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Showing posts from April, 2011

Whispered

Look at this. It's a picture of me, 12 years old, completely sullen. Knowing that someday I would break out of that, but not knowing when. How many hours had I spent waiting in purgatorial corridors? Touching decay, befriending dark walls. I thought I had heard it whispered, once, that my time would come. And now these hands beckon me, stepping through Time's tunnel, strangely seeing that light that everyone claims is there when they are knocked unconscious. These people have it all marked with me. But there was no script, no plan for this. I walked it on my own. I walked until I stopped to embrace people on the way. This was whispered to me, once, but I mostly ignored it. Who knew that I would get my peace, my happiness, that one day I would be equaled in those who poured themselves out to the world? But it happened. What was whispered became true. I remember when people used to tell me "You should smile more." I have finally started doing that. There is sun on my fa...

Hotel- 4. (Funny, business)

She was not new to going to strange mens' rooms. But this was different and mildly silly. "You know, I expected him to be down here in the lobby." "Yeah, this is kinda shady..." she chuckled. Tim walked up to the concierge's desk. "I'm looking for a Mr. W. Svenson." Jake shifted his weight. He wasn't usually here at this hour. His eyes met hers and there was a scared, uncomfortable moment. Wasn't she the one who was always going around with that guy who lived in 312 and all sorts of other men? Jake cleared his throat. "Ok, one moment." He called up. "Mr. Svenson? You have some guests in the lobby to see you." A few seconds. He hung up. Another man was in the elevator when they got in. She and Tim giggled at the awkwardness. Considering her job, she should have learned to ignore that sort of thing by now, like smelly gym socks in a corner somewhere, but it was just too random. "So you think I should s...

Hotel- 3. (or, I replaced your orange juice with liquid LSD)

"Shit. Shit shit shit shit," cursed Jake. He threw his pen away from his drawing across the desk and ran outside. The bum clearly had a head wound. It was bleeding a hell of a lot. He was completely laid up on his back. Pupils did not seem to be rolling back in his head. He was just out cold, with open eyes. And bleeding. "Hi, 911? It looks like there's a transient passed out on the sidewalk connected to our property. He appears to have a really terrible head wound." Jake gave them the address. He hated dealing with crisis situations, though he had to do it on a fairly regular basis. It seemed like 15 minutes before the ambulance got there. He fumbled with the crumpled-up pieces of paper and rosary in his pocket. Jake felt ineffectual. The bum seemed to be coming to on his own as the medics showed up. They tried to get his information and tried to get him to talk straight. Eventually they hauled him away. Jake shook his head and shuffled back inside to his...

Untitled

I don't want to give them morsels by which they think they can read me. No legends by which to interpret and misinterpret me, constantly. But some cling to my every word anyway. It's disembodying and discombobulating. Incredible distortions in peoples' field of vision when they are blinded to the important things. But maybe I am wrong, and none of it is that important. Dizzy spells, dizzy spells, you overwhelm me with dizzy smells.

Hotel- 2.

She closed her eyes and cocked the gun as he strained and moaned. It sometimes took a lot for her not to laugh at inopportune moments. The alarm went off. "Time's up, fuckhead," she said with a brotherly chuckle. He lay there panting. ---------- The man in the fuschia suit was always outside smoking. Jake had seen him countless times that weekend. "Who the fuck wears a fuschia suit," he muttered to himself behind the desk. He would put money on the fact that this guy was a tweaker. He couldn't tell what his age was. Jake went back to his sketching. This time it was a strange, Boschian fish-bird that had been emerging. He wondered about the symbolism. He'd always liked Bosch's art and had wondered about all the alchemical mysteries in it. Sometimes during the graveyard hours, he'd play solitaire, or flick each card in the deck across the room by squeezing it vertically between his thumb and index finger until it snapped out. Jake always ...

Hotel- 1.

She walked up to the counter. "I need a room for the night." "Sure." John took out his credit card. Jake processed everything, knocking his doodlings off of the desk accidentally. She stared, looking distant. "Room 312." Jake handed over 2 sets of keys. -------------- Jake listened to the quiet of the late night and the noise seeping in from the restaurant. He heard drunken laughter and a man squealing and giggling, high-pitched. He exhaled in and out sharply. It had been overcast earlier that day and outside it had felt heavy and humid. There was something unusually heavy about everything at that moment. She walked into the lobby, still wearing her coat. "Excuse me, do you happen to have a cigarette, by any chance?" "No. Sorry." He smiled a little but felt afraid. It was late. "Thanks, man." She briskly walked out the lobby door, with purpose. There was something strange and familiar about her. She smel...

Rock n' Roll (It's been a long time since I)

Ever since day one I wanted to make rock n' roll. I guess there is a difference between being "just a fan" and being committed. But frankly, I always doubted myself because of my bad pitch. Luckily it's the kind of thing you can work out with hard labor, listening, thinking. I doubted because I wondered if it was some hard-won LaLaLand fantasy that I was clinging to as I rapidly skated towards age thirty, happy-go-lucky and broke. There's no use in trying to pretend that I have common sense. But I do sometimes know how to keep a beat. I make rock n' roll with my body now; I always have. Doubt is the enemy of art. It's like speaking a foreign language; you have to be prepared to look stupid. Some people are "go go go" from the first minute, and those people have to be careful that they don't burn out. We all know someone who did now. We all have that embarrassing and heartbreaking not-so-secret. But it's time now, to plug in the amp and ma...

Box

This place is filled with the ex-lovers of the ones I love, sorry pasts and hungry liasons, night-shadowed wishes for intimacy. I just want to be here to be alone tonight. I want to stand on the side and remember another time. Like honey it was, with each song flowing into the other. A time when I was so much sadder but so much more passionate. I still want more, but now my lifeblood has drained into quiet acceptance of the things that need to be performed, the grudging duties that may ultimately destroy me. As I watch this panoply of sad masturbators, I know that I yearn to be one of them because I yearn for the recognition that will validate my choice, that will reassure me that being this channel means I have chosen wisely. But I know that I haven't and I know that I am too old for all this. Defeat and sorrow, but not complete resignation. I don't want to sell you my product, unlike the rest of America. I just want to leave you these gifts in peace. This is what I do and it ...

Dance

Oh, but these men who give their God a face full of phalluses, I laugh at them. It’s not about this. These rights are universal. These rights cannot be taken away, in the home, in the park, in the street. This is a thing for you and for me, like air and breath. I dance because for the next few minutes I need to be alive. I need to close all these voices out of my head. I dance because this dance needs to be born into the world. I dance because I am the channel, not the decider. I dance because I refuse to remain silent. I dance because I am hungry and don’t want to starve. I dance because this will make me eat food and keep myself healthy. I dance to push the toxic things out of myself. I dance for another chance. I dance not to live, but to survive. I dance because there is no reason or blasphemy involved in this- remember, I am just the channel. I am not responsible. I do my best. I dance because I love. I love sometimes, in spite of my dancing, which is my first love. I cry because ...

Sheol

How can you follow blindly and complacently when there is so much to object to? There are no words or objects of the earth to place borders around the physicality of this atrocity. I dance a death-dance of faces twisted in grotesque horror, agony, AIDS-killed orgasm. Our rivers truly run with the spout of toxic hatred. The trees have turned black and stink of tar. This is a wasteland of inner intestine rejects and hypothyroid chemotherapy teacups of cruelty. Dr. Mengele's love-children, bastardizing impure races with impurer ones. Teach your children to spit machine gun holocausts, nooses, waterboards as relaxing room and board, to float in the antediluvian soup of sin in the first blushing wash of crude oil Loved with the screaming eyes of a hooded man as his testicles are Benihana-ed on the open Q'uran Kissed on the rape battlefield Flayed slowly as skin of whales whose calls we do not hear Impaled as a young boy on a fuck-chain of lascivious priests This sounds like hell, bu...

Her Hallway

I envy you. I can't wait to leave. Last night I saw you etched in these engraved outlines. It was strange, you were a painting and two-dimensional, but also real. Maybe they were taking you away to put into the giant storage-box of the Universe. Strangely, I understood. Down here we still have nothing left but faith. The picture was fluttering out of our hands. "You don't know how it feels," everyone says. "You have no claim. You have no right." I think that my family is the only one that has the audacity to laugh death in the face. Some peoples' love throws me into more of a rage right now. We will not be placated. We will not be consoled. Our anger is righteous. Our anger comes from love. I never really knew you. We always think of those who leave with selfishness. Maybe my hated blood is right. Maybe you are better off.

Black Hour

What happens to time in this instance? We measure how long has passed since their being flowed away from us. She said we all have a black hour in the kingdom of despair. Who watches us during this black hour? But it is possible to emerge. All it takes is one hour. I wish, I wish, but this will not bring you here. Have you seen me until now? Have I been doing well? She says I must not follow the path that I wanted to. Have I done well since you left? Only an hour in this black tunnel. I will never know its face. Angels are a privilege of those good enough to be damned. Who walks? I hear no footsteps. All it takes is one black hour.

Yakov

"O bearer of greatness, wrestler of wild beasts, erector of desert monuments. You stretched your hand out to the Almighty." Yes. I laugh at the shrivelled love in my hand. I used to be the failure of this tribe, the snivelling trickster. But I looked Him in the face. And I spat on him and then rent his shoulderblades in two. You know of me through deceit and love. I am the Hell's Angel, indeed. I am Israel. But I am older now. There are complications. This doesn't seem to be going as planned. I tried to teach them rules but they just wouldn't listen. I think someone is supposed to say that later, but I can't remember who now. They will not take the lines I feed them about our women. Everyone is too headstrong. I say you are all going the wrong way and have ridiculous notions. Every year or so, my scar bleeds a little bit. I tell no one of it. It is only put there so that I remember. I have many secrets. I tell them to rocks and snakes. I dream visions of the g...

Veil

Dearest, Please know this: When you reduce me to an art and place me as a thin-skinned character in your narratives, you reduce me to a pile of skin and bones. You starve the blood right out of me. I beg you, brother, love me not as an object but as one scarred, fully and carefully, by the wrong words. Take care to make me not in words, but in gestures. We know of your schemes, that every man wants to sculpt us, in order to take the credit. Veil me, or else I will fall to dust before you when the truth is revealed. I love you, but you abduct me from myself. When you write me, you expose my cruelty. So you set me behind the veil of fiction, as many do with many others. To hold the mirror up to yourself, is all you wanted. Veil me as an act of kindness. I am no longer a part of this. I do not lack, I do not miss. I take up my own veil. Love.

Angels

I live in the city of cum-stained angels. I have seen these dirty buildings and lights since I was a child. I have known dusty waterways and smoggy skies. I have walked the path of the bums riding the bus. You will never satisfy enough with your legalized pot smells, your tamed rebellion, your angry people of Middle Eastern nations, your corrupted hands and casting couches. Here is a Pandora’s Box with too much dirt for Sin City, too much love for San Francisco, too much yelling in foreign languages for your fellow man all but in New York. Crack babies and tired strollers filled with delicate dogs. Teased hair, and breasts that rain down on you when it thunders. Arraignments, borderlands, delis, thrift stores, hole-in-the-wall tacos, Charles Bukowski imposters like this one, fatfaced college students who call everyone a phony like Holden Caulfield. Simplistic lovers, deep and dark fetishes. The turning wheel. The automobile. Bread and butter of creators, crash diets, raw veganism and i...