Ken Poyner
I am just a dialogue bubble.
Pay no attention to me.
I express the passing words
Grown from any of the finely drawn
Characters who populate the flat, two
Dimensional medium you hold.
I am of no consequence.
Look at the characters' slender lines, the shades
Of implied motion. Imagine
What, in an expanded dimensional setting,
These simple sanitized caricatures might
Become, what armies of standardization
They might be: what they might
As lucid icons represent. What
They would have to say would not
Deter them from their actions or counter actions.
They would have creases in all the right places.
See: they have them now, as altered colors.
I would be left on the page:
The forgotten conversation,
The lost thought,
The cereal's cry of alarm:
Oh no
They are wicked drawings,
Don't let them gain volume
In your bright and unprotected house.
But they are not wicked drawings.
You will see
That they turn into a straight line at some point:
Their lives are oatmeal and sundresses.
Close the cover.
What I have to say is not worth the listening.
Tom Holmes
"I decided, after a mid-morning snack,
to draw the world to scale. I figure
I can make countries and cities
appear in proportion to their significance.
For instance, Vatican City, Venice,
a place with a port. The places
with healthy amounts of prostitutes,
as they are indicative of growth and wealth,
but not those lady street-walkers. No,
I want brothels with a madam
and young girls - the clean ones,
not the syphilis by the alleys.
A place with industry and romance,
smoke and chocolate, wine and outdoor cafes,
an opera house. Any place I have been
or would like to live or have lived
or would like to die. Nothing
with huts and wooden figurines.
Something to reflect the world
as I see it ought to be."
"And who," replied the other,
"will authorize your map
from here to where they ought to be?"
"Whoever lends the most land."
