come to pass

Things come to pass.

You find yourself grown,
groaning for the wasted time,
the suddenly, the almost.

You read old diaries,
old aches, old conquests,
old stories, all
like fireflies dying in a jar
with only memories of fire.

Things come to pass.

You trade last call
for the smell of his sleeping back.
Secretly, you love
the ball and chain, the simplicity
of grocery lists and laundromats,
polishing counters and chopping carrots.

You wonder, if this is all there is,
and, in your coward’s loving heart,
you choose it.
You wonder what else you might have done
if you had not.

But everyone wonders that. Don’t they?

Things come to pass.
It isn’t always fun.
It isn’t always failure.

statute of limitations

Others may swear love by the sun,
the stars, the moon, the earth.
But I have loved enough to know
how little love is worth,

how cleanly fever breaks in time,
how lightly one sleeps off the wine
of passion. When the day has come,
how clear the morning. It is done,

they whisper. It’s the truth. But more
than that, it will have never happened.
And, “I’ve not loved like this before,”
they’ll say, again, sincerely, later.

Others can pledge their heart and soul.
I am not one of those who will.
My heart is muscle, mine alone.
My soul is mortgaged to the gills.

And when I say, “I’ll always stay,”
believe me, I’ll keep trying.
But if I say, “I’ll always love,”
you’ll know that I am lying.

the madman in the eyes

You look the madman in the eyes.
You see the madness there, you hope
he sees the madness in your eyes.
You know there’s madness there, you hope

he’ll dignify it with his choice,
legitimize it like a bastard with words
spoken in public. You hope
he’ll make it mean something, at last -

the bruising of your knuckles on a door
that no one else can see,
the constant loneliness, the rage,
the impotence of passing
for sane, for same

as everybody else, who also
looks the madman in the eyes
and prays for intercession.
For meaning. For a moment. For attention.

change

I started out taking photographs of young women. Actually, I started out taking photographs of myself, because I was 19 and vain/insecure (actually, saying I was 19 would suffice), then moved on to other subjects, mainly because it was easier, and they were prettier.

For a long time, as a shooter, I identified myself as a photographer of beautiful people. Models, actresses, all that. Then, I burned out, got tired of dealing with divas and psychopaths, found my time consumed by other things. I stopped working on “projects,” stopped making plans, let my membership in online communities go defunct. The only photos I took were of my trips, and sometimes, local street life. And I showed them to almost no one.

I’ve been making a tentative return to the model-photographer community, partly because I’ve been working with a clothing designer. I like it; I still like it. I like the moment when you catch a beautiful person looking extra-beautiful.

But I don’t like the results, not as much as I like what sometimes happens on the street. On the street, where I have no off-camera lights, where no one poses for me, where almost every shot is a miss, every once in a while, pure magic happens, and something just clicks and feels RIGHT. And even if the picture isn’t something for the portfolio, it’s something that illuminates my world for a glorious 1/100 of a second, something that makes my soul sing a grateful hallelujah.

I want to be a good photographer of beautiful people. I think I used to be. Not GREAT, but pretty good. But something’s changed.

I still can’t figure out if that’s a good or bad thing.

come to pass

statute of limitations

the madman in the eyes

Some people have their finger on the pulse of pop culture. I think I might have mine in its ass. Whatever’s going on, it all feels like shit to me.

change

Chiarascura