HUNTED.

2011-09-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

Today, instead of socializing with my peers as instructed (how many stories do I have that start that way?), I wrote this. Inspired by a conversation with a new loving and worthy adversary.

The ocean wants you.
The ocean wants to consume you entirely.
Inviting into its reaches with the promise of weightlessness,
Of being wrapped in the smothering arms of the complete absence of light.
The ocean must learn restraint - giving only a portion of itself at a time - as none has ever managed to withstand the crushing force of the much too much for very long.
There is an UNDERTOW.
A word always on your mother's lips
As you are ankles
And then calves.
Thighs and then genitals.
Waist and then chest.
And finally neck neck neck neck.
The frightful tempting of fate which the ocean accomplishes through mystery,
The delirious excitement of maybe just maybe being swept up and carried away for good,
Is and has forever been intoxicating.
To know the effect of these depths
And to withhold
Is the ocean's search for benevolence.

2011-08-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

I wrote this piece about MOLTING, a little over a year ago and then lost it. Today I found it in the moldy satchel I stashed in the swamphouse basement (which is a swamp itself). It feels a little like dragging treasures up from a shipwreck.

Anyways.

When the bruises rise to the surface.
And your lips become chapped skin angry
Splitting as they part
Dripping, hot beyond belief.
When you have rubbed holes into your stockings
Both from growth and routine bramble push and pull.
Modest weekday outing harshly
Setting on the thicket floor.
When you are drying up behind the ears.
And you are no longer able to be carried
Strapped in with twine and covered in cotton on your mother's back.
Making the transition from
   Wood to plastic
   Wool to silk
   Miniature to masculine pulling fruit down from trees that used to trip you up barefoot from the ruts in shallow dirt.
You must then bark at the gravel foot path falling flat beneath softening pawpads,
Which were never meant to pitter pat dimly between the sink and back.
You must file your teeth back into points to
Pacify hungers not yet recognized
And consume only what small hands can collect by and by.
When dresses stretch tight over growing spine and elbow bones
And fingers seem to touch only pocketbook and manuscript
Scramble to find branches
And try to remember for as long as you can
Which day of which month is best for berry picking.
Because what comes after this cannot possibly measure up
And what pours out of you will be tame
Plain
Awash in the nothing new.

2011-05-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

I am in love.

And, as often happens, I am entirely unproductive. Well, not entirely, but limited to what I can cart over to the domicile of the object of this affection and accomplish between snuggles. Vomit.

Pictures soon of the minuscule achievements over the last month and a half.

Hopefully my creative self is still as potent, despite happiness.

2011-03-24T16:19:00.000-07:00

Fucking finally.
Exactly two weeks ago, there was an art show at my house, put on by my talented and handsome roommate, in which yours truly participated. My submission: 100 human teeth sculpted and painted, mounted on seven wooden pedestals.
I can now tell you all about in incisors and their neighbors.
A show at my house last night prompted me to take down my installation in the living room so it didn't get circle-pitted. I took pictures before said dismantling.

These will eventually be part of a show about human extinction, once I make all the rest of the art.

2011-03-22T00:21:00.000-07:00

MEANWHILE..

..the deluge.

2011-03-06T18:01:00.000-08:00

One hundred teeth made, painted & sorted just needing to be boxed.

In the meantime, something I'm actually proud of (what?):

DIVA, or THE BODY AUTOMATIC

Hands grasping the space where we have just come from to brace ourselves for what we are about to witness
slowly,
our knuckles will be laced with air.
How we remember, step after step, the automatic processes which carry us from one moment to the next when it would seem we are
otherwise engaged,
and then how
sometimes
the slightest disturbance stops us dead in our tracks
like deer,
slowly.
Sometimes
in the heat
the fetus will be reabsorbed so that the coat may grow fuller
and more lovely.
The automatic processes
which grip our groping hands
and fold fabric
slowly,
over our fiercely beating wings
and rest the beat beat beat
in our chest chest chest.
And then
sometimes
in the heat
we drop dead,
full of sunshine and mystery,
dolorous in our actions but light as the air laced between our knuckles
on the way out
slowly.

2.

2011-02-06T23:49:00.000-08:00

I AM SLOW DEATH,
FALLING INTO THE BUSHES.
I HAVE HANDS CLASPED.
I MAKE NO SOUNDS.

2011-01-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

AN ODE TO DIMINISHED WIT

You who have been hanging off my words for years,
Looking in manuscripts to find the things I keep for myself,
And broadcasting them to the world as your own.
I am like that guy who invented the telephone first
And for whatever reason
Some point to drunkenness
Some introversion
Self-loathing
Contempt
Reluctance to share my precious golden things with the multitude undeserving,
No one remembers my name.
But you, how you can pluck and you can root out
The treasure from my breast
And the ornament from my tongue
Spread it publicly
And it becomes your own.
You who are more desired,
More singularly captivating,
Will be the victor with the stolen wit
And then yard full of progeny.
While I am the next coming of Baudelaire
Wretched and scathing and ill.

1.

2011-01-18T16:30:00.000-08:00

COUCHED IN THE STRAW,
WE ARE DUST,
LET US REST
LET US REST
LET US REST.

2011-01-10T16:09:00.000-08:00

(spending all my time making art that isn't ready to be seen)

Posed like ancient cabinet photographs,
with hands neatly folded together
and placed in the welcome lap,
People on the aircraft resemble the dead, sleeping bodies of our ancestors.
Made up and propped up on the nice furniture
in best attire and properly suited for the extensive sitting the action requires.
(While in the front of the plane, infants can't be made to hold still under the ringing of hot flash bulbs.)
But all must be collected to keep track of departures and arrivals.

2010-12-30T17:35:00.000-08:00

Holidays, things, people, feelings come and go. Make things to capture them, momentarily.

Too bad.

2010-12-19T13:38:00.000-08:00

DESPITE VENEER

I wanted to write a something about being like a buoy
That gets hauled in each year by some calloused, caring, hardened hands
And given a fresh coat of paint
Always a something like fluorescence so as to be visible and correctly perform my universally-accepted duties.
And each year thrown back out to sea with a new protective shell, like
"Fuck, now I am incredibly fly"
Except that, for as many haircuts and rejuvenating perspectives one can adorn themselves with,
After floundering on the same waves for the seventeenth time and probably then some,
Remember that the function of a buoy is to mark and to indicate
Certain facts to the masculine fact-collectors of the world
And each season brings a set of either familiar or foreign boats who will
Scuff, chafe, erode, eventually wear down
So that the years of paint will become visible as layers of hopeful growth and prevention
One shining underneath the other as
White
Red
Orange
Yellow
Red
Orange
White
Wood
And the things built up give way to inevitable destruction
And when I'm hauled back in next year, everyone will see what colours I'm made of.

2010-11-29T16:26:00.000-08:00

Bos Imprimigenius

I have been working, on an off, on a series of animal rights-based paintings for a long time now. Sometimes I make one and then don't think about it for a year. Sometimes I make 5 in the span of 2 months.

I am highly irregular.

This one was prompted by a request from a special friend to finish the series so he could go about making songs for each piece. Personally, I'd love to leave them in the basement and never look at them again as my aesthetic has changed dramatically and the series no longer represents where I would like to go with my 'art'. But I am told there is merit in finishing what you've started.

This lot contains one more piece which I might just go do right now for the sake of accomplishment.

2010-11-15T18:31:00.001-08:00

GAMEY

Endurance, endurance,
incredibly sweet.
More like a happenstance than a preformed occasion, but
Nonetheless delightful.

BACKLOG

2010-11-04T17:26:00.000-07:00

BACKLOG

Now we can all move on with our lives.

2010-10-30T01:31:00.000-07:00

PREMIER

A crow drags a rat out into the street.
A dodge durango forgets its brakes.
I am shot through with adrenaline.
My soaking wet back.
Slick from racing.
I am much too much too tired for cautionary measures.
A crow drags a rat out into the street and I swerve to avoid it, sending what is most likely blood-filled rainwater up and at my own self, moments before being the rat, being the street, being the blood-filled rainwater.
At seven thirty in the morning.
On a Wednesday.
Separating hunters from hunted.