is everything
And everyone is part of some huge inner circle
Giggling and building forts
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 5:40 PM UTC
They say
that a beginner
has many options,
but an expert
has one or none,
so I joined
a new website
where there
are thousands
of great photographers,
so, inspired by them
I decided
to enroll in Buddha's self-help school
of beginning photography,
and actually
I have never liked
photography as an art form,
until I began studying
and now I am obsessed
by the actions
of my little Kodak
that gives me
such amazing
bad photography.
Jan 8, 2012
Jan 8, 2012 at 11:32 AM UTC
The fall of the
L'Heure Bleue,
the sweet lights, Brandenburg Gate,
awaiting human kisses,
a Midas touch,
kiss & tell
lipstick stains,
good girl gone bad,
Her,
heart & soul,
written,
in a silver,
streak,
of embellished ink
Each morning, crossing
horizons,
dawn to sunrise,
the photographers
'sweet light'
sunset to dusk
No full daylight, or
darkness,
sunlight only illuminating,
scattering skies
Paris, & Rome
the Colosseum, & the Eiffel Tower,
strike fire & flowers
This blue hour, shapeshifters
black Alexander **** &
Saint Laurent's elaphe snakeskin,
tainted pumps
The darker side, of
feminine mystique,
fire wood skies fade
Her,
ghost remains
She,
travels her own mind.
© Sia Jane
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 8:00 PM UTC
Never Neverland is the place where dreams come true
Where you don’t have to be serious, don’t have to grow up
Where Peter is the one to follow and ensures that the everlasting imagination is forever
You can run around in your underwear and no one would notice,
Go get worms by the fireside and tell them to come play
Astronauts, doctors, photographers are all dreams reachable
In Never Neverland you are safe from teenagers torment
Or weight weighing you down, every time you count the calories of a *******
Never Neverland is a place of wonder, a place of intrigue
And where memories don’t fade, everything is everything
And everyone is part of some huge inner circle
Giggling and building forts
Mar 21, 2013
Mar 21, 2013 at 10:45 AM UTC
I'm sick
I'm sick of every filter
I'm sick of fake photographers
I'm sick of fake philosophers
and Instagram pornographers
I'm sick of the fake feminists
who don't understand the movement
I'm sick of fake politicians
who make no ******* improvements
I'm sick of all the favorites
I'm sick of all the likes
I'm sick of ******* tinder
causing cheating every night
I'm sick of ******* eyebrows
like who ******* cares
when did we become so obsessed
with ******* forehead hair
I'm sick of religion
I'm sorry but it's true
it's caused so much division
in our red white and blue
I'm sick of trump supporters
who never read the news
they want to close our borders
but don't understand the ruse
I'm sick of fake people
who pretend for us all
cover their old selves in diesel
didn't hesitate or stall
I'm sick of Caitlin Jenner
she/he whatever isn't noble
committed ******* manslaughter
yet still remains boastful
I'm sick of post it note relationships
that last for three weeks
it's not a ******* battleship
just make the proper tweaks
I'm sick of all these hookups
it's become a culture
all of these pickups
initiated by the vultures
I'm sick of everyone caring
about what celebrities wear
I'm sick of overbearing hate
that never ever spares
I'm sick of all the judgment
of how a person looks
I'm sick of everyone watching YouTube
trading it for books
I'm sick of all this money
that we will never see
I'm sick of never knowing
what I'm supposed to do
I'm sick of schooling never showing
how to live our lives through
I'm sick of all this debt
that I'll be paying until my death
Im sick of feeling like our society is *******
but most of all I'm really sick
that this list has applied to me too.
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 11:11 AM UTC
Mutilated chains of flowers
delineate where schoolboys cowered;
sixteen brick houses on St. James Street
reduced to red dust under homeless feet;
photographers pause, catching their breath,
spellbound by the neutrality of death;
clearing haze where the white chapel stood
reveals ever-dismantling wood;
the market's one register on a charred-black stand,
nearby derges lilt from a funeral band:
*...oh and as, and as
they're lain in silk and white ashes...
the town broken apart, flattened...
...in marble graves and mahogany
under skeletal laurel branches...
...on down to sleep, to sleep...
...we may walk with weathered ease...
...oh we may consider, may remember,
a granted time, an affirming love...*
Oct 10, 2012
Oct 10, 2012 at 1:40 PM UTC
downtown Toronto
you left me there, last week
I walked expecting you to follow me, I didn't turn around
finally I turned, you were gone
I was lost,
stranded in a wave of people
looking for art
the drunk and high teens walking around for who knows what
causing ruckus and yelling wherever they went
you left me amongst the young and old artists
the photographers, writers, sculpters, you name it
you left me amongst the old lovers enjoying themselves
you left me amongst the smell of cigarettes, marijuana, **** and *****
and I can't believe it
you actually left
you left me on the corner of King and Yonge
I was lost, downtown Toronto
no where to go
I sat down on the curb of a hotel
A couple tried to help me
tried to get me somewhere safe
your hotel room?
no, absolutely not
she was hot, but that's illegal
I'm not legal
and I'm not dumb
I was scared and alone
is that what the homeless felt like?
I saw so many people walk by
no one with good intentions stopped
I didn't look homeless, I know that
kids stopped to stare at me and they'd tug on their parents clothes
...they kept walking
I had to reach out to my exboyfriend
I had to get him to meet with me again
He liked the packed streets of downtown
it's where he belongs
with that stupid skateboard he's left me for so many times
but it's his passion, I understand
He was in his nature, I was lost
"Meet up with me please, I'm scared
I don't know where I am"
I started walking
I had to ***
He found me
But it wasn't him anymore
He
Was
So
Cold
he screamed
"why did you leave me?"
Oct 12, 2013
Oct 12, 2013 at 1:20 PM UTC
Photographers step out of hazy stairwells, tired eyes adjusting to dim light, looking for
their next muse.
“Works of art take time” they tell themselves
they look for the next spark of intrigue, their next fix.
You’ll find them on public transport, in old cafes:
cameras slung around their necks like billiard boards captioned ‘the end is nigh’.
Buzzing with anticipation of their next good catch, biting the lips of their disgruntled
faces like ancient gladiators biting the dust.
Castaways, oil paintings once brilliant and beautiful thrown into apartment blocks and
grey buildings,
ruins of art cast adrift by time.
Haunted by still frames and possibilities, all burned onto retinas, they stumble across
traffic jams;
finding beautiful people, forcing themselves into their lives.
Fleeting whispers rotate into double takes and flickers on the film of a Polaroid camera;
the subjects become muses,
cities are reborn as golden
flood into spotlights:
vibrant, reckless, insomniac.
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 5:32 PM UTC
*As photographers we see the world differently
We look around and see a beautiful picture
As a “regular” person we see drudging task of life
Photographers see a glistening meadow full of white
“Regular” people see a biter cold with biting wind
Photographers see the world through lenses that act as eyes
“Regular” people think all philosophically and scientifically
Photographers think what would look best
A black and white photograph
Or
A sketch that looks like a picture
Photographers are artist and nothing less
So don’t mistake them for “regular” people*
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 2:22 PM UTC
Table,
My father and I sat
In our timeless silence
That brewed away beneath the lights
Like a sweat that never breaks.
Sister and the Stranger
Sat flanked by pillars,
With two full glasses of
Blood-lit wine
Simmering warmly like
Lamb's hearts
Dropped into bowls.
Never do I love my sister more
That when she wears that little fishhook
Of a smile,
A grim refusal of her lips to flicker down,
Making mincemeat of photographers,
Men in bad jumpers,
And garrulous psychopaths.
It was crueler than any frown.
Far more efficient.
The Stranger buttered her bread-roll all at once,
(A damning thing to do this afternoon)
And dinner turned to coffee
Without a hitch.
I noticed that the whole evening was
Done in a deliberately cut-glass way -
Two siblings painting themselves
Into the people they never wanted to be,
To make a bloody-minded point.
*She’s not one of us.
She’s nothing like us.
She’s nothing like mother -
Absolutely nothing like mother!*
And as we stood waiting for the car
My sister turned to me and said –
“I thought my expectations of daddy were low.”
She swiped at her flapper-girl haircut,
“Turns out my expectations
Have a basement.”
We only notice class
When we need to shut someone
Out.
We only notice class
When it's all we've got.
Oct 19, 2013
Oct 19, 2013 at 6:31 PM UTC
i don't want to flatten you out
put you on a frame in the hall of fame
where people would go just to gawk and stare at you
that would be so cruel of me, because you-
you
are so much more complex than that
you are the foundation of a house
something everyone takes for granted because they cant see it
how many times have you slipped out unnoticed
by those looking for the shiniest, brightest stars in the world
if you look for those
you miss the planets
you miss the way that you sleep with a shirt over your head to "block out the light" so you can sleep better
you miss the ridiculous, pleasurable conversations
"did you know that Louie Armstrong would cut off the callouses on his lips with a pocket knife?"
"we should write a comic strip about a starch that smokes **** and call it "The Baked Potato."'
let's keep away from the photographers, the paparazzi, the artists, the writers
you hate attention anyway
said you would rather "sleep on the roof for a week" than give a presentation in public
i have discovered you
but i won't ever tell
the books will not mention you
there will be no statues of us
but the ones we build with sugar cubes on the privacy of our own kitchen table
where messes like us can be swept away and kept in no other place than our memories
and the storage on my phone
i will memorize the lines on your torso and back
but children will never study you in geography, they will never be asked the year you were born or at what latitude and longitude your chest muscles meet your abdominals
a search on Google will pull nothing about you
you remain undiscovered
to all
but me.
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 2:43 PM UTC
Sins of the father,
Wrought perfection among the world,
In ways I feel farther,
From where the rest unfurled,
Colors are more vivid,
Life is now peak experience,
The people are livid,
But men will take chances,
Among rolling hills,
And steep cliffs,
Into the nine hells,
Just to procure these gifts,
To create the song of progress,
And sing it from their peaks,
Where parasites arrest,
But with knives and leeches the hosts will leak.
The sunlight warms our skin,
And generates life,
And blights are gems we force to glint,
The straightest of diamonds are forged in strife,
Cut in sharp language,
Originating in the furnace of others,
Whether in joy or anguish,
The culmination of lovers,
The poets of life,
The artists of death,
Photographers of honor,
And authors of theft,
The illustrators of ethics,
Profanity’s architects,
Gaia’s ventriloquists,
And the firstborn’s defects.
Formulated impressions have no need to advance,
The darkness of these times,
Warrant no more than slight glance,
If mimes have nothing to say,
We’ll burn the sky as they dance.
This is the letter home from the warrior,
And the drunken hubris of a poet,
The weathered steps of the courier,
And those he had met in his journey,
Whether or not they knew it.
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 2:12 AM UTC
Not all photographers can shoot forever,
Not all writers can write forever,
Not all artists can be in love with art forever,
One thing's for sure, art will be there forever
Though artists may lose interest,
Though they may run out of ideas
Though they may get crippled by old age
Art will remain, in their hearts, minds and souls
Though musicians can fall deaf,
Though singers may turn mute,
Although we all start to fade,
Art will always be there powered by our love
I may one day lose the capability
To write my poems in pen and paper
But the art will forever remain
In my mind, in my heart, and in my soul
Art is the fuel that keeps me running,
Art is my life.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 1:54 PM UTC
All of the Richmond Hipsters
and time killing smokers are killing me
The hobos with broken thumbs
They just barely catch the bus
Late nights under the eastern stars
The City of almost-angels
beards and gauges and butts
Tatted up art chicks with more skin than clothing
Invite me over your threshold
Make me some supper, the coffee is in the ***
River tides carrying away the used condoms of the confused
Liquor breath, joints and e-cigs
Poets, painters, photographers
The air reeks of art and death
fist meets face meets pavement meets God
The good times are killing you, and I’m showering until the water runs cold
cough up my phlegm, it tastes like love
grinding against a stranger’s *** all night long - like it was all we knew
We couldn’t feel so we tried to touch
we fell short and drank from the puddles with gasoline rainbows
The bricks and cobblestones all have names that I will never know
Does anybody ever actually listen?
Life versus fun versus life versus death versus boring
Stack them up like tetris
The sun is sick with stories, the moon full of lies
And all the graffiti in the world won’t change that
snow sun rain sun blank canvases
hear the thunder of arrhythmic heartbeats
sweat drips and it tastes like ****
Black eyes on Bowe, black eyes on Goshen
Mad houses filled with gifted pianists
Ghetto driven dreams of another shot
Play that same acoustic guitar tune I like so much
I lost my harmonica in a storm drain
I lost my Mind in Richmond
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC