Say Cheese

We went for drinks mid afternoon at a usual hideout after one of her photography sessions
only she never put her camera away behind the familiar bright accent
so
the jukebox played away whilst knocking down pints,we hummed along as conversations twisted and convoluted into obnoxious laughs added to the two finger sign not for peace but bring two more pints of liquid art to the two maniacs on the end and add them to the pile of fast pass discussion glasses for it’s been a while and we have many important matters to speak on such as how to trick people into letting Monty Python’s god be stained window art in their chosen prayer domiciles
And all the drink flew away with the train cars of lost words into the evening street
Now being the quick artistic type,the camera was snapping the whole time as the mouth marathon went on and on
I fell right into the boat with my dear old shark mouth chomping with her Tipperary bit
We were only friends or just older souls who knew too much about nothing and the entire universe
the stills of my own face mid sentence,gesturing and laughing twists the uncomfortable nerve
for the life of me I can not tell you what type of dribbling nonsense I was on about as the sneaky camera caught it as the honesty ran away with the sincerity down to Ave.A and caught a cab
the mirror only answers to holder
and a camera catches the smallest angles of ourselves that only we know are true

Ode

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamer of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties,
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration,
Is the life of each generation.
A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible seeming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising.
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man’s soul it hath broke,
A light that doth not depart
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man’s heart.

And therefore today is thrilling,
With a past day’s late fulfilling.
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for it’s joy or it’s sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing;
O men! It must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry-
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God’s future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the corners
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,
And things that we dreamt not before;
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy