Categories
Photography Poetry Writing

August 9, Side A

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Rum Runners took this road South to the border.
Wheels of trucks passed through, chocked full of soldiers.
Band wagoners jumped off trains to escape the draft.
Shady men smoked weed under street lights and shared a drag.
The Prime Minister drove past this road once and did not remember.
The whole community gathered to follow a hearse in mid-September.
Whites pelted tomatoes when a store was bought by Negros.
They offered cheap goods and after a while no one complained.
Plans to build a college failed because of the city.
Janey kissed a girl and then married into money.
A once drunk man found Jesus on a stop sign.
He tried to warn the people but no one had the time.
Rain swept slippery where the Honda slammed the Chevy.
Flowers and a sign that said “You’ll never be forgotten, Janey.”
They still come to put them under the only street light that flickers.
Make sure the flowers are replaced before they wither.
Low res photos to show a plain street at night.
Repaved cracks like scars tell a story trying to hide.

Rain soaked streets illuminated by an evening sun about to go down.
Humidity that pulls at the unwashed hair on your head and eyebrows.
Everything feels stiff and dirty.
Everything seems to bite.
It is in this moment that we’re truly aware of our age.
Tired and lazy and weary, waiting for the day to turn to dusk.

By Ashish Seth
https://twitter.com/TheAshishSeth

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Categories
Photography

July 25, Setting

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By Ashish Seth
https://twitter.com/TheAshishSeth

Categories
Photography Quotes Writing

May 4, Fallout Shelter

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Hulk SMASH!

By Ashish Seth

Categories
Photography Quotes Writing

Feb 24, Terry Fox Strip

When I’m around you. When I’m around me.

By Ashish Seth

Categories
Issues Photography Writing

Feb 21, Global Warming

A highly viscous cloud drips rain in long drops like honey from a jar or maple sap down a tree trunk.

By Ashish Seth

“Haters gonna hate but I’ll still create. I don’t give a fuck.”

Categories
Photography Writing

Feb 18, A Flower Sprouts and Blossoms

A flower sprouts and blossoms. The sunshine radiates energy into it. Once the flower’s petals, a dark lipstick red, blossom out as far as they can, a bumble bee with yellow and black stripes lands on one of the petals. It creeps inside the fragile shell casing of the petals in slow movements and starts pollinating the flower. The whole process is like sex. After it’s finished pollinating the flower, the bee buzzes away. For a while the sky is blue and the sun shines but over a course of some time, dark dense grey clouds come from the east and cover up the sun. A mountain overlooks the field upon which this and many other flowers sprout. Thus, slowly the rain clouds build. Thunder shakes the ground. Lightning strikes in the distance at the edge of the horizon, where the land meets the sea. And then, everything becomes calm. Calm. A soft flutter of wind breezes the flower. Its petals shake, like armor plating. They unhinge. Loosen up. The green stem of the flower bends as the wind gets stronger and the sky gets darker. And in the sea of flowers, all of them are silent. All of them wait.
A droplet of rain hits a petal of the flower. The drop of water seeps in between the petals and goes into the flower. More droplets fall from the dense sky and soon all the petals on the flower are soaked, the rain water bleeding a darker hue of red, making some petals opaque, filling their veins, bursting their organs, making them droopy. Some flowers in the field of flowers will be smitten down by the rain, stamped to the ground and into the soil. Some flowers may even be severed from their roots, chopped in half at the stem. All of them will let loose some of their petals, even the ones that survive the onslaught; there will be an incredible blowing of petals and pollen in the direction of the wind, and for a while at a certain time and place on a certain position on the face of the earth, there will be nothing but the site of petals moving across the wind like locusts in the desert. A mass of red across the plain.
Our precious flower did not survive this onslaught. Instead, the pollen became a passenger to the wind and traveled across to the other side of the mountain. And by a river, around some trees, perhaps beside a bush, another flower of red petals will bloom.

By Ashish Seth

Categories
Writing

Feb 16

Walked down Bramalea street, kept my phone out of the rain, followed the trail of coffee cups, a plaza in the distance. Saw a dead bird on the curb covered by a McDonalds brown bag, reached Brampton hospital instead, went inside and started following signs, saw a man in a stretcher with his head cracked, bleeding, kept asking his brother to check his phone for emails. Finally got to the main entrance and had a double double with some grapes and waited for my father’s Honda Accord.

Ashish Seth