Photography,
Photo journalistic,
Everyday, realistic.

Commercial, architecture, landscape, artistic,
Industrial, fashion, ethnographic, pornographic.

Big Brother, fallace, stealer of souls, vouyer.
News seller, instant gratifier, man pleaser, woman abuser.

Barthes, Sontag, Cindy Sherman,
Virginia Woolf, Warhol. Weegie, Francesca Woodman,
Leibovitz, Adams, Arbus, Tina Modotti,
Nan, Evans, Hoffer and even the Paparazzi.

Cheap *****, digital manipulator, image poser,
Center fold, coupons, Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe.
Where did they go:

Lifeless paper product, painter's picture mess,
C-type, digital archival,
Sepia, black and white, hard drive retrival.

Image addict,
Image taker,
Image maker,
image seller,
image buyer.

Newspaper, magazine, graphics and ads,
TV, dreams, even the trash.

Billboards, subways, phones and buses:

Utopia:
Surreal, crop, stretched and air brushes.

Modern ideal.
Surface manipulator.
Brain conditioner.
Consent manufacturer.

Oh Photography,
I got you in my eye.
A few thousand dollars,
A BFA, A critical scholar.

Or maybe a nerd,
Just boys with toys.
Telephoto genitals, with motor drive action.
Studio lights, umbrella traction.

Oh Photography,
You proprietor of obscene.
Detailed, de-sensitized.
Court ordered, jury analyzed.

Click, image, copy, edit, paste, print or post.
Myfacespace, twitter, flicker,
An internet media overdose.

Pry, spy, your friend's friend's acquaintances.
Parties, picnics, reunions and shows.
Visits, vacation, style, shoes and clothes.


Pics, photos, images, jpegs and giffs.
Snap shot, portrait, panoramic, Kodak kiss.

Exacerbate:
Divorce, break-ups, jealousy, envy, love and fears.
Devour and captivate society for years.

Slaves to Western and Capitalist desires,
Destruction of Earth with psychological, monetary empires.

You can get used to anything--merciless debt, infidelity, death--anything, the photojournalist thinks as he stares out his open hotel window to the beach where two boys lay covered with white sheets.

The bombs fell an hour earlier. Upon impact they didn't so much make a sound as absorb it, syphoning off laughter over mimosas in the first floor cafe, blurring the start-stop of traffic into a shapeless background hiss. He was out there when it happened, on the beach, walking his morning walk.

From one hundred yards he took in the flash, the upheaval of sand, reaching for heaven and then, all at once, subject to gravity's retreat. He knew there would be a second bomb, like when you're cutting a tomato, and you look at your finger then to the knife, and think, I'm going to cut myself, and a couple slices later fulfill the prophecy.

He didn't rush to the boys. He got his camera out of the bag, grabbed the lens, adjusted for distance, for the wane morning light. Boys screamed and ran. He wasn't sure how many, four, five. The second bomb hit. One boy, smaller than the others, rode the sand upwards and back down. The photojournalist thought he tried to get up, but he wasn't sure.

He knew better than to rush over. An unidentified person pointing a vague object at the children on a satellite feed would garner backlash. So he waited, surveying the slight waves break, the gulls continuing flight.

Parents, people he assumed to be parents, moaned in an unfamiliar language. Their sounds though, both guttural and sharp, said all. He approached. A man picked up the smallest boy, his lifeless limbs, doll-like and pierced with shrapnel, hung off to the side.

He took twenty-five shots from behind the lifeguard's post, using the telephoto zoom. He lowered the camera and made eye contact with the father.

Now, in his hotel room, there's an urgent knock at the door. A voice shouts. The email sends. He drops his laptop in the bag with the rest of the gear. A taxi pulls into the roundabout outside.

When he lands he's not sure if he's fractured his ankle or just sprained it. He limps to the door, climbs in, says, "Airport."

"Maa?" the driver says.

The photojournalist punches the seat. The father of the boy, along with three other men, approach.

"Maa?"

"The telephoto lense is slightly cracked,
But everything else is in pristine condition,"
I said, straightening up.
"She's served me well over the years."
You raised your eyebrows.
"She?" you asked, quizzically.
"Well, of course she.
Actually, Bella.
She's named after my grandmother who..."
I caught myself.
"Oh, you don't want to hear this."
"No, please go on."
I took a deep breath, and continued.
"She was named after my grandmother, Bella,
Who first introduced me to photography.
Grammy Bella gave me her old Polaroid
For my eighth birthday.
It was just..."
My voice trailed off,
"The coolest thing."
You smiled.
A picture perfect smile.
Flash.
I continued,
"My life is a series of documented flashes.
Lost my first tooth; flash!
Played in my first concert; flash!
Sang a solo for chorus; flash!"
"Wow," your voice cracked,
Nothing more than a whisper.
" I think I'd like to buy it."
I stumbled through the filing cabinets
Of my subconscious mind,
Thumbing through old flashes...
"Actually, it's not for sale."

The paparazzi are staked out
For the latest splash trending.
Telephoto lenses focussed
On the door in a non-descript
Neighbourhood.
Eye-Witness copter hoovers,
We are in rhythm with the whirling
Chop-chop
Of breaking news.
Rivetted to our screens.
A door opens to reveal
A dentist
On his way to work,
Wearing alligator shoes
And wollen pants.
We'd hoped to see
A mane boa
Round his neck.

Telephoto or prime
Bokeh or crisp and clear
I can't find the right lens
To capture your beauty,
Sunlight or flash
Moonlight or twilight
I can't find the right illumination
To capture your soul,
Film or digital
Polaroid or canvas
I can't find the way
To present you
To the world
Perfection in my eyes
From within
To your exterior,
Pen to paper
Chisel to stone
I can't find the way
To say permanently
All that you mean to me,
From that second of splendor
The first instant we met
To the ever present current
Sweeping us apart and together
Distant and close
But I'm holding out
For the days we'll journey
Rhythmic steps side by side
In the sand again...
APAD13 - 069 © okpoet

do we ever see the world
in an undiluted state?
i walked through the city streets today
and saw the world double blurred
through the haze of rainwater on my glasses
and the clear bubble of my umbrella

do we ever look at things
and simply see them, without an established frame of reference?
is it even possible to look at something
and see it as it is and not through the telephoto lens of the life you've lived?

does it matter that we look at the world
and can only ever see the things we see?
'is your orange my orange' sounds like a silly absurdity
a quirk of language and the subjectivity of human thought
does it matter there's no way for us to know the answer?

everything we see is filtered through the lens of the lives we've lead
your experiences color your vision like a pair of tinted glasses
my orange will never be your orange
the same way no two things ever truly touch

when you take someone's hand, your skin never really touches on an atomic level
when you look at the city streets blurred with rain you don't see the same thing as the person standing beside you
the important things are not the not-truly-seeing or the not-truly-touching

the important thing is that humans will always try
i will always try to see your orange
i will always try to touch your skin

Twenty seven megahertz. Imagining myself in the restroom choking on a crushed throat. This fact is separated by a lack of sleep and much consumption of eleven dollar nostalgia.
A forced talisman of luck and truth. Like words etched onto monumental slabs of cheap granite. Floating in me, two forces join and near a ******. Above my clavicle, closest to the tainted essence nesting in between white skull and black heart. The forces fall like dead and wingless rocks from Heaven.
I try to remove my phantom from you. I try to put myself in your new shoes.
The old ones discarded with the techniques of innocence and lessons of a true first love.
You glow now. From every glossy cover I see you are strong and your wounds smoothed.
The trenches filled and paved. Lonely cathedrals blossom from your naked body. We all wait quietly to worship and sacrifice. Our scratchings wait and you open your mouth.
You open your legs and we baptise our sins in the crashing. We are all reborn of you, inside you.
Away and always this Hell turns back.

Somewhere far away, MI.

The third hurricane. And the few parts that skip, pierced and questioning. Two kinds answer with the days of telephoto webs, before there was much more to be said.

Diamonds spill over floors, on fingers then become squares from the tub's refuge. Fitting places for best friends.

Seas of sweat sway and break near the stucco. Final snowslide in ecstasy just before the window. Seasons of emotion and music hold no breaths.
The snow searches. Wondering influx.

"Just beyond the lungs, the soul waits."

heavy and slow
hard as rigor mortis
lagging and old
carrying it all on my back
the weight of the world
in a gunnysack

solitary as the cold wind
on the prairie
life gushes by me
friends are poison ivy

I tuck myself inside myself
and sit as a stone
as the moon, all alone
reclusive, shy, and diurnal
writing in my journal

dark and grumpy
clawed and bumpy
drinking from a puddle
head in a muddle over my past
snapping at men
as a telephoto lens

if I flew as an eagle
or swam as the dolphin
or ran as the horses
I’d be less obnoxious

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     Rachel Weeping for her Children

This is spring

There should be inattention in class:
Summer plans for camping and for play
When each sunny day is a barefoot day
Splashing in the stock pond, annoying the cows

Instead of

Chain-link fencing, sagging gates, gunfire
Black rifles, screams, ambulances in lines
Yellow plastic tape, detailed narratives
Telephoto camera lenses, MePhones

And tiny little bodies plastic-wrapped
Carried one by one to refrigerated vaults


(Hey, stud, preach to them about your Second Amendment)