Once upon a time
A marriage of moment prose and moment photography. Simple episodes that raise questions without answers. Drawing you further and further in.
Moments seen
Moments gathered
Moments sown.
Naked
He lay on the beach. On the hot brown sand. Watched the young men and girls walk by. He noticed he was as attracted to the well built men as much as the bosomed girls. A stirring. He wondered if others also felt that way. He also wondered what the couple 20 feet to his left, on the lurid blue and orange beach towel, were really arguing about. No one could have that much passion over a watermelon.
Woods
I’m in the woods,
in the sun,
dappled shadows everywhere
the songs of birds
that time of spring
everything is starting to blossom,
the leaves appear on the trees
I feel only infinite sadness
so strong a sadness
that I don’t know what to do
Blue Sky
The sky was blue so blue. It hurt his eyes. He shut them and opened them again, and it was still just blue and still just as painful. He asked himself where he was and then he asked himself who he was. It scared him more that he didn’t know where he was then that he didn’t know who he was. He’d find that out somehow, but that blue sky - that damn blue sky.
Clothes
He put his clothes on, slowly, deliberately, in the opposite order to how he had removed them the night before. First his socks, then his underwear, pants, undershirt and shirt. Finally the tie. How would he tie it today? Simple, elaborate? Or perhaps no tie at all?
The phone rang. Jarring. Electronic. Unreal. He let it ring until it stopped and then beeped at him that there was a message waiting. He ignored that too. Today was not a day for phones.
Trees
He felt the tears run down his cheeks. Fuck. Why now. There was no reason. No one had died. He hadn’t been maimed or shot. There was no reason. But there they were. If he licked his lips - and he did - he could taste the salty tears. Why. Why now.
He knew why. He just didn’t want to face it. That was why he cried. Instead of walking in front of one of the long slow freight trains. Leave the farmhouse, walk through the field of ripening wheat - not yet golden but almost there - he knew what the heads would feel like on his palms if he trailed them beside him - until he came to the track that led from east to west to stand there and wait. It wouldn’t matter if they saw him or not. By the time they registered him in their brains their hands could not move fast enough to stop the momentum of tons and tons of freight. It would plow over him even as they braked.
He would stand in front of that engine - black red stripes - and wait. Or he would lie on his bed and cry.
Hands
She thought it was strange. For a man with such large hands the soft effeminate touch as he carefully folded the letter, measuring it with his finger so it would fit perfectly into the envelope.
She tore her gaze from his hands sliding the letter into the envelope and up his chest to his eyes.
His eyes were also soft. Like those of a newborn puppy. Nothing there to be seen or felt.
Perhaps that is why he had no scruples, and no soul.
Poetry
I can remember how I reacted
when they praised him for his poetry.
He had long hair, an angled face,
and was what all the girls said a boy should look like
he wrote about love and loss and pain
and I thought what do beautiful people know
about love and loss and pain?
How can they say
that his poetry is so good?
Thumbnail
He glanced down at his fingernails. Mangled bitten torn. A spot of blood beside the ring finger cuticle. Marks on the thumb. White flecks across the index finger cuticle. He smirked. His fingers were true reflection of his life. Mangled tattered and torn.
He stopped studying his fingernails and looked across the street. The wind blew a sheet of newspaper up around his arm and grit into his eyes. He stood up from the bench. He was cold anyway. She should have been there by now. She was always punctual. Always correct. Her fingernails - he remembered them beautifully painted and shaped.
Where was she? He felt the panic rise in his throat and tasted bile. He bit at his thumbnail. The wind blew against him and he sat back down. Where was … wasn’t that her? At the end of the block? With two bags in her hands?
Yes. He squinted to be certain. Yes. He felt himself relax and stopped biting at the remnants of his thumbnail. She was there.
Pine Cone
Pine cones
Remind me of home
The good parts
Not the other ones
Pine cones
Close in the rain
Open when it dries
A lot like me