Thank you to John Page of The Academy of the Heart and Mind for publishing my three poems today.

https://academyoftheheartandmind.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/metal-santas-and-other-poems/

Metal Santas

An eclectic gift-a full mailbox.

The Publisher’s Clearinghouse hope against the statistics.

The unnecessary true name or occupant, who will it be today?

All sorted by good men and women in small trucks.

The mighty flow of ads, a likely stream of more.

The nature of peoples’ ink hidden within the metal walls,

while we twiddle our thumbs in wait and hope for good news.

The influx of Christmas cards, significantly paused in July.

Whether under a round, white moon or blaze of yellow sun,

news of grief, news of hallelujah.

Down the street, the long parade of post mounted boxes,

some with red flags standing with pretension,

looking for attention, and some too shy to show their lids.

Mailboxes-the givers of gifts all year long.

Cultural Spellbinding

How they must have loved;

before the roses turned

into prisons and tragedies.

Each of their ghosts will later quarrel,

accusing the others of loving only themselves.

Weeping together as they fall

from the watchtower of jubilation,

where beautiful birds roosted and sung.

They prayed for passion to be

brought back from that first time.

Prayers for a wonderful straying,

back to that long-belated return,

that sometime describe as peace on Earth.

They dug,

into secret mines of strange melancholy,

in the hopes of rediscovering

the enchantment of love,

love being that other spell

that twins with foresight.

They bore,

the weight of mostly sorrow

while their future was unforeseen,

until they realized that having dreams,

even ones not yet come true,

can guide them toward that happy future.

Motion Capture

The camera separates the real from the photographic,

and stands as sentry between worlds,

as proof that time alters us

with each passing second.

Shows us as static,

regardless of how many places to which we have traveled.

Each of our forms reflecting a unique point of time. 

We as two-dimensional, frozen clones,

images reflecting the reality of that split second.

After those we know take their last breath,

this is how they will speak to us.

There’s no fragrance clinging to the images,

no sounds to pull us in.

And, sadly after so much time,

the snapshots join the space where

old dresses fade in dark attics,

none ever again to be in that one moment.

A picture can introduce us to someone

we’ve never even vaguely known,

but gives very little revelation 

about how they walked or talked.

Photographs offer a nearer view of our appearance,

hopefully from the angle of our “best” side,

so in our consequent life

we may revisit new discoveries of our likenesses.

Some poses will be snapped before the place and time

fall into the purview of our eternal forgetfulness,

allows us to do some reasonable checking

on how we appeared in a photo:

with the sun in our eyes,

or on a dreary day when rain was tapping at the windows.

Motion captured, pictorial immortality.