A girl and a boy
Holding hands for public inspection.
In an upstairs room,
Middle-age
Sweating toward failure.
Two dogs in heat.
An old woman
Buying potatoes -
The dirt starves her tapeworm.
A kid on a bicycle
Licking a hypodermic.
The hang-man having lunch
On a construction site.
A poster:
The end of the Dow-Jones index is nigh.
The sky:
A million times over-exposed.

Publication details:"Freeze Frames" was first posted on the Internet on 02 March 2003. Copyright © 2003 Hugh Cook. All rights reserved. Note: this poem was written in London during the Cold War, back when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America.