[Leica] Leicaverse

["Emanuel Lowi" <mano@proxyma.net>]

This is Just to Say

I have taken
the cash
that you hid
under the mattress

and which
you were probably
saving
for our retirement

Forgive me
the Luxus was luscious
so reptile leathery
and so gold

*     *     *

In Salgado's greatest scenes we seem to see

In Salgado's greatest scenes we seem to see
                                                                        the people of
the world
            exactly at the moment when
                        they first attained the title of
                                                                    'working
humanity'
                They labour upon the paper
                                                    in a veritable stupor
                                                                            of
antiquity
                    Heaped up
                                moaning with buckets and nets
                                                                        under leaden
skies
                           in a apocalyptic landscape of slithering mud
                                bent robots ants arms and legs
                                            quivering muscles
                            corpses and gelatinous giants
                        and all the last whispering ghosts
                                of the
                                        'visions of the end'
                           they are so tragically real
                                                        it is as if we saw them too

*     *     *

Wow

I saw the best lenses of my generation destroyed by digital,
        pixelated dotty fuzzy
rolling through the grainy streets at dusk looking
          for a classic image
bluish nowwheres lusting for the 40s Cartier-Bresson obsession
            with the instant moment from the machinery of light
who overwealthy and laden and right-eyed and scotched up sat around spending
            in the screeny darkness of electronic abodes broadcasting across the
unnatural ether talking Elmar
who stripped their accounts to nothing under the spell of Barnackian visions dancing
on asphalt streets lit
            by insufficient street lamps imagining Noctilux! Summilux! Gimme a 50s
Elmar (at least)
Bag ladies sleeping on benches! A parade! A motor drive! A winder!
            Hexars blasting across parks! Nightmares of noise!
Real holy TTL (batteries not included)! Finder flare! Loading like a cripple!
            Down to the darkroom! into the chemicals! 
with the unmatched ball-bearing pin drops of shutter releases clicked out of their
            own souls in just seventy-five years.

*     *     *

With thanks/apologies to Williams, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg