Scenes of Genes
cheese
snap
smile
click
pose
flash

framed
frozen
captured
locked in
unforgotten
for forever

never changing moment
calculus disintegrated
rates unrated
time equated
continuous liaisons
discretely meeting

a picture of a face
a picture of a body
statues made by light
that let us all reflect
as we make light of it
and watch reflected light

growing old
with memories of youth
just like photographs,
they're memories that wrinkle
faded and distorted
non-living life is dead

the moment is now
the smell is now
the sound is now
the sight is now
the feel is now
the taste is now

but that was then
and this is now
perpetually jet-lagged
in the present
longing for the now
that since became a then

a new now
constantly
as long as
you both shall live
with only pictures -
recordings of the past

the moving photograph
of four minutes, fourteen seconds
statues made of sound
that i sculpted in response
to statues made of light
in the little house i used to live in

mom and dad
and brother
aunts and uncles
cousins
parents' parents and kids
smiling, posing corpses