Hold the tiller fast
As grey gulls surf
The unseen wave
Leeward of the mast
And I at peace
In my dead reckoning
Far between the harbours
Of duty and burden
Riding the tide of release
The camera never lies
But the photographer
Knows how to fib
And should I find
A mountaintop
Who’s to say
I find the one
Reserved to some
Refused to those
Who’ve never known
The pinnacle
But I this beauty’s grunge perceive
Projection of my ego’s fear
So let such love that cannot be
Reveal my weakness to be clear
Reveals a jagged truth
Painful and disturbing
Integrity’s challenge
Never are we more beautiful
Than when we conquer
The falsehoods of our fears
I linger here
Instead the heated hearth of home
Frigid fingers upon my camera work
Until chill moment captured thus
By an eye that cannot shirk
In the infinity of moments passing
Before a moment could be noticed
What choice was there but to be
Though such was not a choice
In the next infinity of moments passing
Before a moment could be valued
What choice was there to be good
What choice was there to be evil
So I wonder if
Somehow
The more we choose to value
The less we choose to be
The more good and evil we create
Out of the nothingness of being
Which preceded time
Some might say
Dark times ahead
But unknowns
Are not darkness
One hand holds the chalk of light
While the other clears the slate
Upon the dark revealed we write
With clarity our fate
She shook a little with her distress
Speaking between tightened lips
Just barely containing a primal scream
I don’t mind the old-Earth tenements
Their utilitarian simplicity
But why does every other building
Have to look like the cover
Of an Arthur C. Clarke paperback
Couldn’t we come up with
A more interesting ‘future’
Than one dreamed up by hack illustrators
Over two centuries ago
Jinessa was just getting started
When she goes full rant
You can either cower and exit
Or saddle up and ride it for the eight count
I struggled to get a foot in the stirrup
As her exasperation rose
Oh my gawd
But it feels like someone
Stripped the life out of the colour wheel
I mean I get it
Proxima is not good old Sol
But why does it have to suck
All the juice out of orange
All the indigo out of the sky
All the crimson out of my hair!
She’d wanted the change
As much as I did
Coming here was her idea
It took most of our combined savings
And a serious cut in our lifestyle
To pull it off
Those tenements she mentioned
Were functional and clean
But hardly the standard she’d lived in
All her deeply privileged existence
And why does the atmosphere have to smell
Like fucking plum pudding
What is up with that
Even a hamburger tastes like
A sickeningly sweet yet
Gaggingly pungent holiday desert
Why doesn’t it explain all that
In the brochures
How was it kept out of the news
But life with Jinessa was a bit of a rodeo
Whether it was staged here on Proxima b
Or back on Earth
Truth is I love this most about her
Well not so much the ranting
Pix to Words 