Posts from the “Poetry” Category

Some May Never Live, but the Crazy Never Die

Posted on September 19, 2013

.
Life has become immeasurably better
since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines —
we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company,
we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time —
but essentially, and finally, alone.
This is what makes your self-respect so important,
and I don’t see how you can respect yourself
if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone,
but they’ve always worked for me.

~*~
Photographs by Dave Schubert
Quotes by Hunter S. Thompson

Categories: Art, Graffiti, Photography, Poetry

Level One

Posted on September 14, 2013

Miguel Angel Junquera

Knowledge is consciousness of reality.
Reality is the sum of the laws that govern nature
and the causes from which they flow.
Knowledge is not necessarily wisdom.
~Ancient Kemetic Proverb

Categories: Art, Photography, Poetry

Jane Dickson: The Last Days of Babylon

Posted on July 12, 2013

Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square was a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make. Police and city authorities had declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex. The 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square’s Era of Errors. It had class.

Successive mayors attempted to purify Times Square without success, for the Mafia-owned establishments were protected by the First Amendment. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted adult zoning laws to end the magnificent wickedness and the following year every XXX theaters and porno shops closed on a rainy afternoon with the moving crews loading salacious merchandise into trucks, as the tearful affectionados of sleaze chanted on the sidewalk, “Fuck Rudy G.”

All along the Minnesota Strip pimps in fur coats hijacked teenage runaways straight off a bus from the Midwest and slick hustlers struck cowboy poses on the street corners, while dope-hungry muggers trailed unsuspecting hicks down dark streets. The action should have tapered off Christmas Eve, except the players on the Strip were dedicated to acting naughty and not the least bit nice. Tonight was no exception.

The glowing marquees and flashing neon billboards camouflaged the lurking danger of Times Square. On the sidewalk two young boys were rummaged through a fallen man’s pockets. No one interfered with the robbery and few people made eye contact, unless they loved trouble.

A brutish bouncer stopped a young blonde girl before the go-go lounge, then she produced an ID and danced a seductive Watusi as an audition. The doorman waved the teenager inside the Dollhouse, as Times Square swallowed another runaway faster than a starving shark.

The Dollhouse’s DJ segued from RING MY BELL to BROWN SUGAR and on stage the naked redhead cupped her breasts before a middle-aged man. The plaid-suited businessman was bald and overweight, but the $20 in his hand transformed him to Robert Redford, as he slipped the crisp bill beneath teenager’s G-string.

Times Square’s best pinball wizards gathered around the ‘KISS’, as the champ bumped the machine with his groin and they nodded each time the scoreboard tocked another free game. The champ was on a roll, then the arcade’s front door opened for a frigid draft and a deathly thin player commented, “Damn, one of them Minnesota girls has come in from the cold.”

The go-go girl hooked her arm inside the punk’s elbow. He wasn’t her type, but a woman on her own was a walking target on the Strip and even after 2am Times Square wasn’t ready to call it a night.

Men crowded into a theater featuring the hit XXX film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and a pimp strutted across Broadway with two teens in skimpy silks. After midnight on 42nd Street everyone was working overtime.

Artwork by Jane Dickson
Text by Peter Nolan Smith,
from THE LAST DAYS OF BABYLON

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Manhattan, Painting, Poetry

The Inevitable Has No Plan

Posted on March 3, 2013

We pass through each other casually
as though it were not but it is meant to be.

Lyrically, the poets are called by it
Sophocles is it? Let me check. Okay. Yes.
Art. Stories. Poetry. Scene.
Drama. Romance. Passion. Intrigue.
Glamour. Fanning Mahhself.

Lists Are Exciting.

I wrote this a long time ago
but it greets me again
like Miss Sphinx up on Oedipus
by Gustave Moreau
in the American Wing
of the Metropolitan.

~*~

Categories: Art, Poetry

There Is One Mark You Cannot Beat

Posted on August 14, 2012

Photo: Volker Hinz, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence, Kansas, 1987

This is a story about the machine.

When you ain’t got nothinn, you got somethinn. You got you exactly as you are. You got love and fire, passion and desire, untainted, untouched, virgin, unspoiled by what comes after.

When you a virgin you got that. You got that thanng no one else has had. You got that thanng you can give once. And you know this. So it builds. It becomes everything. It becomes all you have in this world because you are all there is.

And you give it, you give it with everything you got because all you have is you, and your dreams. You got dreams, right. Dreams of what is and what could be, born of pure and innocent heart, of never knowing anything other than the depths of your soul plumbed for this moment riighh here. This moment to give, to share, to become, to be in this world, on this earth, in this life, this time around.

And you give it. You give it with everything you got. Cause you know, you know you got this, this is your shot. So you give it, and then you give it some more, and you keep on givinn until you can give no more.

Who is to say who gets lucky? Cause luck isn’t what happens, it is how you maintain.

But let’s just say you get IT. That dream you dreamed has finally come true. And it surprises you in that way you always knew you were somebody—you just didn’t know other people knew too. So you’re kinda humbled and shocked but also kinda happy and rocked cause you know You, you know what you put in to get to the here and now of it all.

Thas what no one knows, thas what no one could ever know. Not the blood tears and sweat, not the sleepless nights, fears and regrets. Not what it cost and what you lost and the sacrifices it took. Not the passion and the pride and the power manifest when you claim whas yours.

But.

Ahh. See now. It ain’t eva yours so long as there is anyone else involved. If you lucky, it will be ours, but it might become theirs sho nuff. Cause virgins are, well, naïve. There’s a lot of trust in your heart cause trust is believing other people feel the same.

But.

You don’t know. You have no idea. No one eva does. No one eva knows what kindsa people run the machine, why they run the machine rather than live out their dreams like you and me. You know no child has ever answered the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? with the words, I wanna be a cog.

But they do. Become cogs, jockeying for position while causing, well, clogs. Clogs, drains, alla that. The machine is a machine which means, it is gonna break. Break down, break you, break me, break apart, break your dreams, break your sweet succulent innocent heart. The smart ones are dancinn on the break, you know, them b-boys and b-girls with the headspins and backspins to keep themselves in check.

But maybe if you lucky, you will learn to maintain. You will learn it is a machine and you’ll look to preserve your (integrity) (sanity) (innocence) (name). Maybe you got that, maybe you are that one, the golden virgin with brains and restraint. Or maybe you like me, thinkinn, now you experienced. You somebody. You got that. What? What! WHUT!

It goes on like this. It goes on and on until you’ve had enough. But when does it get to be enough is enough? Do you gotta get on your Donna Summer and be reborn?

Sho nuff. Everyone got they thang. And it makes you wonder, yea, it makes me wonder. We know this is a machine. A machine designed to turn us into a dairy cow (heated vegan alert). Take us out of our natural rhythm, in a constant state of mass productivity, draining our life’s essence to make dollars for just who now?

But even if you get it. Even if you get tha cash. Is that what this is about. Is that why we are here. To be whored out.

I’m sayinn. What kinda writer hires a writer to write for them? Dig, we know Warhol wasn’t paintinn nothinn for most of his career, which is why no one ever calls him a, umm, painter. He was a conceptual artist. What he produced was ideas, not artifacts, though undoubtedly, he had that OCD need to hoard crap.

But most of us ain’t gonn reach the stage of conceptual artist, meaning we aren’t gonna be able to have other people produce our work for us. Or. Perhaps we are, we just won’t tell you. We’ll take the praise and the hate and run smoke and mirrors thinking we beat the machine because we lost our soul.

But wait. Wait! Can you beat the machine? To beat it, wouldn’t you have you blow it up. Why does that sentence set my heart aflame. Bougie fuckinn revolutionary, c’est moi.

Categories: Art, Photography, Poetry

Self-Preservation Society

Posted on July 28, 2012

Guy Bourdin

Commitment is a crazy thang,
take you by the hand and be like, “Step right this way.”
And you go, down the rabbit hole
but you know it’s not a hole, it’s just The Way.
Like a supernova thas gonna explode I guess,
time is here and now and also past and future
spiraling over again and again…
til
it gets to the point that there is no point
except
to know.
well,
good luck with that.

Yesterday I was up then right back down,
flat on my back, could not sleep;
it was gruesome in the strangest possible way.
It was like, drained, every last drop, and all that was left
was me swimming in thought.
Treading water,
to keep from sinking…
into what?

Go, where would I go? What’s left?
Nothing is my everything, yes ~

So this is me looking at the phone ringing,
smiling wanly like, No fuhhckinn way. I’m paper thin.
But I notice there’s also this feeling in my heart,
this low beat like,
Wow what would it feel like if I were alive?
And then I think this is one of two and
what’s up on the other side.

But I can’t feel anything,
I’m barely alive.

I miss the point.
This happens all the time.
I’m thinking one thing because I’m stuck in my mind.
And I’m thinking wait, what
and I actually ask.

And then I get it.
And then I Get IT.

And then everything shifts and I finally understand.
I mean, I have no idea what I understand.
This post isn’t meant to be read at all.

How do you hope to help your fellow writers—now or in the future?

I just want to read your words.

~Miss Rosen

Categories: Art, Brooklyn, Photography, Poetry

Like Buried Treasure

Posted on July 9, 2012

Photographer Unknown

I feel greatness and it is here for me.
And perhaps one day I shall
articulate the ineffable.

There are things I see and I feel and I know.
Writing has chosen me.
And in that it has chosen me,
I feel the deepest humility.

I feel the flow of life and I hear the voice of truth.
I feel it in work and I feel
work is no longer a four letter word.
It is not money and it is not status
and it is not an addiction.
I no longer use it to avoid but to discover myself.

To write is to live honest and free
pure and simple and with integrity.

I wrote this piece and I am not ready for it.
It is so heavy and dense that it kind of intimidates me.
It makes me think, it’s not even mine.
It just is.

Like buried treasure.
I discovered it but I cannot own it.
It exists before and after and without me.

I am no one.

But I will say this.
Writing is my salvation.
Not just meditation.
Not just creation.
But a means to something greater.
God, even.

~Miss Rosen, 2012

Categories: Art, Books, Poetry

Silence Moves Faster When It’s Going Backward

Posted on June 5, 2012

Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods.
We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

Poets don’t draw.
They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

The eyes of the dead are closed gently;
we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.

Photographs by Tomoaki Hata
Quotes by Jean Cocteau

Categories: Art, Japan, Photography, Poetry