I take and take and click
and take and take
and have forgotten how to
give a picture.
Give it meaning and place and confidence
and strength –
give it to you, personally,
and not to the entire universe at once.
Face the picture book
and label one another’s failures
’til the tragic smear of inward spiraling community
sinks in.
Like dish soap on a hungry sponge,
I horde, I soak up pixels,
soak and squeeze,
distributing the dripping megapixels to my multitudes.
“Go back…
No …no …yeah, that one!”
And absorb for one more second
That which we’ve forgotten how to see.
All these instant stratifications
gratefully commemorate the winding down
of a universe that once was
flesh and blood.
Reminisce,
relive the memories that we have “lived”
a mere five second span of time ago,
transfixed in dead dead dead dead pixels
But can we resurrect, perhaps,
the honesty with which
a kiss, a hug, a laugh
conveyyed a memory?
Do not just invest in one another,
we are more than mere relational portfolios,
but give, and give and give,
and label nothing.
Despise the dust on dusty kodachrome collections,
immortalized and yellowed on a semi-acid-free cardstock
waited for in checkout lines
and bought with cash, and “Thank you” and a smile.
And create, if you must, more pictures.
But make the moment worth it,
make it worth immortalizing,
make it you.
And swim against this tide,
this flood of so-called individuality
with such conviction as to pull along the world
in your wake.
Make for me an image
that I must return to at least once or twice,
and ponder anew
what the Almighty will do.
Leave some negative
space in your photo albums,
rather than succumbing to the clutter,
and facilitate the apprehension of that positive grace.
Build something beautiful and strong,
Your Maker did when He made you:
the best that I can do is shout it out
in thankful song.