Short Nikon Poems

I kept the inner workings,
kept the plastic furniture
while it cracked
into multidimensional bones.
I kept (in part),
the whir of its mirroring mind.

Of course, the viewer has dimmed out
nothing in the camera fully develops,
yet images emerge.

I can catch the blurry taillights of stars,
find my way through a long-burnt corn field,
photograph photographs
yet to be imaged.
...

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Why am I drawn
to this scowling girl
selling her poems
in a Shinjuku underpass?

Every Tuesday she is here,
next to a Nikon ad,
threatening commuters
with her cyclostyled angst.

Busy people keep up
with the times,
do a tap dance
on their smartphones.

Only drunks buy poetry.
Grubbing for their last,
sweaty coins, they
mock her with every purchase.


First published in Eclectica Magazine...

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The stock of the rifle is hand-selected walnut.

I dust a beautiful porcelain lady.

My Nikon needs to be taken out of its case
like a coal black memory.

I pick up a quartz crystal,
put it to my eye
don't know why.

I drive out at night
with no aim or destination.

I go to the Oriental grocery emporium.
Cooking into the unknown
is my space travel.

These things I do are tramlines,
These things I do are rituals
for the safe-side of my mind....

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Late in the afternoon,
long shadows drive in-roads,
between paths of sunlight.

Got my Nikon on.
Locked and loaded.

The white tail just came too close,
got him!
Man did he fly when he heard,
the whir and click of a live camera!

Shot him startled and looking,
shot him leaping.
Took him down
as he disappeared
back into the deep woods.

Man,
I think I will hang
his big old beautiful head
on a wall,
somewhere at the back of my brain
forever.

...

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