Don’t show me snapshots of pixilated faces
and vanilla homes with chocolate covered windows
In a stone cold Google street-view
Glaring through your camera clicking gaze
Snapshots won’t tell me if you have a heart that cares
Your eyes are mere windows, introduce your soul
Express emotions for the drunk in the gutter you saw lying there
Spare me your cold faux news commentary
In journalists accounts of potholes in the streets
Flooded by streams filled with empty imagery
Where a glut of meaningless metaphors pose as poetry
Paint me a painfully vivid Van Gogh
Don’t pop off plastic pics from Warhol’s bag of tricks
I’d rather you just tell me than show a painted face
That even lifeless mannequins would rather die
Than be manipulated by the ink that you portray
I’m so sick of it, so tired of photos full of holes
Bled dry of the emotion androids fail to feel
Until black and white is read all over
And over and over without a heartbeat changing pace
Like your wall of cleavage dripping selfies
Thinking you express secrets that no one else can see
Some hidden imagery declaring sex is never free
Somehow between the lines, you paint redundancy
Where prose pretends to stand in stanzas
Of broken sentences cloaked in nursery rhymes
Instead, express your passion and your pain
In a flowing river of vivid prismic dreams
Allow your heart to PEN the words beating deep in you
Then and only then your ink reveals its crimson hue

12/10/2014

Posted on 12/11/2014
Copyright © 2026 JJ Johnson