the early years

cupo laughing. z pissing.

Rikki Rockit

stay tuned...

ROC to NYC

I will be in NYC for a few days. Stay tuned...

uh oh

rhythm painting

Antony showed up. He knocked unannounced at the studio door. I peeped out gripping a wooden club and saw his face. "Is this your painting? Are you a painter?" He was looking at the rhythm painting, the one in the picture. "Yes." "And this one?" he said pointing to the chalk painting just next to it, the one that had been there for two years. "No." "I'll give you a hundred bucks for your painting." "OK." He handed me a card, he was a poet. "You're a poet?." "I study business but I'm a poet on the side." He was a poet, I already knew it. "Where can I hear you read?" "At the factory tomorrow." "OK, I'll be there." I wanted hear some words. "Man, that's..." he pointed to the rhythm painting, nodding his head. "See you tomorrow then." I closed the door and Antony walked off. I stood there all gruff with a club in my hand and thought of Paul, my friend who lost his mind back in the short days just out of high school. I thought, "I could use that talk old man." Then I sat to write it.

then, again

The past is dangerous, as much, if not more than, the future. The past has a way of rearranging itself. Losers become grand and noble things base. Of course some friends would say to me, why suffer it? Why even consider it? And my former friends would say, you’re fucked up and don’t get involved with that mess. The girl came by to tell me all my observations don’t make me right. Said that inherently I’m selfish, that I even said so myself, that I could only live this way with crazy dysfunctional chics and no healthy girl with a solid self image would ever put up with me. I apologized, then sat there and cried. I loved her and now I was going to suffer it. Again. I couldn’t lash back and didn’t want to. She may have been saying exactly what she feels and this, at least, was a good thing. I looked to the monitor just as this pictured flashed by the screen in some random cycles so I called it back and looked at it with my hot red eyes. I saw the past but what I saw in it now changed. I saw all real views are divided and will contain something to sever the plane. S _ _ _ would say that this reality shit is dubious and queer and that the only thing that makes someone good at something sometimes is that they are the only one doing it. Maybe both things are right. I focused back on the picture and traced the path in my mind from it to the apartment and back, traced the steps in my mind up the road, up past the old wall and up through the garden where this image was made. Florence is dangerous. It swims with nostalgia. I saw it though, I saw both sides. I saw how it split the people and how it held them. I saw a distance and the distance saw me. I wrestled with that nostalgia like a mean fag and launched toward the future. The future was aggressive and foul, not luring in the least. It insisted on a fight and uncertain outcomes. The past mirrored the future. The past was a dark skinned man posing as Caucasian and the future was a white skinned women posing as black. I may be closer to present.

Easter in Buffalo

days before the wake

Good Friday

Chronicles

I woke up feeling cold. The girl was gone. She had wandered into the front room to smoke a bowl and masturbate and fell asleep on the couch. I wandered out at some early hour to fetch her back. “Come to bed.” She opened her groggy eyes and complied. “You were screaming in your sleep,” she said. I knew I did that sometimes, I was stressed. E-cubed had borrowed the camera and kept it for the night even though that wasn’t the plan. I hadn’t been without it since January 15. I didn’t expect that reaction but it came. It was the thing that overburdened that load. “I’m sorry,” I replied, “I must be stressed.” “It was fucked up, you wouldn’t wake up, and I thought you were joking at first.” I wasn’t. “You should have asked me to fuck you, it probably would have helped you sleep,” I said changing the subject. “I’m afraid to be aggressive with you, I thought you’d let me know when you’re ready.” I would but sometimes there’s just no time. I had analyzed too much of it already and risked losing it all. It always feels that way. How could you actively want less with a girl? With my possessions I want to get rid of more things and then I think long and hard before I bring anything in. With the Girl I was on new ground, I didn’t know how to reach her and lacked the patience. “I am impatient and am not sure if I can find that connection with you.” This upset her. Maybe I should keep these thoughts to myself but I pushed anyway. “I don’t have time. How am I going to make these pieces and keep moving forward and work out how to connect with you?” I was saying too much, bungling it. She stopped to just look at me and I stared back. “Stop staring at me, I don’t like it.” She was clearly vulnerable but I look, that’s what I do. “I’m looking at you because I adore you. That’s why I look at you.” My stare is fierce, I know what she means. I tried to lighten it. Reached to touch the back of her neck but she grabbed my hand and threw it off. Violence. I imagined her screaming and punching a dude until he hit back. I imagined various scenarios of domestic abuse and how they arise. I also knew repression.

“Maybe you could suck my tits every once and awhile.” “OK.” Maybe I didn’t know a thing, it sounded a fine idea. We were talking about lesbians and I was being sexist. “Gay women really have the best of all worlds, they can have babies should they choose and all those soft titties. Who doesn’t like tittes?” Then came her titties retort. I haven’t been myself for a long enough time now that I suspect magic. I have some enemies that use it and I’ve had this feeling that I’m being attacked. The thing with magic though is that if the spell caster is wrong then the energy will return. A curse is a powerful thing, it takes real hate to cast one. I’ve been angry enough but I’ve yet to learn hate. Even _ _ _ _. I think, after the wound is healed enough, “good for her. She’ll survive.” And that’s one way to do it. To survive. Hell is always close but so is salvation, or so the convoluted stories of childhood would have me believe. Nevertheless I thought I should check into some protection spell or some acknowledgement of the disease in order for it to be returned to sender. I also thought I’d better fuck the girl more. It’d be a dumb and awful way to lose a girl. At this place in time at any rate.

the March

Sleeping Boys

Way past post - St. Patrick's Day

Monday, March 17, 2008

“Good Morning Daniel.”
“Good Morning.”
“Language won’t save you Daniel.”
“I’m not looking to be saved.”
Silence, then
“Logic won’t save you Daniel.”
“I’m not looking to be saved.”
“Then why are you trying Daniel?”
“I’m not trying to try.”
“Yes… you are.”
“You built it for me then. You put the questions in.”
Silence. Awake.

Americans are fierce people. We are to be feared for our independence. Even the pansy dreamers. Each one. Each motherfucker a diamond pure against resistance. Even the Anti-Warrior would raise a gun and fire. They would kill. It’s built into the code and we are born into the code. Every American shithole is a maelstrom of free men and women. And these people will lock eyes and knees and move forward, each an island like a retracted solar bang, 300 million celestial bodies upon your threat to such a shithole.

further essentials

essentials

morning star toward Utica

future standing box

the design center

blue

in the trinity.

Confessionals - no dumping, N.Y. state

Ah, the sweet and putrid truth. The flump of failure. The utter fascination of wanting something, finding it exactly as imagined and losing it as foreseen. Schmuck. The way there is a horned devil whispering it into being. The way of want. The way out. The honesty of pain, the foolishness of honesty. The stupidity of courage. The misguidance of valor. The end, the bitter end and the match that ignites it. The beginning and end, the beginning and end. The day. The first day. The last one. The last day. The fight. The last violent act. The last act. The final act. The loser. The last word. The final word. The finalist. The next day. The out. The out again. The city and all her distorted lovers. To each a city. The city of each. The hardened, embarrassing putrid truth. The real. The hold outs. The dreamers. The real. Beginning and end, beginning and end. The city. The long road to it. Hope.

> “You’re worse than that nigger whose fucking your wife.” Jesus. This coming from the woman I spent a year of my life with. The woman who I fought for and stood in court with. The woman who I entrusted with special knowledge.
I reply > “I assume you got my emails. I assume you got my message. I assume you don’t care.”
> “What do you want me to say?”
> “Anything. Something. It’s unbearable to ignore it.” “It’s fucking unbearable.”
> “You’re a bad person Daniel. Look what you did to your wife. You’ll get yours. You’ll see…” “Karma, it’s called karma.” I wanted to remind her that karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos. That all these actions are a result of unenlightened behavior and all this suffering is likely from lifetimes ago. Or at least that is what the Bodhisattvas would advise. The best thing to do would be to leave it be. I didn’t and this is the result.
> “Be kind.” “Jesus.” “I gotta know, I deserve to know.”
> “Yes, abortion asshole!” I still couldn’t know. I looked up at the rings dangling from the clip, all the evidence of birth control. The thought of it wrecked me. I wouldn’t be lured in. I wouldn’t let it go down like that. I couldn’t. I was sure it was a lie but I couldn’t be positive. It’s the best way to fuck a man up – tell him you intentionally destroyed his seed. Tell him he loses and is worthless. Set him up for the ultimate failure then produce it for him.
> “It’s un-fucking-bearable.” If she could know the whole truth. If she could tell the whole truth.
> “What is?”
> “Abortion, asshole!”
> “Oh, Call me asshole.”
> “Asshole.”
> “I love you.”
> “I love you too.”
> “That’s a lie! You are stupid. Fuck off and seriously die!” “You’re so depressing. Look what you did to your wife!” “Lick the dogshit from my boot heel.” “Fuckin’ Loser.”
> “Virginia Woolf was a writer. You gotta make something before you suck cocks in hell,” I replied. I had the thought that she was baiting me. All her words hurt.
> “Get a life and quit thinking about me!! I don’t want you!!!” There was no way out and no way to make it right. I gave her the last word. She hit. “You purposely try to destroy people! You have major mental issues and need serious help!” “Seriously, lose my #” “You don’t know when to stop! Everyone knows!!” “You scare me! I’m changing my number and getting a retraining order!”
And that was it. That was the last word. The end. All enshrined in drugs and booze and lies and a hope that happiness will follow. More victims, little else.

I crawled into bed with the girl. I was numb. Knew little else. Couldn’t make it right. Didn’t know how. The girl got up and left. There really was no out. I knew something. I knew my heart. I knew that there was more than that madness. I knew when it was time to pony up and take punches. I knew the difference between right and wrong. I knew how to suffer and to accept responsibility. I knew it took two. I knew I would go on. I knew I didn’t want that. I knew enough but not enough to stop it. I knew it was time to walk slowly and carry a gun.

more

one more night...

sleep first

in the morning love...

stacks more

I am currently cleaning the studio for "artificial standing box" and "the lovers" nudes. In a state. More stacks.

roc city

the hill

The girl is a good human. This is not to say that others aren’t, rather that there is a natural goodness to a person that is apparent in the way they hold themselves. Her goodness has not saved her from hate. She spent years being beaten by her boyfriend. Fucker would wound her with fists until blood or a scream broke the spell. That’s how it went down, that’s what she put up with for a few years. Then practicality set in and the girl left and the man stopped beating her because she was gone. Otherwise the beatings would continue. Simple. Like most things except when they aren’t. They often aren’t. It’s confusing this way.
The man I’m standing with in this picture, his father died of complications arising from heroine use. He hit it hard and died young. His mother was beaten, beaten down, thrown through windows, dragged down. She escaped with the boy to our safe, or seemingly safe, suburban shithole. We walked this mountain daily, wailed on our boyish flesh with all the righteous rage of youth and aggression. The top is a sea of homes, each locked to its own televisual whacked living room looptronics. The bottom was the refuge of flood plane and garbage and a sweet golf course and excellent friendships, the kind that last decades, lifetimes even.
Mom was on her third glass of white wine. She lost her job again. In her fifty ninth year, facing unemployment, she’s back to the job market, back to cigarettes, back to double time wine and back to all that she can do to celebrate the success of her sons. Sister having moved back in to the family home, to consolidate the debt and escape the uncertainty of a relationship outside of marriage, with no one to lead and no lead to follow, what else is there to do?
I check the machine for news. The television gawkers look on with judgment. “There he goes again?” I find. Pete loads a few from the west coast – messaging from trailer lands:

> a drunk moment of stoned purity...
> the street, the gang, the syndico-anarchist unit...
> i miss my friends.
> i hate nearly everyone that's left tho that's my problem...
> today they were dancing & singing their latin love songs while i slept.
> i heard them though, in my stuppor, longing for community.

I thought, “he’s the only sane man I’ve heard from today.” I wanted nothing more than to walk the boiling caldera and drink booze by the river once the distance had burned out the air of failure and exhaustion had set the tune to what we knew was right. Distance is a grand celebration.

bjorn-lass

Chronological Buffalo

New Jersey