i knew i felt something special for him...the way i found myself watching him and listening for his voice above the din of the others. i liked the way he did things, that he was neat and clean but not obessively so and that he was a gentleman--not like those professor type assholes who make a big show of it but like the guy from your neighborhood who always had a smile and looked out for you in a quiet caring way, making sure you got to the end of the street OK.

i wanted something. i wanted him to touch me.

i wanted a man to touch me.

i put it out of my head and tried to hide it away...

but beauty can not remain hidden from me

(even if i'm the one hiding it)

i will unearth it if it means chipping way at myself for years

like tim robbins in the shawshank redemption

my unconscious gets to work

it picks and cracks and jabs and dislodges

it taps out messages

and frees the space to be filled by feeling--

a love as pure and sudden as an electrical charge.

a buzz...a high

a lyrical kick.

this is the first weekend of the rest of my life.

at the elliot smith "figure 8" wall...

There are people who blog for a living, there are people who blog for a cause, there are people who blog to be worshipped, there are people who blog to make art and there are people who blog for no reason, stabbing themselves in the chest again and again and again with the pointlessness of it all.

I've started writing a book for anyone who blogs or is thinking of blogging but it is especially dedicated to those in the last three groups.








there's a message in the format

interludes

lying here, stoned and dethroned in the unreal yellow half-light of the cool spring rain. im toying with the notion that while it might not be possible to truly think several thoughts at once, perhaps we can conceive of our consciousness as a pair of hands that holds thoughts like stones--picking up one, pressing on it for some time and perhaps holding it close before putting it down and picking up another...

perhaps the things we think and feel remain glowing on our mind's motherboard the way the stones retain the warmth of our hands for some time after we let go of them?

outside my open window the drops fall on the black metal bars of the fire escape, in secret, fated combinations that flash like static in front of my eyes before disappearing forever.




u can turn yr life into art if u make every action the result of yr own specific brand of grace.

if i could have a clue what justice is it would be more than i deserve.

i'm gonna turn my back for awhile, down
while nothing bad can or will befall
the lights welcome me all by myself
and the fires only bronze they do not burn

well do you understand girls where its going
i'll fuck girls, if there's violence to come
why, happiness, ohhhh happiness
they're crying, and their night has come

See them in the theatre, they're very, very real
Scold them when they come home, dirty, crying
Well, love, is forbidden outwardly
but inside there is no denying, oh

so, ???? boys, bury their hats
and they suffer while they waste and hurt
they are men who bow before us now
and i do not trust them, no
How many children are there like this?
Yeah, and how many will I serve?
o if i could have a clue what justice is
it would be more than i deserve, oh

o time is passing, come into my house
loot the pantries and muss the sheets
Have you found it useful, thinkin' here?
Your host will be ten miles, on back.

--Palace Music, "Cat's Blues"

Never ever ever could we fake moves.

Back in the days when I was a teenager
Before I had status and before I had a pager
You could find the Abstract listening to hip hop
My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop
I said, well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles
The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin like Michael
Its all expected, things are for the lookin
If you got the money, Quest is for the bookin
Come on everybody, let's get with the fly modes
Still got room on the truck, load the back boom
Listen to the rhyme, to get a mental picture
of this black man, through black woman victim
Why do I say that, cuz I gotta speak the truth man
Doing what we feel for the music is the proof and
Planted on the ground, the act is so together
Bonafied strong, you need leverage to sever
The unit, yes, the unit, yes, the unit called the jazz is
deliberatley cheered LP filled with streeet goods
You can find it on the rack in your record store (store)
If you get the record, then your thoughts are adored
and appreciated, cause we're ever so glad we made it
We work hard, so we gotta thank God
Dishin out the plastic, do the dance till you spastic
If you dis... it gets drastic
Listen to the rhymes, cuz its time to make gravy
If it moves your booty, then shake, shake it baby
All the way to Africa a.k.a. The Motherland (uh)
Stick out the left, then I'll ask for the other hand
That's the right hand, Black Man (man)
Only if you was noted as my man (man)
If I get the credit, then I'll think I deserve it
If you fake moves, don't fix your mouth to word it
Get in the zone of positivity, not negativity
Cuz we gotta strive for longevity
If you botch up, what's in that (ass) (what?)
A pair of Nikes, size ten-and-a-half (come on, come on)

Chorus:

We gotta make moves
Never, ever, ever could we fake moves (come on, come on) (4X)

"Time.. time is a ship on a merciless sea
Drifting toward an average of nothingness
Until it can be retarded for it's own destiny
TIME is an inanimate object
Praying and praying and praying for ??
Time is DANCING, moving lingering all memories of past.."
-> The Last Poets

You gotta be a winner all the time
Can't fall prey to a hip hop crime
With the dope raps and dope tracks for you for blocks
From the fly girlies to the hardest of the rocks
Musically the Quest, is on the rise
We on these Excursions so you must realize
that continually, I pop my Zulu
If you don't like it, get off the Zulu tip
So what could you do in the times which exist
You can't fake moves on your brother or your sis
But if your sis is a (bitch), brother is a jerk
Leave 'em both alone and continue with your work
Whatever it may be in today's society
Everything is fair, at least that how it seems to me
You must be honest and true to the next
Don't be phony and expect one not to flex
Especially if you rhyme, you have to live by the pen
Your man is your man, then treat him like your friend
All it is, is the code of the streets
So listen to the knowledge bein dropped over beats
Beats that are hard, beats that are funky
It could get you hooked like a crackhead junkie
What you gotta do to is know that the Tribe is in the sphere
The Abstract Poet, prominent like Shakespeare

Chorus

Edgar Allan Poe, it don't stop (uh!)

"Time is running out on black power Africans today
and whites blacks and reporters at night
Everytime you see them ?? with their tongues hangin out
Time is running and past and passing and running
Running and past and passing and running (excursions)"
--A Tribe Called Quest, "Excursions"

* vocal interludes sampled from "Time is Running Out" by The Last Poets

Left looking just like a ghost.

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you

Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got

Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon

Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same

Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost

I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to call my bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough

--Bob Dylan, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"

Hard like that.

i looked at a picture of myself as a baby--so beautiful, tiny and strong.

"Don't worry, kid," i said, "i got yr back."

would u be an outlaw for my love?

in a new york city public park about to fall off the wagon...

i can feel the world vibrating off its core as it shows me how simultaneously alive and dead it is

the tree in front of me is so still, its branches are like the arms of a statue. each little leaf however is trembling wildly, achey shakey breaky.

my outsides are frozen but my insides are jumping...i know that one will take care of the other--if i break this self-imposed paralysis one step after one step will lead me across the busy avenue (the streaming cars and bobbing heads of people, the lights and the glares where the lights haphazardly converge) and i'll find my feet leading me straight to the bar, where i'd hesitate as always at the door before disappearing inside or else to the liquor store, where there's no hesitation... prolly the liqour store cuz i have money and im so ashamed...i dont want anyone to see the lame, stupid, broken me that i see..i'd rather be curled up beneath my window, drinking myself unconscious...

the urge to drink is the urge to sink to the bottom of the ocean, where the me of the here and now can become one again with the wrecked barge of my past, which sits motionless on the soft ocean floor, split open by the raw rainbow sea aneome muscle of philosophical and psychological investigation in full bloom--its bulbous, yellow and green fingers curling in and stretching out in synchronized grasps...

the weight of the ocean swings back and forth with the thick, unstoppable grace of a pendulum.

u gave me yr mix

we're like outlaws

nyc punk art rockers

we have our secret places in the city

like the secret spots on our bodies

and secret meanings in our mixes


our love blooms orange and red

flowers and flames,

the happy and sad feelings between songs...

memories form dark twists beneath the surface

of soft spring soil

but everything's ok

it's all as it should be

love and loss

rise and fall

sweetness and light--

the earth is its mountains

and its valleys and its wonderous pits of mineral ore

and its rainbow oil slicks and sparkling factory lights

the searching lighthouse eye

and the ragged company

of metal ships and bombs that scar

all is desire, all is ending, all is beginning

all is love,

big, big love

Creating Situations

i come back and the rain is a movie dream

its only falling in certain spots along the lavender street

the moon is yellow the streetlight too

the tulips r sprinkled with white blossom petals

i feel like nico's voice

room 526, it's enough to make u sick

my eyes never stop filming


...

it's funny when u see some old-time actor make an appearance on one of those new, teencentric sitcoms...they blow all this time trying to act, which is unnecessary because the script is total exposition: we're told what happened, why it happened, and how to feel about it. all of the characters are so meta, as tho they're simultaneously filming the sitcom and the making of the sitcom DVD.

we are the holden caulfield generation. we dont have time to ACT.

we're too busy being documented

wandering

woostercollective


Like any one of your standard “artist coming of age/realization of destiny” Hollywood flicks, my story begins in the wilderness, where I have wandered for many years. In this case, the wilderness is encompassed by my bedroom walls.

u got me open like 7-11.

Ocean

I live alone. Sometimes at nite i wake up so scurred i'm paralyzed and you're not there to hold me so in order to calm down i imagine the rest of u out there, doing what u do in yr different time zones. the things u write about. u don't think i read it but i do...

i read with my eyes closed and my laptop flipped open and my heart palpitating and little red shapes dancing against the orange drive-thru screens of my eyelids.

i lie there, literally trippin out on my own adrenaline till it hits me how far i've fallen beneath the surface of it all.





dead duck like me.

one reason i haven't moved back to europe is that even after everything i still have faith in the taste of the american people. like how they like seinfeld and the simpsons.

i feel like i can entertain them. that they'll get me.

that's one of the reasons i stay.

13 inch television

i have a tv for the first time in a year. as always, it was given to me. i've never purchased a television. someone finds out i dont have one and decides im suffering some lack. i took this one because it isn't too big. speaking of which i like smallville. the story of the teenage clark kent/superman growing up in the heart of the heart of the country, where he was deposited as a baby in a meteor shower that bestowed super freaky powers to people living nearby to where it fell to earh. i like how most people use their powers for cold scheming on means to ends that are never totally justifiable. i like how clark's normal "mom" and "dad" keep him powerless under the structured heaviness of their moral superiority. i like how his best friend is lex luther, who will one day turn into his best enemy...i like how lex's father is a wealthy capitalist who is trying to take over the world with Luthercorp. everyone has a weakness that works like an achilles heel, for clark it is "meteor rock" which we the audience know to be "kryptonite" cuz we know where clark comes from even tho he does not yet. the feeling of fate is overwhelming, unstoppable...yet it also feels delicate, like a million brightly colored newsprint cartoon panels stacked to the sky in an archway leading all the way to metropolis, to the promise and the art decco glory of a skyscraper shooting its newswire load across the horizon like a shooting star...

i like how the teenage fear of feeling forever alone is true in the case of clark kent.

One Thousand Posts Later

I always knew I'd build something cool one day. It coulda been a bomb or a bridge but instead it turned out to be a blog.

oh wells.

wasters of the world unite!!

> > > heya,
> > > ...u have
> > > to remember that I come from the blog school of
> > raymi
> > > anti and jamie, where its like blogs and
blogging
> > and
> > > posts r SO not important...its all one big
> > unnecessary
> > > waste of time, the whole fucking enterprise.
> > >
> > > only once a blogger fully realizes that will
their
> > > blog kick ass.
> > >
> > > xoxoxo

how i write stories

I stretch threads of text back and forth until I create a cat’s cradle out of all the moments leading up to and away from that one initial moment, which no longer exists.

It's a black square on the table. The Perfect Polaroid that never developed.

My job is to shake the shit out of it.

Iron Will

“Little Willie”: That's what they called my great-great grandfather--stunted and hunched and pale as a corpse with black hair and blue eyes. His back was twisted and from it he suffered chronic pain in his shoulders and hips. Blood moved thru his swollen veins in sludgy, polluted clumps, made worse by the anti-nutrition of the English pub food fry-ups that he subsisted upon. The poison his father tried to kill him with when he was a toddler pushed each of his organs to the brink of failure but it cast his immune system and his will in iron—as huge and hard as the engine of the ship that took him all the way here, to America where he deposited his lonely, broken teenage body and started again, amongst the poor, hard-scrabble immigrants who didn’t read the papers and wouldn’t remember any of the details regarding a mass murder in England a decade earlier...

i imagine him on the deck, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and zoning out with his hat pulled low as the wind blew and the ship cut thru the waves and white foam dissolved in long, silent lines on either side of him.

He was being thrown far, far away from everything he thought he knew and into the black, cauterized spoon surface of possibility, where one is boiled down to molten lava by the blue-tipped flames of fate.

Only the strongest metal survives to be handed down…and only as an essence.




open like a child's mind.



delicate lines on delicate paper