The following poem came out of an article by Kate Bartolotta:

“To me, the most beautiful people aren’t the ones who are “flawless.”
If you have a life that’s full of laughter—you are going to have wrinkles.
If you play, enjoy and spend time outdoors, you’re going to freckle.
If you live your life passionately, it’s going to show.
If you go through all of those things that carve away the bullshit and leave you raw and excellent and true—you aren’t going to have an expressionless, lineless photoshopped face.

You will be real.

That’s what makes you beautiful.”

It’s worth having a look. It made me think…and it made me write this:

Photoshop

Just a moment;

I have to talk about
these “Before” and “After” pictures,
these comparisons.

To the left,
a sister human being,
a brother’s smile.
To the right,
Photoshop.

Freckles and laughter-lines,
hopes and fears,
dreams,
memories,
Life.
Replaced with emptiness…

We should recoil,
for sure,
from the “After”
as from a soul-less body,
an empty shell.

Yet the “After” draws us in,
calls from every billboard,
demands assimilation.

Here we are:
Photoshop Zombie Wannabies
roaming the Earth.

(Old Age –
and what does,
or does not, lie beyond –
is surely not worse than this.
Go on.
I dare you.
Live.)

Ruth Calder Murphy is a writer, artist, music teacher, wife and mother living in London, UK. Her life is wonderfully full of creativity and low-level chaos. She is the author of one published novel – The Scream – several books of poetry and one or two as-yet unpublished novels. She is passionate about celebrating the uniqueness and diversity of people, questioning the unquestionable and discovering new perspectives on old wonders. She is learning to ride the waves that come along – peaks and troughs – and is waking up to just how wonderful life really is.
You can visit Ruth on her website at www.ruthcaldermurphy.com or on Facebook.

 

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~

Editor: Bryonie Wise