Proselytizing:
reorganizing
all the flash photography
to set a stage,display a play
where everybody knows the curtain calls are like obituaries,
and scripted dramas
end in tragic parodies.

still your paranoid,
sifting through Polaroid's -
you know it's the pictures that you don't remember
that make you who you are.

so i put out candles and we shout clear
and send eighteen shocks (one for every year)
through a frame that couldn't hold certain portraits if it tried
[. . .to save my life]

overexposure, or underdevelopment?
trying not to dwell on the negatives...
this film is lost in all but the darkest dark rooms it calls home.

still your paranoid,
sifting through Polaroid's -
you know it's the pictures that you don't remember
that make you who you are.

so i put out candles and we shout clear
and send eighteen shocks (one for every year)
through a frame that couldn't hold certain portraits if it tried
[. . .to save my life]

shutter ghosts speak 1,000 words a second.
but the world is not a still life
[. . .of a tranquil lake where a boy drowned yesterday.]

so i put out candles and we shout clear
and send eighteen shocks (one for every year)
through a frame that couldn't hold certain portraits if it tried
[. . .to save my life]

like the photographs where the boy is me.
and i'm not who he wanted to be.