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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...