Friday, May 14, 2010

The Neon Violence

between the sea and sleeping, a joyless harmonium of stimuli. the mind pops and percolates with varying degrees of intellect and flash delirium. I am the nerve hunter, tracking the last pieces of my burned out resistance to the edge of the forest that shifts in my head. Some days the blue plastic tarp that is the sky is torn, or ruffled by the breeze, and a radiant glimpse of natural sunlight pours down as the spotlight eye of material god. Without such incident I am the hungry apostle of the dark. Without such incident I am forlorn between the sea and sleeping. Waves of sound and words without lips that carry my voice that never once broke from my throat. Somedays the brain is like a balloon that is constantly being filled with air and it grows and stretches and the rubber is eaten by all the tension in its body and the mind explodes. The earth is an eternal bicycle pump. The earth is a broken swing set. I have noting but hope for the earth. I have nothing but love for myself. Some days I wish to end my life, but something says "what a waste of your time." Dying is too much effort, you know? Of course you know because you are me whether you know it (or like it) or whether you don't. Maybe I am cut with a busted pair of safety scissors but we are all snipped from the same piece of pink construction paper. The doted line plays no favourites. Days of splendour; days of blood. A mood strikes the atmosphere and instantly the sky changes colour. Black to brown to smoke grey to gun metal to blistering hot red. Violence in the air. Neon Violence. All at once the clouds spell out destruction.

But, believe it or not, the earth is already destroyed. The universe is a stringless harp playing its way into oblivion. We are the children of a starless heaven. Rotating from right to left to diagonal fields of inexperience. What blasted planet? What moonless void? Growing ever more distant from the factory sun. You speak of the apocalypse. We were the apocalypse. This is the post-mortem life of humanity. A thing is born a thing dies a thing is born again. This is a message of hope that wears a robe of space-age black. I was born on the altar of fire. I was fed on the milk of corruption. You won't see the bullet when it nestles its nose between your eyelids, but you will see the face of god. It is a seamless dark landscape of twilight trees and phantom wildlife. The spirits of men hunt the spirits of animals. It is heaven and it is beyond your reach for life is beyond your reach. You grasped it once when you were spit from the womb. You grasped it as your lungs grew wet and cried out for life to fill you up. You grasped it when you soaked your loins and when you raised your fists in anger. Now a bottomless rope dangles by your left ear and you stare into a subliminal screen of light. Devils sleeping in the subtext.  

I'm talking about the real apocalypse. The one that already happened. I am not a doomsayer for doom has been murmured in the footsteps of humanity. It has been woven in bone and blood. Women menstruate it, babies eat it, young boys rub their little pecker's at the sight of it. I am a doom knower, for I have seen it. I was born in its decade. 1980, the decade of catastrophe. That's a crock. Every decade spells murder by the moonlight. 1980 is merely the the year the mountains began shouting out the obituaries: GOD DEAD, HEAVEN DEAD, EARTH DEAD, Time & Space collapsing in on itself. Humanity marches onward into Hades. What will the shade of Heracles say as he cups his hands and pushes the ram's blood to his lips? "I was once a man of power." he croaks, "I was once the hero of legend." his voice grows stronger as the blood grips his vessel and substantiates his form, "There was no chthonic monster I could not slay, nor no labour I could not overcome, yet my end was met by the mistrust of the ones I loved." Now we see Heracles, the shadow of the man, his voice booming with lust, his eyes shinning with the memory of glory, "And as my flesh blackened and burned away I was dead and a part of my soul, the part you see before you now, slipped into Erebus." Now his voice echoes hollow, now his skin grows thin, "The rest of me," he chokes, "became a god." 

Some horse bottomed bastard has sold humanity the means to its own demise. Who do we love? Ourselves. Who do we mistrust? Ourselves. Who buys the poison? Who supplies the poison? Who applies, and complies, and dies from the poison? Ourselves. Now the world is burning down around us. I can feel my flesh bubble and grow sweet. Can you smell it? Can you smell the aroma of a slow-cooked species sparkling out of existence? This is the end of the human age. The ignition has already taken place. Now, as we smoulder away, I wait to see who shall be counted among the dead and who shall rise as gods. Between the sea and sleeping, the narcotic army of walking dead. Televised scripture. Digital heaven. Flesh men and women turning to stone. Are we sleeping? I rarely sleep, for to sleep would be to dream of a golden throne. My eyes are flooded with neon violence. My brain is filled with the silent screams lurking in the faces of my friends. Are we sleeping? Or are we the dead.

S. Sparling

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Ancient bones are breaking


Stars and stars and stars
keep it to themselves
Have you ever noticed how private
a wet tree is
a curtain of razor blades
Love me because nothing happens
***
Why should I be alone
if what I say is true
I confess I mean to find
a passage or forge a passport
or talk a new language
Love me because nothing happens
***
I confess I meant to grow
wings and lose my mind
I confess that I've
forgotten what for
Why wings and a lost mind
Love me because nothing happens

L. Cohen


Córdoba.
Far away, and lonely.

Full moon, black pony,
olives against my saddle.
Though I know all the roadways
I’ll never get to Córdoba.

Through the breezes, through the valley,
red moon, black pony.
Death is looking at me
from the towers of Córdoba.

Ay, how long the road is!
Ay, my brave pony!
Ay, death is waiting for me,
before I get to Córdoba.

Córdoba.
Far away, and lonely.

F. Lorca




'Find meat on bones that soon have none,



And drink in the two milked crags,
The merriest marrow and the dregs
Before the ladies' breasts are hags
And the limbs are torn.
Disturb no winding-sheets, my son,
But when the ladies are cold as stone
Then hang a ram rose over the rags.

'Rebel against the binding moon
And the parliament of sky,
The kingcrafts of the wicked sea,
Autocracy of night and day,
Dictatorship of sun.
Rebel against the flesh and bone,
The word of the blood, the wily skin,
And the maggot no man can slay.'

'The thirst is quenched, the hunger gone,
And my heart is cracked across;
My face is haggard in the glass,
My lips are withered with a kiss,
My breasts are thin.
A merry girl took me for man,
I laid her down and told her sin,
And put beside her a ram rose.

'The maggot that no man can kill
And the man no rope can hang
Rebel against my father's dream
That out of a bower of red swine
Howls the foul fiend to heel.
I cannot murder, like a fool,
Season and sunshine, grace and girl,
Nor can I smother the sweet waking.'

Black night still ministers the moon,
And the sky lays down her laws,
The sea speaks in a kingly voice,
Light and dark are no enemies
But one companion.
'War on the spider and the wren!
War on the destiny of man!
Doom on the sun!'
Before death takes you, O take back this.



D. Thomas



I've come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I'm not kidding, it's
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head-
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes-
then she drops her hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
this will do. well,
I'm going.
I get up and walk her
to the door
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them
red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the pointsettas drip in the sun
I close the door.


C. Bukowski



outside my window stands a culling man


his feet are doused in ivory for


they hold nothing of what is human


on his hip he wears the bowie knife


at his side he carries the tombstone rifle
raised to extinguish the solitary flame
that spat upon the land once
six thousand years ago
and gave birth to bale
gave birth to me and you

he draws the knife and enters my house
I hear the doorknob rattle

S. Sparling

you've got the universe reclining in your hair

Columbia gives births to images of coffee, cocaine, and conflict

Yet its one of most beautiful places on earth.

A mysterious propagator of life and all its pain and suffering, all its beauty and soul.


Bastardilla is a Columbia based street artist who's work could only be described (by me at least) as one of those things that people do that transcends mimicry and becomes nature itself. There is so much vibrancy and jubilation in her work - so much colour and enigma- she forms her own mythology of visual stimulation. She finally has her own website, which is here.

Mother's of Invention


This is a picture taken in Joshua Tree by photographer Stephanie Gonot, the set is really amazing and shows her unique style. You can see more of her photography here .


Marvelous street art by Roa, which can be found all around the UK. A highly detailed map of where one might come across these works can be found here.



A Circular Walking Bookshelf. Not much is known about the piece or its creator (name unknown), but you'll need a fairly large apartment to get any exercise in this contraption. Either way I find it a strangely odd and beautifully thoughtful piece.