Hi all,
here's the text. Special thanks to Sh'maya for his part. It was extremely hard work to incarnate what his passage tees-up, but perhaps the most rewarding, fruitful collaborations I've worked on. Also If you read this after you've read Sh'maya's and seen the image it'll make more sense since it is a chronological follow-up (Words to images and back to words again).
Great working with you all, and having your participation - PT artists and audience alike. Stay in touch:
at verbswish.com or twitter.com/verbswish
In
that beginning was the image
Then
telescopic songs of whirring press lenses throng,
The
zips of their zoom-in or bloom of their zoom-out,
Extending
gasped greetings from beyond many a breakfast table long before the morrow,
chorusing
around that star-seeing subject at the foreground
of
looming storm clouds,
the blush of nightstick.
Each
‘Click and switch’ causes the sudden speed up then gradual ease up
of
retractable scope,
begging
the question, how far back to actually go?
To
capture the whole constellation and the story’s black hole.
Strata
of pixel dust settle as the songs cease:
Here
is the stuff that sells papers
Lying
beneath what tries to stop riots
Rumours
of the latter quelling the former
cause
a bottle to be lobbed higher
Buzzing
through powers of air, becoming dropped spiders
In
shrieking glass.
Pro-paparazzo
and regular chap roll
up
on the scene outside the bank of agro
regulatory
authorities? perhaps so
so
in the moment that their handhelds are
handholds
as
both citizens kane memory and roll, as if time lapsing rosebuds from multiple
angles
the
scene grows ugly. they move in fast
the
pro adjusts her lens with left supined palm
it
sings that zoom-in, zoom-out kum-ba-yah.
The
other closes left eye in time with the slow retreat of shutter
He
whispers a word in its shell like “go
discover”
drawing
in rays like archer with bow,
catching
the light, arrow-like with a slow-sync flash of his own
hungrily
absorbing its main course around source material:
the
stuff that sells papers
Lying
beneath what tries to stop riots
The
impressions of light are holstered
And
biked over to HQ
Canons
are docked or cradled like resting
Titan
of Eos, yawning out dawns that the day knew
As
unformed fables and cold, hard truths
Slalom
through warm cables;
USB
plugs and ports marry;
Older
scoops hang back like plus 1 guests on spillover pews
Whilst
fresh, digital confetti blitzes through bit streams
And
knits back to fabric of unbroken news;
‘new device detected’
File – Open – View… Zoom
Some
of the unsaid is stated, some of the stated suppressed
posed
between columns, the photo stands Samsonesque
as
the debate rages within QuarkExpress pages
Headlines
and text are more or less plaintiffs
Defending
their right to present a full story untainted
By
a picture with nice blurs,
whose
tip-of-the-iceberg, frozen moment
does
not fit the story’s scripture of right words,
cannot
thaw, with the same assurance
as
things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.
I
had not been expecting this kind of birth
It
is another kind of word that stirs me now,
One
constrained by time, deadline and whatever editors opine
is
heard pronounced.
I
am it’s unknown exponent, pushed to the top and somehow always right;
Raised
to a power
Brooding
over the deep of search engines and the summits of nations
That
conscript pictures that someone has taken.
I
have seen snapshots leave grief statuesque or joy contained
Entombed
in frames
I
have watched the rolling stone of video, mossless –
embedded
at no extra cost, yet
Rolling
inexorably from depressed sideways triangle to terminal square
And
yet in the shape of things to come, I sense there’s more that is certainly
there.
Hard
drives to limbs once left me clattered
Now
I am gathered above archives
I
sit upon web servers,
I
kick back on memories, on hard drives;
A
digital immortal upon binary chariots,
zeroes
for wheels, and 1’s for reins
With
Lipizzaner stallions as my companions,
they
are words birthed black and reversed back to white
in
the newsflash I’ve been having:
Where
Chalk dust on newsdesk blackboards has been made
And
vignettes formed by the smudge of my name in previous briefings
On
the blackboard’s corners and ceilings
Are
revealing that I was also yesterdays news
And
a feeling of unworthiness surfaces
My
life in pictures is a flick-book against a thumb with no firm ridges,
As
frictionless as the cloudless firmament
Ever
skipping whole pages, where the storms of shame are most turbulent
Constrained
by time and linear loop
I
have lived such a life in my image of truth
what
else but the Word could take “extra” and double it
And
testify with “read all about it” to
finish the couplet
For
now I am that news projected from news stands
Flexed
in the hands, whilst the charge of commute spans
from
tube and train exits, rolled like a die
from the back of a news van
will this turn of pitch and toss be where the
Truth lands?
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