Photogenic

I am not photogenic.

A picture says a thousand words,

But mine always reads left to right,

With no good side.

Rehearsed smiles frozen in time,

With eyes that are incapable of smeyesing.

Windows to the soul showing nothing but numbness,

I am not a good subject.

A smile frozen in time,

That doesn’t look like mine,

Tells nothing but lies,

I want the truth.

I demand an explanation.

My cheeks do not rise to the occasion,

And the strands of my hair defiant,

Too untamed to listen,

And too crazy to remember the directions

Can I ask you a question?

How do you do it?

How do you pretend,

And how many hours do you spend,

To look like that?

No, I don’t need make up.

I mean the lies you make up,

The reasons you pretend to have to smile.

To separate my thin lips,

All the while,

Remembering sometimes I feel nothing,

And that doesn’t make for a good picture.

No movie to be acted,

But a story to be told,

I find comfort in real pages.

In ripping my guts into pages,

My blood into ink,

That’s where I say what I think,

Why won’t you listen?

But it doesn’t translate to illustration.

I wish more people would read chapter books.

Find my features between the lines,

Reading between the lines,

To analyze the character of my character,

To learn me and study me,

And read me again.

The spine of my book standing tall,

Flaws only surfacing through overuse,

Hoping you’ll really see me.

Read left to right,

A story never ending,

Shows no good or bad side,

But the details of a life lived in a grey area.

A picture says a thousand words,

But I do not know how to read them,

And I don’t know what they mean.

What am I trying to say,

And what do I want from me?

My guts rip into pages,

And my blood turns to ink,

I will still take pictures,

Because I care what you think,

The real me memorialized by a message.

Pages scattered across a wreckage,

The material is quite pressing,

I won’t leave you guessing,

But to understand it would be quite impressive,

I have an obsessive, aggressive, expressive need

To share my essence.

Please read me.