Frank De Canio

Wild Goose Poetry Review, No 33, Fall 2017

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PICTURE PERFECT PATRONAGE

Prepare your album in a way that, should
a rogue intrude among the portraits, he’ll
appear as someone up to nothing good.
But if the viewers skimming through it feel
he seems to look no different than the lot
of subjects seen before in photographs,
it might be difficult indeed to spot
subversive ones from those promoting laughs.
Of course, we’re speaking mindsets here, not looks.
And those who see the former on a page
that’s part of socially accepted books,
had better hope that mischief’s not the wage
of failing to turn over some new leaf
from it, before their focus comes to grief.

 

Author’s Comment: As I see it, if society were a photo book of people we want in it we should keep a book not based on superficialities like religion and social standing, nor of appearance, or character but of mindsets that mirror the values of law and freedoms that we hold dear. The real danger to society is not the criminal who proves the rule, but those who think they are above the law and play free and easy with it such that when really dangerous people enter the community with seditious and dangerous notions we scarcely recognize them because they fit into mindsets we’ve grown accustomed to. I like to say that the murderer violates his victims; the person who takes the law in his own hands makes a potential victim of all of us.

 

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Bio: Frank De Canio was born & bred in New Jersey, works in New York. He loves music of all kinds, from Bach to Amy Winehouse. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost , Ginsberg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.

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