Friday, December 25, 2009

Christmas day comma two thousand nine

Christmas was a beautiful day. Except when the girl was puking from food poisoning and when Z called and had me assist like a goon with the latest drama between the ex-wife and the boy and the ex-wife’s bo, Cletus. It started however in church and church was good. It was as usual filled with memories and the icons rested like heavy granite in a much heavier structure surrounded by the light hot weight of history. I thought of my grandfathers, both of them but each knowing more, watching and trying or watching and hoping across the river Styx, then across the clouds, faithful and full of love, full of peace. From this spot in history I wanted the night to extend on. The chorus sang and the bells rang. The people of the village were well dressed and white and well-to-do. I watched them, I watched the row of boys behind us and the woman with the long legs and black lace stockings and red silk smock. Above her the ceramic Stations of the Cross mounted on the one hundred fifty year old brick, women singing, men in robes raising hands above the Eucharist, the Christmas offerings, the first. From here there’s a beginning but I think two thoughts that contradict these desires. One, an ex-wife and a marriage on a mountain and a lost thought and a better time and two, a small church in a small town from a year ago after driving through deep snow, so absurd and so deep that I kept the car travelling fast enough to prevent it from stalling. I made it within 100 yards of my destination and called the girl where I lay, stuck along the road in a shit house car, red and stained and already gone because the worst of the worst place got the best of me and kept me low and the best of the worst place was actually not true. The season past, the summer came and God pulled me west by the ear to the land of answered prayers. So fucking answered that I could proclaim it as certainty. Direct action without lip service – the way I had demanded it so pompous. All this could happen in a blink and even the opposite travelling behind in an instant, an afterimage. So this is Christmas, I thought, so lucky and rich with love that I was alone by nightfall in a house that didn’t belong to me, in a space that I didn’t choose, in a time that I’d have been glad to escape, in love and safe, because I had wished for it and there it was - thankful, alive, angry, in love, in peace, in stupid honest report (dear god, oh boy), listening to the bells and holding the hand of the one certain one on Christmas day 2009.

Monday, October 5, 2009

my ass is so bony, it hurts to sit on wood

I got fucking visions, I know it sounds crazy but right here is where I'm going to make my stand. This is it. This is where I draw the line, Obadiah says catching me in the morning hours as I shuffle sleepy down the hall toward the porcelain shit machine.
I stop and stare, listen for a bit then say, well if we're on the subject I need some bars across these windows for security and, not for nothing, I don't want to smell the cigar smoke of my fucking neighbor either (as long as we're dropping F-bombs). He's a hell of a good guy btw (I say it like that B-T-W), but I just don't want to breath anything other than air, coffee or my own god damn farts. This last part I add for emphasis barely containing a grin.
Who Jerold? He's been smoking cigars fifteen years, I don't think I could stop that.
I nod but I see we're not connecting.
I'll get some wood for those windows and we'll fix you right up.
I don't think so, I want something worthwhile, I'll work it out.
I know I can come off as an asshole but.
You are an asshole I add abruptly, that's just the thing.
There are two kinds of people in this world, ones who draw the line and ones who just let it happen. This is where I draw the line, this is it, right here, he says speaking to the ghost of his dead father and the father before that.
Alright, I hear you, and to it I'll add this, it's not going to work. Not this way, not here. I'll watch you come around. I'll watch you work it out. But in case I'm wrong I'll buy the next round. Then I went to shit, which came out burning from the prior night's hot wings. Fuck.
I thought of Buttercup, poor girl, in this nightmare pile of bricks and broken things, fascist crazies, from the best of good places, for a night or two, playing along. The truth is, no one would play along if they had a choice. The truth is that this place is a monstrous end and a damn new beginning (god I pray). That said, I felt for Obadiah, felt on his side, to make a stand, etc. All that horse shit. I felt it was as good as any approach. Maybe it'll go. Maybe.

In the morning Emmy texts - I'm still praying.
Me too - I reply.
For what? I thought. For a strange thought thank God. For worse until it becomes clear.
What becomes clear?
Good point. It.
There is as much 'it' as there is a 'they' dear boy.
There is?
Ha ha, you know better.
I suppose I do. Even though, in the back of my mind, I know I don't.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

othromantics

When we arrived in Jackson Hole there were lightening storms above the lake that I'd not seen before, and I had lived there five years. There was electricity in the air, big connective strikes, powerful stuff. Then when arriving at Leys' place about 20 miles from the lake there was ice, balls of hail, like I'd never seen in August, Leys either, and he had lived in the place for 45 years. That was the reintroduction. We (Leys and I mostly) drank several bottles of wine to celebrate. I was alive again, away from the pointless struggle for career that takes up ones time in the doldrums of upstate NY poverty. So they claim. That night I made love to Avé good and long and we embraced that feeling, the love, like it was our dying breath. Because it was. In a way it always is. Our relief and the power of that entrance was enough to convince anyone that God was watching and blasting away at our notions of normalcy. Or it was just happenstance. I thought of V-Daddy thinking that the romantic part was more than foolish. Then I imagined he approved. Someone had to. Imagine that is, imagine it was possible, imagine the best.

At home, in the studio, in the train yard below, a man had died. Men had gathered to await the coroner and stare at the torn body of the yard worker.

Apparently there was a missed step.

What happened here? I asked the guard and that’s what he said, Apparently there was a misstep. I pursed my lips in a grimace and nodded. Then we watched. We watched as the half torn body was lifted and placed into the coroners van while the police asked questions and took depositions. There was a misstep and that was that. I got my story, the boys in uniform got their days work, the unfortunate man got his earthly end and I walked Faf in our little piece of brownfield, what we got, next to our collaborative beginning.

+

Sunday, September 27, 2009

hand over fist

Autumn came, the birds, the cold, the mist and rain, full in it. Just the leaves to turn now, coal and corn syrup cars slamming into stacks just below the dirty brick. Full in it; work, wine, sex & worry. Work to the point of worry. Worry to the point of memory. Memory to the point of rumination. Rumination to the point wine (box wine, dear lord). Wine to the point of sex (real love to internet porn dear God). Sex to the point of worry. This is it. This is where I am, we are, I am, dear friends. Friends. Lord. Love.

Let's lay in a cuddle for a bit.
Do you want to?
Yes.
OK.
Babe?
Yes.
If you had me first, if I was the first one you were with then we'd be flat out dead by now.
You think?
Yes.
Thats it, just yes?
You want me to affirm you lover?
You started this.
I just wanted to lay with you.
Then you spoke.
Babe, I sometimes think that we each seek a space that is impossible.
What impossible, I just wanted to sleep, to lay down and feel your breath on my neck.
But I wanted to lay down and see you like a bar of gold; heavy, pure and perfect. Something to keep me honest.
And I just want to lay with you.
I see.
Do you?
I think.
Well stop thinking and just do it, do something useful. Maybe fuck me. Maybe instead of talking or thinking just fuck me. Is that clear enough for you boy?
Yes.

(Fucking)

(time)

Babe?
Yes.
I'm sorry.
What are you sorry for my love?
I'm sorry I was short with you earlier. I don't mean it so harsh.
I know.
You do?
I think.
Because sometimes I think that maybe you think I'm not listening or sensitive to you and what you are going through but I think I see it.
I'm not sure, really I just don't know but I understand your concern. Thank you love.
(tears)
Because I just love you so much.
I love you too. That's why we lay like this. That's why we're together.
Really?
(I don't know) Yes.
(you fucking hypocrite) Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
(fucking)

Saturday, September 19, 2009

drag and bone

There came a moment where i saw my own paranoia. I see it and know it and live in it and realize, this is it. This is me. Creation. Create things. Dispel it. End it. Yes. No.
Rose, live well. Drug yourself to normalcy.
Normal, OK, this would be best for the others?
Yes, that's why I'm telling you. That's the whole reason for asking.
Yes, OK, so which drugs to take now?
Let the doctor decide.
Doctor?
We'll take you inside the system and a doctor who cares for you will prescribe medicines that will help you find normalcy.
OK, but...
No buts mister, you'll see. On the other side will be strong and consistent desire for family, steady increased income, social success and love.
Even love?
Yes, when you correct yourself people love you more because right now, well...
That sounds good. It sounds almost too good.
That's probably your disease talking. You don't have to fear any more about it. The doctor will show you which drugs to take and at what times and this will correct your paranoia.
You know this?
I know this.
Which drugs?
It depends on your dependencies. Probably Wellbutrin and Xanax for the acute moments.
Like when I feel like leaving or when I feel angry about social injustice or injustice in general?
Yes, at those times because you have everything you need and then some so when you think and feel those things you are just whining. Do you understand?
Yes, I understand. It just seems...
No seems or buts mister, just go and talk to the doctor and then live better and without disease.
Do you hear that?
What do you hear?
Lightening or something. I hear the weather.
Maybe it's just a passing storm Rose bud. Maybe you just hear what's passing.
You're probably right.
Of course I am. I'm helping. Isn't that what you always want, just to help? Well that's just what I'm doing, helping.
There are two moments in songs that I'm thinking over right now. It just sort of hits me when I think of these moments. Can I tell you?
Not really but I want you to have the best kind of trust with me so just tell me what you are thinking.
OK, I keep thinking about when Damien Jurado in Medication is praying to God and asks for him to take his brother's life. It's wrong but I ask it, please take my brothers life, he says and then when Bruce says Fear will turn your heart black you can trust in devil's and dust. I'm thinking of those two things and thinking which one I'll be.
The doctor is going to help you there. The doctor's going to bring you medications and then that's that, that'll be that. You won't have that kind of thing in you.
I was hoping, wondering, if that was like, normal, to think those things, those lyrics and about songs and stuff.
No, it's not. Not in that way. That's why we can do this, talk like this. OK?
OK.
(silence)
What's the best thing I can do right now. For myself.
The best thing?
Yes, for myself given our conversation and I want to please you.
Don't try and please me Rose because that usually goes nowhere. But I think maybe you can just tell a story. Try to write a story down.
I can do that?
Do it nice. Make it clean.
Nice. Clean.
(silence)
And then we'll see.
(silence)

Faf maimed a small woodland creature at the far extent of our yard. I would say it was a rat but on inspection it's head was too round and formed and I thought it was a groundhog. It must be a girl I thought, about the groundhog we see on a somewhat regular basis. The poor thing was helpless and sort of kicking futile on the hard patch of dirt near where the rail yard fill hits the embankment. Right where Faf dropped it at my feet, it's hind quarters covered in slime from dog saliva.
Baby, it's still living, leave it be Fafa.
She lay down kind of crawling toward it, tail wagging, awaiting my approval.
I placed a hand on her supine head and watched the poor thing kick and struggle through the last moments of its poor young life.
Oh babe, it's sad to see, I told Faf. Then I looked around to see if anyone was near and wept while I comforted Fafa because I wouldn't allow her to pick it up as we watched it die.
Where's Avé?
Too far from here.
Too far how? She's coming over now.
She's not going to be a part of this.
She's not going to know what to say anyway, your shit's always taking over.
Alright, so I'll stay quiet again.
Good thought.
Not so much.
I picked up the small thing's form, still breathing and placed it away from the open sun and danger, underneath the railway shrubs and left it alone to die while Faf and I moved along to get some beer and wings at our local pub in the early autumn sun.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

the ones you know

What is needed? Here is what is needed. Love, the ones you know.

Early one evening I go out to piss with Faf. She trots her yard and I just stand there in it near the fence that separates the city from the railway and piss. I piss in full view while Faf seeks an appropriate equivalent for her turd deposit. It's amazing how much privacy one has in full view. Faf and I are similar creatures in this way - we prefer our privacy in public. But this day, before we make it, just at the edge of the yard we find a man with a tripod, a camera mounted to it, intent on the sky just above the west complex roof line. He is waving his hands about, really flailing between glances into the tiny camera viewfinder and alternately at the two of us as we were, standing silent, watching as through a glass screen this man's small dance. We watch until it registers he wants our attention. I pull down the earbuds from my ears and silence the music. The man speaks.
The international space station! The international space station! he says pointing.
Seriously?, I say.
Yes, the man replies matter of factly. Yes, there it is.
And there it was in the early evening sky; bright, low, traveling at a steady clip 250 miles above the earth's surface, caught in its orbit, the only visible heavenly body.
There's eleven people up there right now, the man says. And that faint dot just beyond it, that's the space shuttle waiting to dock.
No shit.
Really, the man replied, no shit.
Within five minutes it had passed, the man had packed up his gear and we were standing together at the edge of our field still looking up.
Amazing, I say, it moves so fast.
17,000 miles per hour it moves I think.
Amazing, I say again. Thanks for waving us down.
When I saw you there I thought you'd want to know, he replied.
Yea yea, amazing, I say again, I did. Thank you.
No problem, he says as I step onto the sharp cut grass.
All else is memory.

I sat there with Z and saw nothing but bullshit. a snare. a trap. I saw the way out was the way in. I saw my uncles' in the soft world transition. I saw the International Space Station. Then I saw this. I saw what I thought was needed then left. What a bullshitter, I thought. What a fuckin' heister.
So what?
So what, what?
C'mon.
C'mon what?
You won't give an inch will you?
What are you talking about?
Seriously? You know.
(Silence)
(This is it)
(Silence)

Hmmm... What is needed?
Hmmm... What is needed?
What is needed? Do you provide what is needed?
Here it is. Here it is. Here is the provision.
One foot. One foot.
Here is not your empty, doll.
Here is not your empty.
Here is not your nemesis, friend.
Here is not your empty.
You may make for better gold.
Your story made for fodder.
You may make for world untold.
You may make for better gold.
This is it.
This is it.
This is what is needed.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

love

I've been holding back my love.
What is it Rose?
Just that. I've been holding back.
Oh. Ok. What do you have to say?
Where I've been and why I can't just tell you.
Why don't you just say it?
Because you would think the worst. Despite this, it does come from the very best of me.
Yes. I think I understand. So tell.
With each lover I wanted something better.
That's it? We all wanted this.
I think so. I understand but I believe my experience to be exceptional.
You're arrogant. But I love you.
We are mostly arrogant, most of us.
So we are the same then?
Yes. So with each lover I wanted something better.
OK, why are you telling me this?
I think maybe because I'm confused.
Well then, unburden yourself boy.
Confessionals?
Something like this.
When I left Buttercup I was torn up, I wanted her love so badly.
You're impatient.
Yes, but this love required reciprocation.
And what if you're wrong? A myth. A sad reveler. Weak.
Then I die that thing. That's the risk.
Sad.
You think?
I think you are justifying yourself.
But God screams at me. I've got stories and those hit me like a bag of bricks. Those twirl in motion.
But you leave a wake.
Waves settle.
But you cause pain to others.
Pain results in reaction. You do it too.
This is not about me.
I see. So I cause pain?
Yes.
Convenient.
Not so much.
(silence)
Rose?
Yes.
Will you want me after this.
I think so.
OK.
(pause) Do you hear this music?
Yes honey, I hear it.
What do you hear?
Soft chords, more.
I hear the lyrics above them.
What are they?
They say I want you but you are a distant beast and I am a beast.
Sounds campy, swooning.
Maybe...
But maybe sincere.
I love you.
I love you too.

And in that soft moment I thought of her soft belly and her soft desires and everything that I so fully loved and walked out on. That IS rumination says Frank. That's the very definition of it.
Thought about the past is rumination?
Uh, yes.
How do I stop it?
Think now.
Think now?
yes.
I'll try.
(silence)
Pain will help.
(silence)
I'll try.
Don't try. Just go.
I see.
Maybe.
Maybe.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

several signs of autumn

There are several signs of autumn already in the north east that add to my general sense of heartbreak. Keep these thoughts out of rumination zone I keep thinking but it's hard so I prepare a canvas and lay down some words. One word actually, a series of one. Initial thoughts are go and I'm rather pleased with it. But in the blankness of my reply in my non structured meditation I work a few more hours and go wandering. To the bar where I find a wry crowd.
Who's this guy?
Me? I'm one man young.
And what's that supposed to mean?
I'm just playin' with words cowbell. (I specifically call him cowbell)
You're playin' with fire son is what your playin' with.
I stood staring at him, thinking about it, almost walk away and say, then throw down tinkle boy.
Bar stools scrape the floor, chests puff.
What's with the tinkle boy shit boy?
You gots the tiny tinkle right? That's why you're hemmin' and hawin' cowbell.
Then he swung and caught me on the forearm as I tipped back off my stool landing hard on the floor. Before I knew it I was out the door getting strangled by a fat bouncer.
I let myself relax and waited him out. When he let up I popped him quick and hard on the ear, struggled free and trotted down the road to safety. So it goes on a Friday night in the country. I may have to leave here I thought. (I always think that).

Back at the studio I check the mail. There in tiny child's writing is a message from my six year old niece Amber, "Dear Uncle Rose, Thank you for coming to my party and for the gift. Love, Amber." It took up the whole card in a good use of space. I tack it to the wall with a good long pause and think, I may have to leave this place soon.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

here are some words I can never tell you

< @ Shelf Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Tuesday morning. >

In the mountains I am most at home and blank. I don't come here to write the great American novel or to photograph or much of anything else. I come here to blank then to dream again. Not the type of dream that amounts to future life or children or career, cars or other absurd shit. To physically dream. The city sapped it out of me - no words, no dreams, nothing. Here in the elevations I hear voices and see ghosts and pulse with history which are all welcome things. High up after a day of strenuous work and load in a pinch from past traumas I talk to God but she is silent.
What is your prayer?
That's what I'd like to know.
What do you think it is?
This pain. The pain of my body.
And that's enough?
No.
Why not?
Because you are love. Is love pain?
Silence.
(silence)
< end >

I look to my love
Here are some words I can never tell you.
I can not tell you that I get what I ask for, I do.
I can not tell you your love, my love.
I can not say that the beach is a sand pit and I came down to you for it.
I can not send light from above.
I ask for hope and you open the ocean.
I can not ask you for more.
You ask for hope and I open the sea.
You may not ask for more.
But these words I can never tell you because they're in service of high Romanticism and essentially bullshit and you can never tell me more.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Sodom and Gomorrah

Maria and I brought Faf to the Hill Cumorah Pageant and sneaked her in back. We actually got caught but convinced the kindly guards that she was harmless and that we'd be quiet (even while Faf did her super cute girly howl for being held up) so they let us through. In all my years living among the Mormon's I generally like the folks - they tend to be kind, sober and inviting. Unless you're gay or a drunk or otherwise human and were born on the inside but since that isn't my experience and since it doesn't pain me to be an outsider I rather enjoy their company. The company of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, not Mormon - an insistence of obvious psychology that many of the post adolescent "elders" probably don't realize has worked on their delicate spongy masses since before birth. The perception of innocence is a wondrous thing, never let the man drag it from you. On the way in there were, of course, protesters - men with booming voices and bullhorns shouting bible verse at the wayward cult of Mormons.
"That's just fucking awesome," were the first words I said to the faithful parking attendant.
"I think you just told the parking guy that those protesters were 'fucking' awesome," Maria repeated wryly.
"Shit, I suppose I did. I just love this Sodom and Gomorrah Pageant, it's just fucking perfect."
Maria laughed.
And we were in, a beautifully clear night in the remote upstate village of Palmyra, NY. Home of Joseph Smith and his polygamous cult. Perfectly absurd, perfectly American. I'd do anything I could to defend these people. I wouldn't follow a single policy, I thought as we sipped on the outlawed wine from our blanket in the fields, but I'd go down defending the absurd.

(days pass)

I started blinking more on purpose, until Cheryl from the design center noticed what I was doing and asked about it, "What are you doing?," She asked. "Why are you blinking so much?"
"I don't know, it makes me feel more productive."
"Oh I see. But you're not, you're not more productive right?"
"I'm not more productive? How's that? I'm blinking more furiously each moment," I said while putting a bit of extra emphasis into each blink.
"How's that productive?" She said. "You're just wasting energy squeezing your lids together forcefully. You're forcing it."
"Maybe," I replied. "But I'm getting it accomplished."
"Getting what accomplished? Those aren't accomplishments, it's just hard blinking."
"It's practice."
"For what?"
"For future blinking."
"But blinking just comes from a body, it's like breathing."
"Good point, people choose to alter their breathing all of the time right?"
"They do?"
"As in Yoga or controlled breathing, people with heart conditions, athletes, astronauts, all that stuff."
"That's different. That's a whole different deal when you're sick or in a fitness program, an athlete. Your forced blinking doesn't fit a purpose."
I kept doing it, her protest seemingly bolstering the effort.
"Now you're just trying to annoy me."
"Am I? You don't have to watch."
"It's distracting. (pause) And annoying."
"Don't let it get to you, just ignore it," I said blinking hard and in rapid succession, this time lifting my checks higher so it felt like they were touching my top lids. Then release. This extra effort amazed her.
"Well I'm not going to sit here and watch you blinking like this. I'm just not going to do it. It's dumb."
"Maybe, but I'm trying at least."
"Trying what? That's not productive, that's wasted effort," she replied visibly more shook up with each retort.
"Maybe," I replied again, blinking on.
Then she left. I just stood there for some time blinking, controlling it, pushing it, seeking future effort.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Sunday, July 19, 2009

parallel the fall

Look at the power of that fucker. It'll smash you up in seconds, I said in mock Jersey speak.
Yea, it'll do that.
I'm sayin'.
Babe? (pause)
Yea? (pause)
Nothin'.

We stood staring at the American falls, that tiny side tributary separated by an island. It was a beautiful evening, soft, misty and comfortable. We made it there on a spontaneous visit after dropping Z and the boy off at the airport to meet the family.

Do you imagine yourself perpendicular to the fall or parallel to it?
Oh. I'd have to think about it. (time). I imagine myself parallel to it.
Really?, hm.
Yes, your head here and your feet there so you'd fall at once with your entire body, she said motioning the direction of the fall.
The funny thing was I pictured the same thing but I'd call it perpendicular because I imagined the front of the fall from head on.
Why, would you be parallel? she said.
No, I'd be perpendicular but I'd fall the same way with you. We'd both fall lengthwise.
Really?, she said. Hm.
hm?
hm? oh.
oh?
oh.

We just stood there grunting in the undercurrent and watched the glassine edge, soft and gentle and then the fall.


drawing by Steve Caruso

Sunday, July 12, 2009

maria. avé.

Dash Snow's dead. (+) It came in a text from Youth.
Fuck, first MJ and now this.
Thoughts? asks Youth.
He's gone to the 27's. Done. Sad.
Aye.
That was that and we were alone again in our personal prisons. respectively. respectfully.

I'm not sure that we feel things the same.
Is that so? Why, why would you say that?
You wouldn't make those choices should you know.
That's what everyone says. It's common. The you wouldn't hurt me if you knew stuff stuff.
Maybe.
Not maybe, now sing a different song boy.
OK then, how's this - I've come to love on you.
Then love on me.
I have. I am.
What now?
What now?
You don't know? You're crazy then. You're bi-polar or something.
sigh. (silence).
You're using me.
(silence)

The Girl came back to town looking as gorgeous as ever and as lost as ever or as found as ever. So was I but we go in a good way. My thoughts were easy and free. I was happy. Until later. Later I kept thinking of buttercup sitting in that chair like the ambassador of beautiful (+) and how the days turn to weeks turn to months and all we want stops and become silent. "I thought she'd make a good story to you" she said but in a loving way. "I know you think that," I replied. I am what I say I am and be careful what you say. Even your thoughts become lakes, especially when you are compelled to exhibit them. That I do.

It's childish, you know better now.
I do know better but what's the point of knowing better.
Live forward. Live like a fish, hold a ten second memory and react to danger. Cover yourself in scales and slime. Spawn. Return. Be food for the biblical types on Fridays. Scour your clean waters. Clean your soiled ones, mercury, shit and all.

Who are these people?
Who are they? Lost Souls. They are the end. Watch them live forever.
You want that too? You want to live forever?
C'mon.
Just then Cathy pulled up her shirt to reveal a set of nipple clamps biting hard at her soft tits.
I keep them on all day in anticipation.
Anticipation of what?
Getting fucked later.
You keep them on through class and meetings and everything?
Yes.
Nice, I said and left it at that.
I stood there again and thought of Maria, her blue dress and my left ventricle heart part all cooed and ready, broken up and loose. Faf too. Avé. Avé & go.(+).

Sunday, July 5, 2009

1 pellet every 4 ounces water then sip

Two metal scents filled the hall. One was a burnt ballast - I peaked out the studio door and saw the offending encasement flickering off its last hours. The other was something from the train yard below - it smelled like oil but with a crispness to it.
Post investigation I sat in the studio, alone and a bit afraid.

Fear? Why fear? I thought you were over fear dear boy.
No. I'm traumatized I think.
Birth was your trauma.
Good point. I think.
Are you?
What?
Traumatized.
Yes. So I'd understand why you'd want to leave me.
You do?
Yes, of course. Are you going to then?
What? Leave you?
Yes.
Well it's not that I want that.
But you are going to?
Yes, eventually but everyone must part eventually.
I understand. It's maybe better if I don't say anything then.
That'd probably be good. I mean you are very good looking.
So?
So just look good and be happy, maybe keep that other stuff to yourself.
(nod)(time) Is it too late now then?
Too late for what?
Too late to clam up and just look good.
Yes, I think so. I mean I guess so.
So you will leave then?
Um, yes but not right now. Not at this moment.

What gets out blood?
Is it fresh blood?
Yes. What gets it out?
Cold water and soap will take it out, she said naked and beautiful from half the world away. But do it immediately.
And it did, white fuzzies and all.
Amazing, I say. That's amazing, it just disappears.
She smiled. Like everything.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

oh six short

If I could tell you what makes me this way I might tell you about some trauma. You might too. You might even tell me about a rape, a beating, a break-up, a dissapointment. You might tell me about a great joy, a drunken night when the direction of your thoughts just changed for the better. A love, a big love or the death of your grandfather. And if you should ask me the same I may tell you about the two deaths in my college dorm, or Charlie, or the loss that left a young man in jail for two years and a mother not able to get past it. I might tell you about even more than that. I might tell you about betrayal or terrible fear, awful shame or the castle in Naples. Then I may ask you to be silent.

Why? What comes next?
Several things. Maybe love.
There you go again.
We know by now that trauma is latent. I am surviving.
Ruminating more like.
Am I? (fear) No, surviving.
Wait till it hits your person. Big fists full of fun.
It has already.
Has it?
It has. I wear it like a pleasure shawl.
(silence)

Fuck the interlocutor.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

once more a beer

Flora entered into her heat and bled all over the studio floor. She kept curling up to me in prior days - poor thing had menstrual cramps. I just let her into it and wiped up her bloody snatch when a clump had formed or when it looked like a big drip was forming.

Did you ever think you'd be wiping up your dog's bloody vagina? Luna asked.
Yes. Remember my kennel days. The dogs. Lots of bloody vagina's there. Maybe not off of the floor of your house though.
Exactly, she added.

And what a house. But by the time I had seen it, really seen it, and let it in to roost I was over it or through it or on top of it. Or somewhere else. Too close or too far to make any sense of the order of events that make up a life. Luna simply stuck through it with me, simply opened it all up. To anybody or anybody with half a mind to help. Helping consisted of showing up with regularity and staying with half a mind to stay. Half a crazed mind to accept all the pieces where and how they lay. That's survival and I wanted to learn this from the battle hardened.

Oh Rosebush, wake up. Wake up my little worm to cuddle while the cuddlin's good. Wake up my dollform.
Wake up to what?
To the real, to what is right in front of you.
I see: My hand on the trauma trigger, your hand on me. Your hand on the trauma trigger, my hand on thee. That?
Poetry, dear boy, will not supplant what you must make right.
Make right? Fuck you. My right is generations deep. It'll take two or more, just like you.
(silence)
Always silence. (silence). Always more of this silence. Death will be silent, speak now. (shame)
(silence)

At the grocer I stood in line waiting for the clerk to take back the mop head and the extra bottle of oil. When my turn arrived the man methodically went about his tasks, checking off entries, punching keyboards and working various machines with paper, pen and printer. He did this through tiny mashed hands persistent from a birth defect, through slurred speech and gawking fools. Me. I let him to it and found the consistent replacement for the returned sponge mop and bought it again. Even five bucks or an extra bottle of virgin olives made a difference, especially if I planned to drink a bottle of decent red in the evening. So after a stop at the winery and through the dirty heart of my filthy city I settled back and did just that. That's that. That's just that. That's just that then.
My Love?
(silence)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

back to back to back to

Ba Boom BOOM. Ba BOOM Boom. BA boom boom.
Bang that drum slowly Rose my boy. More slowly than that even. Yet more slowly still. Right now one hundred thousand lives are happening. Not just you right now. There's many more than you right now. But one hundred thousand is enough. Do you see my point?
No.
Blond Emily's will rule the world then - all one hundred thousand of them.
That's more than we'll need. Ten is enough.
Funny boy. That's it then. For the sake of the ten you will be spared.
Ten blond Emily's? Sounds good. Deal.
No deal. Time. Time and nothing more.

Flora sat eating cherries on the sofa. Most of us just swatted them or plucked them off the deck as they fell from the sky but Faf took them one by one and ate them leaving the tiny broken pits to litter the cushions. Then after being such an incredible doll and beauty she sneaked quietly away to the back room and made a steaming pile of shit. She's my dog alright. I was pissed anyway. Pissed enough to lock her in the back yard where she promptly escaped for the indignity of it, got picked up by the cops and spent the night in the awful prison under threat of sterilization or euthanasia, audibly. "I lost my doggy," was my response. No sympathy. Several phone calls and one hundred and twenty bucks later I had her back. Fuck. I suppose I could be more organized about the situation but damned if I'd wait another minute to enjoy what I should have several days, months or years ago. Back to the grind then, almost over it, back to it, back into it, mine, yours, the other. Grrrrrr...

Monday, June 8, 2009

objecticandy

It's not very often I'm alone, clear, separate, alive and in love with life so intently. At this moment I can share some thoughts with you.
What's clear?
What's clear. I love you. At times you may think my actions indicate differently but they don't, they aren't and I love you.
What's your idea of perfection Rose?
What, my idea?
Yes, what is it?
I don't know really. (thought) Love. (pause) Adventure. Solitude. Death. A good life. A productive life. Love first though, the kind that bites into you.
And what kind would that be?
Love of the other. Soft full love to and from the other.
God love?
God. (long silence) Love. The other. Love mostly. Is this what you asked for?
(Pause) (silence) (soft laughter) (silence)
Yes. this is what i've asked for.
(silence) (laughter) (silence)

Sunday, May 31, 2009

My Dora, Your Dora

This is true.
Is it?
Yes.
Why, because you say so?
Because I imagine it.
What's the real issue?
Why do you ask?
Because I see you are lame. (I awoke several weeks ago with a stiff neck. Over several more weeks this turned into intense and sustained pain in my right arm until the damn thing went numb, then limp and I couldn't work. Shooting dull nerve pain.)
I have a spell cast on me. I've let the spell in to work. To kill me even, if it can.
I see, so we can see how brave you are?
I guess. More how stupid but I like where you're going with that.
You'll understand just how stupid it is in time.
Why time? You always ask me for time. More fucking time. More fucking waiting.
Patience is your weakness. That and slow dull nerve pain. Lets not forget the sciatica.
You're forgetting fevers. Last year it was the plague of throat ulcers.
Yes the high temperatures to chill your active, stubborn, spongy mass. Rose my boy. My idiot child.
I've got a few more years of neurotransmitters in there. Fucker.
(silence)
You can't take it casual.
(silence)
fool.

Without much choice and no clear second option, I finally visit the clinic where the doctor report concern because no discernible trauma caused the pain and the intensity is visibly affecting my movement. "This is very troubling" I think were his words. There is brief discussion of MRI and repeated questions of nerve disease. Slow and painful death. I thought of Charlie, god bless his soul, in his chair as the life was choked out of his failing body by a cruel disease from a loving god.

The following day, on an agonizing early morning trip back to the clinic for expensive follow-up treatment the car radiator blew which caused it to seize up in the turn lane near a busy entrance ramp to the interstate. I put on the flashers (which malfunctioned), crawled to the nearby grassy knoll between ramp and traffic-choked highway and called triple a. A painful hour later help arrived and I spent the 500 bucks my mother had direct deposited from her own state of poverty to fix the fucking car instead of paying the incorrigible institution. I was literally moaning in the cab of the tow truck. The driver recommended yoga.

Back at the studio I lay again, in fear of travel, MRI, bad news, women, life, death, consciousness and total collapse. I canceled the lecture at work, holed up and planned for the end. Writhing pain. Acceptance. Then a friend hooked me up with clinical massage. The therapist released my seized trapezius (incredibly) and sent me on the mend. That night Buttercup came to town and treated the whole incident like a distraction. The next day, after behaving similar, I kicked her out of the studio in dramatic fashion, returned to my painful bed and haven't spoken with her since. I felt I made a solid decision.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

electronitch

what sort of story is this?
well, this is a story about... dreaming.
what's so damn important about that?
about dreaming?
yes.
from dreams come new blood. new ideas.
for what purpose?
safety, honor, pleasure. to elongate
the already soft and pliable mind.
fuck you.
fuck you, why?
silence.

hey babe.
hey.
where have you been?
out.
oh. (time) out?
you may not want to breed with me. right now i'm thinking you may not want that. here's why, i'm lame on my right side. my arm hangs limp. when it used to work it was strong but as it is right now it's limp and lame. this is it.
i'll still breed with you.
silence.

the world will find you in its cracks, sister, it flows down.
well, come up boy, earn me, have it.
silence. (time) be careful with your brother.
?

Thursday, May 7, 2009

April

I was shaving my balls in front of the mirror when I nicked the sack and winced. Put the clippers down and inspect, I thought, a bit aggravated at myself for slipping. Mental note: don't drink while shearing balls. The nick came on the shaft though where the hairs creep up. I tried waxing them once. Once was enough. I thought if I could maintain an erection long enough, a real hard one then the task would be easy. Turns out that shaving your own cock n balls just isn't that sexy, hence difficult to maintain a real hard erection. The skin is just too damn sensitive so I got the electric clippers out. I wanted to make a good impression on Buttercup, who I knew would appreciate the grooming. I looked down and thought of the ensuing scab, the bright red blood pooling to a drip. The natural world is the perception of order. Balls and order.

A friend recently asked, why do you feel compelled to write all this down? Why do you feel the need to put this all out there? 2 thoughts: One, Guilt - to confess my sins to the world. A recovering Catholic. Two, Relief - to share hidden realities so others don't suffer. Three, Art - because it is beautiful. A recovering Artist. But beautiful is tragic and we know by now oh Rom-ee-fuckin'-oh that tragedy plus beauty equals stupidity. Nothing less. Isn't that right Jenny? Plus that's three, not two dipshit. Don't call it out too quickly Rose, my boy. Bad man. Don't finger me too awfully.

Who? April. April's over.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

not a

you don't know me,
oh fuck you, you really don't know me,
you touch my kid i'll fuckin' blow your head away,
i'll fuckin' knock you down,
says the man in the white T on the tracks with the red cap speaking to apparently no one. well, not to no one, to his brain, so i could relate. i spied him from the bridge through the linked fence. The train yard was busy with clanging boxcars slamming into lines. The man managed a stage out of the little knoll next to the bridge flange and had at it with his enemy, real or imagined. I listened in respect - the demons hit hard and I recognize the dirty legion when they do.

When I left the studio I was without camera or recording device except for the pad. I took it out to record this scene: I saw deep gray clouds with the cool blue slate of the raked sky behind them. As I scuttled across the asphalt inlet I saw the black of the yellow traffic signal swaying across those blues and a view of where the wind tore down the flag and billboard last year at the dirty corner of Goodman and Main. I wanted a big camera and something deep and red like blood internal but I settled instead for the description and its subsequent longing. That is the case more than half of the time now.

That's when I happened upon the conversation with Satan. I began jotting it down, got thirsty and headed up the street to the shitty Mexican place. There's good Mexican in ROC but not this one - nary a Mexican in the joint. Matter-of-fact I'm not sure anyone in the place spoke a lick of Spanish. I go because it's close and because I like the Margaritas even if the bar boys are tools. "He's got a little shade to him" says the barkeep. Code for a black guy. They were talking about the guy selling stereos from his knapsack outside the place that night. The guy they denied entry on such grounds. That guy had more balls than the whole fuckin' joint put together. I almost said something but thought better of the trouble - I had words yet to write plus I liked the smell of the girl sitting next to me doing her best to converse with the nimrod serving. we hee, "shots" she announced and I turned my stool. The one word to kill a thinking man's boner.

So what's been going on with the pRoseDC? I'll put it plainly. Things are going relatively well. I'm only sixty or so thousand in debt. I have two jobs that gross nearly twenty thousand a year. My girlfriend has cancer but the last MRI looked good. I now have an air conditioner (and working towards hot water). The yanks are on a shameful losing streak but it's early in the season (so they're working toward maximum glory). The not-for-profit got funded until September so we're good there. Mom's out of work but in high enough spirits to hit the Jersey shore and I'm drunk right now. In short, we're good. The lord is patient. Sweet Monday nights. The perfect human. my beautiful dog. the sun. conditioned air.

Monday, April 20, 2009

transmingular

It was springtime and the spring bloomed. Easter time. If the spring is a time of new growth it is also a time of renewed youth. I sat at the back of the rock n' roll Jesus church on the floor, legs crossed, tradition broken, brow furrowed with a slight curl to my lip. A skeptic. Not of God or the power of prayer or love or community - I am a skeptic of influence. You simply are not the word, I thought. But I listened and watched the kids pass to the back where toys and fun and other kids play so they don't have to sit through the entire homily, bored. Never get into it with preachers I reminded myself. Preachers are like drunks, belligerent and diseased or lying. The kids seem to know this by instinct. God is where the fun is, with the toys and joy, with mom and a warm breast or on the long expanse of lawn where Rose secretly hid the eggs.
God is everywhere Rose.
Huh?
I said, God is everywhere, he is in everything you do. The preacher said to me audibly for the room to hear.
Was I speaking?
You said, God is where the fun is.
I said that out loud?
Confused, the preacher looked toward me, smiled and said with certainty, you said that out loud.
Never get into it with a preacher, I thought.
Apologies, please continue, I added as the soft creak of chairs and uncomfortable shifts became more noticeable.
Would you like to pray?
Together yes but not for me, not now and here for me like this.
Don't get into it, I thought again. Don't get into it.
Don't get into it? the preacher said.
Damn it! Did I say that out loud?
Yes, Rose, you did.
I'm sorry, please continue,ignore my interruption. Mass resumed.

Jesus, what comes next dear lord?
Submission.
To what?
To what? C'mon. God. Submission. Giving up. Giving in. Going down the river. Submit fool.
Um, ok, take me then.
My lord, my love, sing this. You'll know my love then when you sing.
But you are not my lord, are you?
I am a messenger.
Where is my lord?
Your lord is certainty.
Where is certainty?
Silence.

So I joined the chorus and from the pew I sang and as I sang I felt better and bolder and raised my hammer higher and as I placed it low it split the seat and made a crow and a crack. SCREECH, SPLIT, CLUNK, above my junk.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Artificial Standing Box (Natura)

Made about a year ago I stand naked in a plastic box in nature.
http://www.vimeo.com/4142151

Monday, April 6, 2009

then my blue morning

Tonight I have almost no words for you.
Be quiet to hear them.

The dwarf is bones in the keep.

The mind is still,
The mound is solid,
The solid is a bone.

The dog takes the bone and chokes.

Did you hear them?
I didn't, I heard the refrigerator.
I heard it kick to life and
I hear Susana sing.
The singer is quiet, almost a whisper.
In short breathes.
Can you hear her singing?
Because right now, at this moment, I can't.
I can't hear her sing.
Instead I hear the cough and the mound,
but the mound is silent,
and the cough has since ceased.

Monday, March 30, 2009

three for the weight

Brood: think moodily or anxiously about something. hang over, as of something threatening, dark, or menacing; "The terrible vision." brooded over her all day long. sulk: be in a huff and display one's displeasure; "She is pouting because she didn't get what she wanted". grizzle: be in a huff; be silent or sullen. sit on (eggs); "Birds brood"; "The female covers the eggs". the young of an animal cared for at one time.

Luck: fortune: your overall circumstances or condition in life (including everything that happens to you); "whatever my fortune may be". an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another; "bad luck caused his downfall"; "we ran into each other by pure chance". an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that leads to a favorable outcome; "it was my good luck to be there"; "they say luck is a lady"; "it was as if fortune guided his hand".

Port: put or turn on the left side, of a ship; "port the helm". bring to port; "the captain ported the ship at night". a place (seaport or airport) where people and merchandise can enter or leave a country. carry, bear, convey, or bring; "The small canoe could be ported easily". sweet dark-red dessert wine originally from Portugal. carry or hold with both hands diagonally across the body, especially of weapons; "port a rifle". an opening (in a wall or ship or armored vehicle) for firing through drink port; "We were porting all in the club after dinner". modify (software) for use on a different machine or platform. interface: (computer science) computer circuit consisting of the hardware and associated circuitry that links one device with another (especially a computer and a hard disk drive or other peripherals).

Brooding is the past time of depression. Brooding is the lack of a challenge, the empty silent lot, the hole, the lost, the bend, the bale. I brood. But when I do and I know it and the fire is raging for movement and I am contained, the brooding must be put to death or to use. Fuck. "The female covers the eggs." What a thing. God will not make all of it possible.

Luck is my enemy. I hold luck like a hammer. "Save the Rose." Luck is the cracked banister and the cold ascent. Luck are my words to you. Luck is the chance. Luck, the opportunity. Luck has come to strangle you. Luck has come to set you free. Lucky. Lucky one. Lucky domestic one. Luck, my lover, luck.

Port, a choice. Sweet dark dessert red wine. Port is the empty moment before the strike. The first to ascend. The last out. Port, my motion this way and that. Port, the field. Port, the dire. Dear God, wait with me here.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

never beat up a retard

I would NEVER beat up a retard, Z says. NEVER, he repeats for emphasis.
That's good, I say as I sip my beer.
Or anyone like me for that matter, a cripple, he adds.
That's good too, I think but manage just a grunt over a second slurp. Uuuh.
We sat there watching the boy pull tricks on the bike, Flora making a turd center soccer field for all to see. I took another sip and just lost it laughing. Z joined in. Sometimes the circumstances, proverbial or otherwise is just too absurd.
Christ man, when will this shit let up?
Right. I dunno, he says. He says it in that way that is resigned to the fight. The bring it on thing that gets us both into such trouble. For some reason, just at that moment I thought of Nurse Ani. I followed Nurse Ani from the lodge in Montana, back east and then out to Jackson Hole shortly after I had finished the Rutgers degree. Ani, in a sense, is a pivotal human in my life's path. Her father turns out was a known figure in the art scene in Philadelphia before I ever made a picture worth spit. She must have liked the way I looked because I was so damn immature at that time, worse than now, that I could barely imagine putting up with me for a second. Once I left the poor girl in the airport at Salt Lake and drove home without her when I knew the end was near. Now that's some shit. She took the shuttle home and I jerked off for a week while we worked out the new arrangement - she leaves, I stay, done deal. We weren't right anyway so I'm glad it went down that way. I remember taking her to the kennel (one of my many tests) and seeing her concerned expression at telling me, Rose, I don't like this. The kennel is a tough test and I feel for any poor soul that must endure it (the test) for my sake because if you fit in too well, well then there isn't a need to make a union but if you completely dislike it then it makes for some frustrating sex for a few weeks but ultimately the black flag. I am born a tragic thing, yes? But filled and filled again with sunrise, yes?

So I sit here with a notice of divorce. For the six or so who started reading this two years ago when I started it, drunk and on pills in the darkest recessions of failure and pain over the loss of my wife in such horrid circumstances, facing all of the judgment and decree this heartless place could muster, you will recall this pending divorce. It's here now. It came. And in such a way that leaves me in the same awkward fashion that started us in the first place. After waiting the few suggested months and not hearing a word either from counsel or court or estranged family I investigate and find the document filed on the 21st of January, 2009, City of New York, County of New York, State of New York. I order a copy and there it is, laid out in front of me. I stood staring at it for a second, kind of crinkling the pages and lay it down ironically right next to the thesis work I had set aside and picked up again around that day in January, probably a cold and snowy day and set about the work to finish the stupid thing. I laugh again at the tenacity of this endurance and remember my grandmother who said, probably the last words she spoke to me from her death bed, You'll lose her to the city. Not sure why she felt compelled to say this but now I see the premonition. The dying know things. Balls of electrical discord are not meant for domestic life and I'm a ball of electrical discord. At least not before we're 35. Yes, 35 seems a good round number. I'm laughing again, thinking of Z's good advice, never beat up a retard. 'cept if it's yourself I suppose. Still laughing. As such we are.

Friday, March 27, 2009

28

My body stood there right in front of me.
It stood there and I ask, are you the ghost that leads the rider?
um, well, no, this is your future shadow.
From what light?
The past. It casts you forward.
Makes sense. I want you clear.
Then clear your past.
My past is over.
Then work from the present.
Isn't the present just a picture?
Focus.
Focus for the future?
Focus for the now then your ghost will become clear.
I see.
Silence.

An old lover once told me that she fucked her friends brother to make me jealous. It worked. I wondered with all of the people I've know and in all that I love and give away why for a moment would I accept this as my bottom line? Nothing. Nada. I had no answer. My dark heart beating underneath the pile. Alone is best, it calls out the wild.

At ten thousand hours you have your skill. The craft is complete at ten thousand hours of practice. Ten thousand hours of patience. 10,000 hours is 200 weeks at 50 hours a week. Two hundred weeks is about four years. Four years full time plus, then you have your craft. Then you begin.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

video, possible

I like to floss when I drive. That's right, when I'm driving my car I like to floss my teeth. One time, on several occasions actually, on my way up to Canada instead of stopping for fast food I would stop and buy floss so I could clean my teeth when I drove. I'd kind of put my elbows on the wheel, pull out a long strand and go to work. Sniffing the floss in between each pluck to identify problem areas. Then when I was done I'd look around the car for a place to stash the soiled strand while moving on to choose new music, hidden in burned CD's behind the heavy visor or flipping through the mp3's looking for something heartbreaking and somber. Somber music makes me feel better, a little less lonely because I know others are feeling the same longing. The longing I was born with, some call it an anxiety disorder but anxiety disorders are too expensive so I call it being human. That is, until I go overboard into the impossible. And that's what I do. If life could be shortened to a plunge, the time it takes to get from the edge of the cliff to the canyon floor and all the thoughts that come in between, to the seasoned adventurer this is, to the hardened who accept the fall, then all of this writing and vision and philosophy and art is that thought. That's one way to put it anyway. God's ashen plume, awaiting injury on impact and judgment on ascent. I know, I know, this God stuff, what a mess. All part of the plummet, like a dart, into the heart of it. What heart? What it?

I love you. I'll just take what I can get.
I don't know Rose, you can't say those things.
'Those things' what things? But I knew, I knew what she was talking about already. In a quest for absolution I say the impossible. By this point, it's old hat, no cussing and no idiocy but the thing that just can't be had. Meet me on the moon type stuff. Have faith enough to rise from your bed and walk and live forever and eradicate all disease and dissension and anything else you have coming at you. Then what. Silence.
It is all delivered back in one huge mirrored punch. All of it. Without a word.

I want to bring good things to the family.
We are not the judge, someone else is.
Who?
I don't fucking know, God?
God? C'mon. Pony up.
Huh?

video.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

boom doom

I've seen things you will not imagine, said the African man.
I bet not, says the Irish woman.
He's handsome, she says to me.
I don't give a fuck, I say but felt bad about it.
She held her head, cupped it on the right side. I caught her reflection in the spoon.
I don't like St. Patrick's Day, I tell her. Patrick was an Italian anyway.
I felt bad immediately for being such an asshole, the thick glass protective shield.
Well, you're no fun, she said deflecting my bad attitude and holding me stasis.
That man's fought a war, I tell her. He's telling you now.
What this might mean to her I wouldn't know.
I haven't fought a war my friend, the man says to me leaning over the girl to make contact.
No?
No. I've lost my family to immigration laws. They can not come here from Darfur.
Are they caught in conflict?
No. The laws have changed and they give no more visas to us. I'm here, they're there.
I nod.
The girl looks up from her beer.
Silence.
What will you do now?, I ask.
What will you do now?, she asks in near unison.
The man is silent then says, I will go to work in the morning, file and then ask again. Then he walked away.
I glanced back to the girl but she was lost in thought, staring into the spoon.
Babe?
Yea?
Let's go.
Yea.
Back in the car she asks, Rose, where we headin?
West, I think.
West?, she says pointing to the compass, a little bubbly thing filled with air and swinging incoherently to North then West then North then South. Impossible to tell what's what.
How about home?
That sounds good.
And I hit the gas flipping her back in the seat off balance for a moment.
Get your bearings doll, pick 'em up, I think.
And we were back on track.
Track? There are no tracks here.
Did I just say that doll?
Say that? You scream it Rose.
Fuck intention, I think. Still unsure where home is.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Highway to Hell

Sis took me out to the Van Houten clubs and we ended up at Dingbatz. She may not have known to what extent I was holding myself together and what I wanted but if there was someone who would know, I think it would be her. My sister always knows even if we don't connect audibly about it. I stood and watched the band sipping expensive beer from a plastic cup. J-Moto danced with her though she looked visibly perturbed and in general done with him. I've watched her patterns and knew what the poor guy was in for. At this age who knows what love is although I had a pretty good idea. I tend to choose relationships with women who love the idea of providence but can't or aren't willing to provide it or really hear it.
Jerry sat in the corner making out with the 300 lbs biker babe. Tonight he was being sponsored by Coup. Sponsors are the guys who help a dude have a good time when he's down on funds. Many of those cats end up in the sponsorship program, the ones that survive. The rest are dead. Next door to the place is a leather shop that we hang in, full of jackets, pant, bras and belts. All black, all leather. D, the owner, sits behind the counter sipping beers and smoking cigarettes when not entertaining guests. There's always guests so D doesn't get much rest. I kept eying up a black belt with snake skin veneer and a faggy, no frills plain leather number.
Oh, that's Louis Vuoton, only a hundred fifty or we have lay-a-way my man.
Damn, I want to but seeing as I'm nearly in sponsor category I'll have to pass.
Well we're here for you Rose my boy.
Of course, of course. There'll come a day.
Always a new day risin'.
And then we're off to watch the AC/DC tribute band, Rock-it coughing through several packs of camels making the rounds.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

aWay things go

There's a moment after realizing that no help has arrived where I stand numb, wanting far more than can be provided. Immediately regretting any movement or lack of movement that left me here in the first place.

Nothing has happened to you Rose.
I see.
We want to help you but.
But what?
But you... need refinement.
Refinement?
You need... Salt.
I see.
Can you send Buttercup?
No.
But.
It's not going to happen.
Who's going to help with the apartment?
That's not going to happen either.
But.
Rose, you are not going to get these things. You must earn them.
How do I earn them?
Pain.
Pain? This hurts.
Not enough.
I see.
What is the next thing then?
Go it alone, you'll know what to do.
I will?
No. Stop being so childish.
I see.
Not yet.
I do, I must learn to kill.
Not kill, kill swiftly.
What if I kill you first?
You can't kill me.
What if I want to.
Then you will go with me.
I don't want to kill you, I want to love you.
Who are you talking to?
I'm talking to absence.
What absence?
That thing that wants something more. Send Buttercup.
Each time you ask, the further she will be from you.
Right, right, go it alone.
The only way through. Good luck.
Good luck?
You may not make it. Many do not.
I see. I risk too much.
You gamble with it.
It's in me.
You should have waited. You should not need a test. Go quietly. Carry on.
Aye. Give and let give.
Silence.


More voices:

What you are making here is silliness, it's Romantic and dumb. It's numbness in action. Just listen and don't pretend to understand. Just listen.

I don't understand. Who's speaking?

Silence.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

love and cancer



I encountered Zach at an art fair today in NYC. He asked for a poem topic as I approached.
Love and Cancer, I say. (the words swelling my spleen)
Wow, he replies. I hope this isn't real.
It's real.
He wrote the poem, read it for this recording and then we spoke. After a short while he added, I love you, I hope you know I love you.
I love you too man, I do.

There exists a video recording of the performance.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

whole earth

For some time now I've been transferring digital video tape to a hard drive for a friend. All of the tapes are home movies, twenty two of them full. A day of capture over several years. I've seen the birth of both her children, trips west with family and a great number of happy moments in parks, pools and playgrounds. She's going to die from cancer, my friend, so her efforts to preserve the works make my process with them all the more intimate. I get to watch because I see them for what they are and I see them through. Plus I do the work, I work at it. At some point she expressed a need for her to turn them into art but I know, at some moment, that this will be my job. Art is movement and this family moves. When I glance at them sometimes in the cold chemical plunge of the studio I see something else because I know them all so well. I know them through hard standards and breakdowns and crisis. I know them through the cold and clouded realities that we construct our lives on. So when I ask Constance what she will do with this stuff I see her happiness. Women are fulfilled with the fullness of family, I think. Men are held restless. Maybe it's best to be transgendered, a Primrose. Maybe its best to travel with nothing and expect nothing and want nothing and only to seek nothing. To experience.

Tomorrow I'm looking for it, electronic media. With mom. A tone of something, now that the tools are just about roadside. I'll keep you posted in the artline...

Saturday, February 28, 2009

confayousion

Many days I must remind myself that I am essentially a happy person. I have insight and love and a real need to belong and pitch in and move ahead, fast and foreign and built for speed. Money slows me down, desire definitely does, fear, enemies, loss, momentum, movement, piles of sin, backward glances, pork, and then I'm stopped and then I'm slowly inching backward as if sliding on the scree. And then I'm regressing and a day may be lost to the clutching of bellies and the want for more works of art. I look up at the computer screen and see the thing refreshing as electronic things do and I look for the message. Nothing, so I deliver one. "You cocky bastard, take that!" Boom, done. Silence.

This morning is a terrible one and for those who have experienced it will know the feeling I'm about to describe. It's a dull swoon of headache, like drinking all night but haven't had a drop. The flood of depression chemicals leaking in on caustic waves in a cool wash over brain folds and ash and soot. No desire for much of anything, not even a cigarette (cancer having purged any desire for that shit long ago). Buttercup gone and having no idea what I might want or need, knowing all along that the pull is down. Down down down. Stupid, at the bottom, not an ounce left. Or so it feels. The car fixed but $500 low and with what needs to happen and what I need to come up with I am stuck. This is my last effort and so it goes. I look to the foods, a few boxes of cookies, some pasta, an apple. I think of the week I ate popcorn and laugh. This is funny. Why are you doing this? I think, to prove a point? No, it is the boulevard of broken dreams and most of us are on it. I hear J say, "loser." I hear that loudly because I know what that means. I can't let that happen, I won't let that happen and I can't let that happen. So since I know better I call mom, mom of course understands. Mom always understands, herself unemployed, a victim of the economy crunch at 60 and with no higher education, just experience, there is less of a chance there will be employment waiting. I know what I have to do, I see it. It's the rise or the fall but maybe that's too literal. Maybe the whole thing is too literal. Bah. Barometer. My weight is your weight, your weight is my weight. We both weigh just about the same, loser. We both weigh just about the same, lover.

Bas Jan Ader

Saturday, February 21, 2009

ब्रेन Gray

One year ago today I met Buttercup. I know because I made this photograph on that day [large]. That's her looking down at the newspaper, in the middle between Constance and El. By this time in the evening I had likely popped several pain meds and smoked half a pack of cigarettes on the way over to the BBQ joint and the birthday party where this photograph was taken. I was even more arrogant then than I am now and so was she. I've looked at it several times today. It'd be several months before we'd get into it over beers and cigarettes and several more before we'd find out what that pain was that took her eye and why her intestines would seize up and then in the coursing pain of a February visit, why grandma June would give in to her own advanced stage of disease and we'd be burying her remains under catholic blessings. We were separated today by the necessities of work and labor and practicality and a border and a state of being.

I woke up confused by the distance and by the distressing phone call from a friend at 3AM. (3AM phone calls are almost never good.) I never recovered and the distress led to unrest and confusion. That's the best word for it, confusion. I made coffee and noticed the fruit flies had gotten unruly and were swarming my attempts, the little bastards, so I decided to finally deal with the trash. The building has no pickup so once a month or so, when the sealed lid Oscar the Grouch trash can that I harvested from a previous tenant gets full enough that the living things from within kind of seep out I double seal the container bag and bring it down to the trunk of the car where it usually stays for a few days until I spy an open dumpster and gorilla toss it Alice's Restaurant style. This time however I thought I'd kill two or three birds with one stone and bring the checks for deposit, the post office box key and run some errands to get groceries, etc. The trouble is with a troubled mind the stress can cause confusion and seize even the most mundane tasks into vicious circles or worse, a dead brain halt. And that's the way it went. In the car, trash in trunk, I leave the lot only to realize I had forgotten my cash, credentials and the damn checks. I swing the car around, park and go up the stairs. On the way I up I remember the discs and mugs left in the Design Center and how I'd better get 'em. Down the stairs again. Out on Main toward the Post, cops lights, inspection again, stupid, so I manage to talk the cop down to a lesser offense as the post closes and I lose my window to check the box. Turn around and I'm back toward the city uncomfortably behind the cop that just ticketed me, by this time sort of audibly barking at nothing in hopes of a hard wired mind reset. Half way back I recall the bank, turn around (U style illegally on the main cross city artery), drive and park in the bagel joint next door feeling hungry. Standing in line for food, nearly forgetting the damn deposit I make a quick break to get it done, leaving the order to toast, clerk waving frantically. Deposit slip in hand, I pat down my inner pockets, second check missing, realizing I grabbed the wrong envelope. In a confusion, leave the bank, return to the studio, stop by the office to pick up the discs and mugs. Inside, still hungry, having abandoned the bagel, I get distracted by a bag of chips and in a soft shift of memory I'm heading out the back door, bag of chips in hand, half way up the stairwell of the adjacent building recalling the discs and mugs. This is funny, I thought, and pat myself down for the moleskin to record the thought (I never leave without it) only to realize it was left bedside. So I stood there half paralyzed, thinking of the festering bag of trash in the trunk and then Buttercup and all the things that make up a life in between, between slow fists of chips, alone in the stairwell, half mad and numb.

Monday, February 16, 2009

tennessee

If I listen to myself long enough I can hear the contradiction. Shut up, listen louder, quiet, let them in, repulse your embarrassments, use your failures, think more clearly, stop making sense, hone your logic, divide yourself, make more sense, build your treasures, stop your fears, fend alone, open more doors, drive faster, feel, produce, let it be, watch, sequester, produce, go blind, produce, silence, noise, pause, time...
Oh, old boy, if we had to strain and see you and your world, lost in ours, waiting.

Where did the maggots go?
I opened the steel garbage lid to look for the maggots. Two days back they were crawling up the edges, popping about. Now they were gone. Probably a good thing, I thought. Eh. So I shoved in more trash (the contents of the plastic bin I used to collect my hair trimmings), compacting it down and sealing the lid tight, fearing the crawling things. I imagined waking up to the flies like a horror flick. I prayed that tonight the press below would stay quiet and chemical free but I knew it was a lost cause. Then I woke up screaming (I do that) to Buttercup shaking me, her face and skull throbbing in the early morning. My heart sank for how cruel I'd been and how cruel I'd stay in my collective stupidity.
You're not stupid Rose.
What's that Doll?
Silence. She was fast asleep but I still think she managed the words.
I love you, I say, in the silence, knowing we'd be burying her Grandmother in less than twelve hours. Poor girl, having been released from the cruel and advanced stages of Alzheimer's. Her body, in this case, the last stone to turn. And I cried in silence, cupping Buttercup's cheek where they'd removed the nerve. Praying the words that we'd picked for her mass over my caustic logic, my dead religion, mercifully free from doubt through the strength of family.

Job 19:1, 23-27
Oh, would that my words were written down! Would that they were inscribed in a record:
That with an iron chisel and with lead they were cut in the rock forever!
But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust;
And from my flesh I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.
Whom I myself shall see: my own eyes, not another's, shall behold him...

Friday, February 13, 2009

Teeth

I bit down into the grainy goodness of an organic loaf and felt a crack. The porcelain inlay split down the tooth, became dislodged and floated to the front of my tongue. Shit. I thought immediately of health care, my situation, and the way a person can get caught in between. I grabbed the piece uneventfully and laid it on the table beside me.

I hadn't eaten all day. I do that from time to time as days get busy and we get in a hustle. So in the last efforts before evening, driving across town, I planned a stop at the grocer to get something. It's either this or the bar but I thought better of it and continued on. I went for healthy, a good choice.

So I cracked a beer, sipped and felt the wincing pain as the cold hit the tooth. Felt good. What to do? I finish the beer, crack a second and place the call to the guy who put it in less than two years ago. No go. Without health care there are no options. Fight harder, don't panic. I look to my laptop and the shiny new cover. Two weeks back I called about the cracked armature so they sent out a technician to replace it. On warranty, it happened quickly and at no charge. Dignified. This is my tooth on the other hand, down into the bone, two of them, less than two years out. No warranty and no responsibility. There is an option, for a couple hundred a temporary solution can be made until my 'situation' improves. Don't take it, move forward, demand what is medically called for. So I ask, "What is medically called for? Is it the repair of the inlay or this temporary splint?" No answer. Money will provide it. So back to the hovel, head high, mind low and we go. I'll need some options with more teeth... I already know what that is, money, as I head out to my position in the not-for-profits, civicly engaged, open belief, community, an organism.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Hogs and Bats

For the third time since I've lived in this damn brick polluted madhouse I pulled a bat from the floor and released it out into the cold. A screaming rodent scooped up into the plastic confines of a dirt pale, shoved from a warm carpet embrace and placed out into the dead of winter. Poor thing. I sat staring at it from the rear entrance of the Design Center as it crawled over the stained wood platform frozen over with ice, slush and snow. I felt that was my bold move to save it as I watched her tiny screaming form crawl awkwardly for safety or shelter or a decent place to die away from the ill green flood of asphalt and mercury bulbs. When I saw it crawling there I knew I needed to leave Rochester. I never wanted to be the bat and there I was one with the thing. It's hard to leave though. Pain is hard to let go of. It's a blanket that serves to move me forward when love and pity and desire all fail. Most of these attempts fail or more accurately the belief of these attempts fail. That's my monster, failing beliefs. Then Amito reminds me of the dogged truth, that autobiography is the easiest form of art. Simple. What's easier than that? To tell a story from a unique perspective with Romantic overtones while simultaneously defeating and deconstructing those overtones if you've had enough schooling to understand your role in creating your role. I feel therefor I am, what dog shit. What wacko bullshit both to not explore and to indulge in self. I'd like to let go now. So in true repeatable, paradoxical form, from a landing zone of headaches and stoned hope i say, "Dear Lord, help me leave this place or help me fight harder." But right now, I'm exhausted...

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Rose Aasp Torture