Teaching Kids to Take Photographs

Teaching kids to take photographs
When you're not really sure yourself
It’s more a way of looking at things.
Cradling images in your hand
Feeling the weight of a frame
A picture at the beach when you were young
Hair dappling across your forehead
Sticky from the saltwater
A towel draped around your neck
Looking into the camera

Take that moment, let it sit there with you
Decode its meaning
Feel the result in your gut
Reactions and emotions are all we have
Let’s use them as tools
To write a treatise
On why we’re alive

In the Shrouds of Mourning

In the shrouds of morning, when sleep still clings to you
Do you dream in your waking hours?
Do you see the visions swept across highways?
The steering wheel like a scythe
Music playing, flashing illustrations on the windshield
Driving through the muddy grooves of battlefields
A nickelodeon in your head
Seeing time as something more dimensional
Stretching across years, tears and rain filling up highways
Drowning in rain and memories
Bleared lenses, eyelids wet
Blink one minute longer
Drift off into the oncoming lane
See the headlights on an S10 Pickup
Leave this world on a slanted plane.

The Old Wood

To be alone must a great thing make
The only one alive
On an empty ship
Staring into the grains of wood
On the hull
It slouches one way, heeling with the ship
Leaning over, sides creak
Getting a side view of the grains
Make a statue with its grace
Chisel out a face for yourself
Live amongst the old wood
Read its history
Count the rings in the knots
Think about the faded men’s faces
As they died
Think about the old wood
And the people it left behind.

Kayaking on the Obediah River

Feeling nothing behind as you dip paddle into river
Up to cows on the bank looking at you for answers
You silently let them down, paddling onward
Past wooden shipwrecks
And Irish skeletons
Feeling the wake from gliding water-skiers
It hits you a few minutes later
Like the morning after a fight
The first day of winter
Maybe we are all like this
Not feeling consequences until years later
A commercial on TV in an empty hotel room
An extra blanket
On a train
The empty car echoing back
The voices of those
We’ve left behind

The Last Eucalyptus Tablet

Etching out a living for himself, the illustrious doctor no longer sat in his director chair, his megaphone faded from years of swearing into it. He was out of lozenges, the ones with the eucalyptus leaves embedded into each pellet, he felt the empty paper in the tube and sat back with amazement as he watched his show come to an end.

The circus would never be the same without him, the dancers wouldnt have the same pluck, no matter where they went, and the owner chewed on his wet cigar and huffed a gigantic sigh of relief.

The giraffes in the back tilted their necks slightly, scooted to the back of the tent, sensing a storm out on the plains.

The doctor lifted up his megaphone one last time, took a large swig of whiskey, used his hankerchief to soak up the sweat from his back, coughed three times, stood up and announced the start of the show for the last time.

On Monday the theatre was closed, a dog-eared flyer telling passers-by of the death of an institution.