The Documentary of My Life
July 20 2016


The documentary of my life
will never be made.
And if seeing is believing
perhaps I never was.

As a kid, we had an old box camera,
the mechanical click
that gave ko-dack its name.
But few pictures were taken, and fewer remain;
small prints
on brittle paper
that are fading fast.

Before video.
Before smart phones.
Before every moment
was obsessively preserved;
posterity served
in place of the now,
self-consciousness
in place of immersion.

Yes, we fear death,
compulsively filling our time
with living colour,
anxiously showcasing lives
with meaning, and breadth.

Yes, we exist only in others’ eyes,
curating our brand
to be seen at our best.

Yes, we compete for adventure,
to prove    ...whatever.

Another  thousand pictures,
like reassurance
for the insecure.
As if every smile must be framed
to to be validated,
every second documented
or we question its worth.
While the unspoken secret
is they will never be viewed
and surely not shared.

Because mere possession 
is more than enough,
archiving ourselves
for posterity.

The illusion 
that bits and bytes
will out-last our lives.

The odds 
of cheating death
in pixels of light.

The hope
we’ll be forever young
when memory dies.