Notice of absence from Tristan Robert Lange
Life is full of seasons. This is a season of transition for me, where I will be moving with my family to a new location. As such, with much logistics to consider, I am doing my best to keep up. Please know if I accidentally don't respond, it is not because I am ghosting or becoming distant. Once things settle after the move, I am sure life will return to some normalcy. In the meantime, and always:
Read 👓, Write ✍️, Rise 🌅, Realize 🤯.
Tristan 🌹🖤🙏🕯️🐦⬛
Life is full of seasons. This is a season of transition for me, where I will be moving with my family to a new location. As such, with much logistics to consider, I am doing my best to keep up. Please know if I accidentally don't respond, it is not because I am ghosting or becoming distant. Once things settle after the move, I am sure life will return to some normalcy. In the meantime, and always:
Read 👓, Write ✍️, Rise 🌅, Realize 🤯.
Tristan 🌹🖤🙏🕯️🐦⬛
SNAPSHOT
year
book
compiled
nineteen ninety-five.
flat-top, spiked
strawberry-kissed, blonde
america’s average surface:
kid, teen, nice
warm
smile
drawing attention
away
from
void verified eyes
the caution no disguise
for the forced lie
coming through—like lye—
the frozen teeth of
a snapshot smile
within a book
year-dated
nineteen ninety-five
SNAPSHOT
a spring thing
gathered
back porch steps
sister looking inside
grass stoked
bloodshot eyes
blazing smoke spiriting
in wisps around...
friends?
a few now,
even fewer then.
looking back
at young me
looking down
a little bit of company
yet no one really
ever
around.
SNAPSHOT
Kodak disposable
not feeling too posable
still lights, camera,
yeah,
cheese.
i want to hang myself
will you help me please?
a pitter, a patter,
smoked some pcp
became the mad hatter
in fact, even radder,
fell down the ladder
with a gigantic clatter.
long hair outgrew a bowl
smoked that all up
up in smoke,
nothing left to roll,
fuck the bowl
crush these pills
ouch...
that stuck to my throat!
call me the goat
as i bleat mucus out
where’s that sheet?
fuck it!—can’t stand this heat!
summer’s over
life more incomplete
progression not the fix—
age didn’t stop the torrential drive—
those haunts followed me past
nineteen ninety-five.
© 2026 Tristan Robert Lange. All rights reserved.
First published on tristanrobertlange.com, June ??, 2026.
Tittu
-
Author:
Tristan Robert Lange (
Offline) - Published: June 17th, 2026 11:19
- Comment from author about the poem: Part of The Mind’s Maze collection.
- Category: Reflection
- Views: 14
- Users favorite of this poem: Teddy.15, Paul Bell
- In collections: The Mind's Maze.
Offline)
Comments8
What an amazing piece of reflection, kudos on being so brave to post your young self... 🌹the madness of growing up. 💜
Teddy, thank you so much for that. 💜 There is definitely a certain madness to growing up...especially when you're carrying things nobody else can see. Looking back through those old snapshots now, I can see far more than I ever recognized in the moment. Strange how time changes the picture without changing the photograph.Thank you again, my dear friend. 📸🖤🙏🎞️
💜
a great write on such complexities of youth.
Thank you so much, Norman. 🖤 Youth really is full of contradictions...confusion, discovery, mistakes, survival, and a lot of pretending everything is fine when it isn't. Looking back through those snapshots now, I can see how much was happening beneath the surface. 📸🖤🙏🎞️
much enjoyed read
The year you first knew of Popeye?! lol.
Orchi, lol! 🤣 Ahhh, so Popeye is the culprit! That explains everything. One minute I'm minding my own business, the next thing I know I'm tumbling through adolescence, making terrible decisions, and ending up in a poem thirty years later. "Glug," says he...before disappearing into a vat of suspicious spinach pudding and leaving the rest of us to deal with the consequences. Argh! 😆 📸🖤🙏🎞️
It's always his fault - is it?! lol.
A nostalgic look back to days of schools graduation and dying youth. Memories frozen in snapshots. A time of drugs and yet the year of graduation is not the end. It has a feeling of young life now gone but yet not. Well written my friend
Thank you, Soren. 🖤 You put your finger on something important for me here...those moments are frozen in place, but life kept moving long after the picture was taken. The younger version remains trapped in the frame while the rest of us keep carrying the story forward. Grateful as always for your thoughtful visit, my friend. 📸🖤🙏🎞️
You are most welcome Tristan
I love Alice Cooper's Album 'School's Out'. Always reminds me of leaving School.
Good Write.
Kevin, thank you, my friend. 🖤 Haha, that's a great association. For a whole generation, that song practically became the unofficial anthem of escaping classrooms and looking toward whatever came next. Here's to Alice! Rock on mate! Much appreciated! 😄 📸🖤🙏🎞️
Thank you, my friend. 📸🖤🙏🎞️
Reminiscent hindsight. Excellent hairstyles as well. 🙏🏻🕊️
P.S. was there a background sound effect of a colour slide carousel? (it's meant to be the SNAPSHOT in the transcript, correct?)
Arqios, thank you so much, my friend. 🙏🏻 Haha...the hairstyles definitely earned their place in the record. As for the sound effect, yes...you caught the gist of it. The repeated "SNAPSHOT" is intended to function like an antique camera shutter or the clicking through an old carousel of slides, each image revealing another piece of the story. Really glad that came through and it sure beat saying, "SNAPSHOT" loudly at the mic in all caps. 🤣 📸🖤🙏🎞️
What would we change in our past, probably everything.
If we could, we'd tweak here, tweak there, tweak everywhere.
Always think, as long as you only murder yourself in your youth, the courts can't jail you.
Paul, thank you, my friend. 😄 There is definitely some truth in that. Looking back, most of us can find a hundred things we'd tweak if given the chance. Thankfully, youth tends to survive decisions that wisdom never would have approved. 📸🖤🙏🎞️
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