the pleasure of my axis is you

"The pleasure of my axis is you." says the electronic man. Pause.
"The pleasure of my axis is you." says the electronic women. Pause.
Red fades to violet to indigo to violet and back to red.
The black arrives with a straight audible tone. Repeat.

monday night dinner party

wait for me

it is so late and i need to process this vodka

hail roc

+

this night

the chic or the nigger

“The most dangerous animal in the world is a woman who doesn’t know her own power.”
The little chic cocked her head slightly. She didn’t like me.
“I can see you are uncomfortable with that statement.” I was uncomfortable with that statement. It probably shouldn’t be said to new folks but fuck it, I needed to talk.
“He’s going through a hard time right now,” Z added, laughed and said, “He’s been going through this hard time for three years now.” I laughed. The little chic stared stone cold.
Sigh. “I’m going through a hard time right now.” I wanted to shout out every detail of it, the girl, betrayal, the dishonest polemics, the empathy, the work, the love, the light, the truth. She didn’t want to hear it so I switched topics. “Who you voting for, the chic or the nigger?” NJ bastards can be gruff. The little chic was silent. The walls start going up. “I want Hillary, she’ll change the world through sheer power and will.” I said this even though I like Barack because he’s an artist with words. “I don’t trust her,” Z added, “and there’s no way in hell she can make it through the general election. Plus they are going to impeach her. They HATE her.” “What do you think?” I asked the little chic. “I don’t know, I don’t think of people on their gender.” She was full of PC nonsense. “I don’t either but I got to admit it feels better than four more years of cock n’ balls in the cream house,” I weighed in with increasing gusto. I wanted to weep. I excused myself, went back to the studio and wept. I missed the girl, god damn it, I wanted to rub her soft belly and sleep naked with the covers off.
The boy came slamming down the hall. He knocked; clunk, clunk, clunk. “Hey Daniel.” I opened the door and looked down. “I did two circles,” he said confidently from the driver’s seat of a red big wheel. “Two Donuts! Wow!” I felt proud to know him. “Daniel, can you read me a book?” I loved that. “Of course I can. Let me finish up some work and I’ll come over.” “OK, Daniel.” He always calls me Daniel and notices when others don’t. Children are smart. I tidied up, headed over and read him a righteous gargoyle poem.

papal visit, prior

m y t

Killing the Cock

Springtime draws up memories like worms. In the years just shy of the explosion out from the weed and swamplands of North Jersey, in the years before the great escape, on the weekends I would make it to the kennel and feed the sheep and my mind with responsibility and all the lesson of the workhorse blues. They were good days, some of the very best, and if the lord saw it fit I would have overturned every inch of that swampland with my hands in obedience and died happy. But the girls don’t love a kennel hand and the world was too small for me not to engage it and my ideas were too large for me not to enhance it so I left. It was only always a temporary parting which continues to the present. The lessons remain and persist. Like cock fighting.

“Did I ever tell you the story about the boss’ cock.”
“Really? You mean a chicken?”
“A male chicken, a rooster, yes, the boss’ cock.” “His name is Dick.”
“The chicken?”
“No, not the cock, he was named One-Low-Hung-Jowel. He had a giant dangling Jowel and you couldn’t miss him. We called him One-Hung-low.”
“Oh.”
“I killed One-Hung Low. Or I thought I killed him. I knocked him out cold for 40 minutes. The deal was this cock would watch me to see when my hands were full then attack with his talons. He’d really dig in. He’d literally be attacking the hands that feed him. What a bastard. Usually I’d punt him as a solution then he’d stay away for a day or two. This time I wound back with the shovel and kind of aimed it at his body but just as I swung, a good solid swing, he jumped back, put his neck forward, feathers flared as he does, and I landed the blow solid directly to his head.”
“Wow.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. His head instantly dropped as if I had broken his neck and he ran around the yard essentially like a chicken with his head cut off. Then he dropped and all the hens rushed to peck at him. They do that, I mean One-Hung-Low was a tyrant, they were probably happy to see him go. I felt terrible. He had blood coming from his eye and beak. He was dead so I picked him up and flopped him in an upper kennel, holding him high so the elkhounds wouldn’t tear him up. He was clearly dead. I had to tell the boss that I killed his cock. So I did that, I told him and I felt so bad. The boss took a look, he was dead. So we made a plan to leave him in the swamp for the fox and set about kennel work. Then about a half an hour later he was up, just sitting there like a hen, completely confused with his head low. We fed him in that cage for a month but he lived.”
“Really?”
“Yea, that’s the story of killing the cock. I have a better version which involves the curdled crow he was able to get out a month or more later. I miss One-Hung-Low, he was a righteous bastard, a real scrapper. That fucker.”

o w l

whom, friday z

s o s

post median

I ticked the debates after watching a few innings of the Yankees game. Baseball is a game of patience and patience is what is needed so I decided to make a habit of it. I told myself I wouldn’t get into stats and names but I’m developing favorites. I watch now as love in me is passing where from I make it out and watch the world from my new perspective. Now and again I’ll talk to a girl or deliver a drink and now and again the night pops alive and the heaven’s open and we are off. This night was warm and decent and uneventful. I felt pride to watch a black man and a woman debate for the most powerful position in the world even if the world wasn’t ready. I thought of holding a gun against an invading army and thought of the lack of love and the clouds that encase it.

The girl called for a cool minute and handed me some coal. I burned the coal into soot and searched for canvas but it just didn’t come together this night. It’s a hard night when it doesn’t come together. I told the girl as much but she was already asleep or ignoring my contacts. So I told myself as much and laid to rest, awaiting the next inning.

in one

negotiations

Mary

The bartender looked up and with some trepidation at my inquiry. “I’m Daniel,” I told him. “That’s my name, Dan. I’m Dan too.” This lightened the mood somewhat. “I don’t live here anymore, I’m just wondering how she is.” “Yea, I remember Mary. She had a tight little body.” That was Mary. “She’s probably 200 lbs. now.” I nodded and listened for more. “You don’t want to get mixed up with that,” he said, looking out for me. “I know. I’ve got a whole other life now, I don’t live here anymore.” “She came in here a year or so back and had a few drinks then just fell off the bar stool.” He motioned with his hand how she fell. “Right in mid conversation,” he added. “A girl like that will never get right. I think she was born in prison. I mean what does a girl like that do?” “Yea,” I nodded in understanding. “Well, if she happens in here at some point tell her Daniel asked about her.” I felt it. “I think she’s in Florida - on her second or third kid.” “Yea,” I nodded again. We watched a bit of the game, shook hands then turned and left. When I met Mary she was gorgeous. She read me a poem and I fell in love knowing it would only be a short life. She straddled my body in the driver’s seat of that car. The car that took me west, twice. We would make love in the quiet of her Main Street apartment and I would visit her all awkward at her lunch hour in the library. She was a librarian by day and a bartender by night. Perfect. We fell in love, sort of, then I left. I left on the weekdays for a philosophy degree from Rutgers. I didn’t last but I wished I could see Mary now, 200 lbs. or not although I knew it would go nowhere. We shared fluids, we connected on some level and stayed for the want of it. For some time, for now, as we do.

bats and worms

The instant I awoke a bat fell from the rafters. I saw it from the periphery – “oh?!” I exclaimed. I do that, exclaim in random grunts. It fills the boredom of the dark – a madness born from the darkroom years. The form that fell could have been the dust but this time it wasn’t. It was a bat, either rabid, dead, confused or stupid. I got up to investigate nudging him with a nearby coat hanger. “Oh, he’s dying. Put him out of his misery.” “I’m not going to kill it. He could be rabid.” I stood over him now, fully naked watching his tiny paws grasp the air. “Lemme find something to pick him up with.” I looked for anything to do the job. The girl went to piss. In the minutes between the bat came to, flew past my exposed body and slammed into the door, dropping to the floor. I watched him again, this time he curled up in a fright. I grabbed a mop and used it like the hair of a seahag until it clung on in a hail of tiny screams. I thought of it dropping on the girl’s head, clutching fiercely as she swatted in hysterics. “Maybe bats do like hair,” I thought. I thrust the mop into the hall and the creature took off.

The following morning these worms had crawled from the soil up and onto the concrete. I took pains to avoid them as I walked. Strangely they were only present on the bridge and pathway leading up the hill to the bridge that crossed over the railroad tracks below. Back in the kennel days we used a yellow substance to attract and kill flies. We’d sprinkle the toxic jimmies onto a bait bucket of shit and kill thousands of those fuckers. The problem was, other creatures would die too. Like the worms - if the toxins hit the soil, the following day worms would be dead near the site having been lured by the poison. What poison drew these out? I wondered. I looked to the trains and the stacks in the distance spewing soot. I thought of my lungs and the south facing tenants. No birds seemed interested. I made note of it and looked the landscape over to determine if the soil that supported the bridge was fill or natural. Then I was past the worms and hardened my thoughts on survival and the dangers through the back streets to work. Past the abandoned lot, past the strip joint and the razor wire factory lot, past my old apartment where my old curtains still hang, past the neighborhood crack house onto the lawns of posterity and the quiet reality that forward contains such convoluted paths.

the lead, morning view

pork and beans

all of it

The flow of snot ran from my skull and down the back of the throat slowly draining, draining, draining. It tickled the spirit that lives strangling the vocal chords and then came back up like an angry dog in short barks from the irritation. It is time for the movement of bile and blood through the spleen. It is spring and time for a change. Visiting Z I saw the restlessness in his gate. “Things are moving too slowly for me.” “I know.” “No, this place moves too slowly for me.” NYC does that, there is just way too much to see or do at any moment. To be bored in the city is to be stupid. Dreams of building the cabin ran through my draining skull. I almost opened my mouth but decided against it. This was the closest to the dream that is necessary. Over the hills there is also adventure but this one was enough. “We’ll get it painted by Saturday,” I replied referring to the new space. Z nodded – “I need a right hand.” That’s the hand he can’t move, he was right handed and now he can’t move it. In all the years we’ve done this I can recall only a handful of times that he referred directly and lamentably to his ailments. It’s springtime and time for a change. I just listened. Then abruptly as we watched the gold of the sunset grip the city he arose and announced, “OK, I gotta work.” “OK.” That meant I had to work too and set about that.

The day passed, filled with events and ended with the long road ahead. I gripped the camera in my pocket, my constant companion, and fiddled with the dial. Hadn’t been feeling it lately. Products and art products had their toll on the life – too much information and too quickly. I love it all so it’s hard to balance. Plus, I’ve been feeling distant. Distant from what I’ve wanted, distant from my old complaints, distant from her and you. I thought, the symbolism will become clear with time but now it is time for a change. So still, one a day but if the pictures don’t come, they don’t come and I’ll offer words or video or stillness or all of it. Maybe I’ll give you all of it. Maybe I’ll give it to you, all. I’ll maybe give it all.

imagine placeholder

The video is taking up room and significant space. stay tuned...

Artificial Standing Box Pre-roll

the artificial standing box - video still

spem in

Spray paint on cardboard behind glass (explaining the glare n shit) by Tony Feher made in 1999. On the opposite wall to the left of the glare where Z is looking are Matisse screen prints. Some of the best Matisse prints I’ve seen, ever. So much talent is wasted for lack of imagination. Neither Feher nor Matisse lack either but I’ve known quite a few who waste away or worse, hack away for what they lack or fail to create. I felt affirmed by these works and I felt pity for the woman through which they recall.



Two or more years ago I had meal in this room. I walk by it a few days a week depending on my pathway to work and not think twice. Today I recall the baby crying and the conversations we had with friends. Most days I walk past ghosts and most days they walk right past me and we are both content to our searching. Occasionally, like when dog sitting and a late winter fever collide, the spirits come at me as firm as urban structures. I stay here to face them but someday, maybe someday soon, I’ll leave and meet the same spirits in the unfamiliar vastness of the elevations…

transitional exhibit, domestic

the girl pissing

head on

Picture of "Head On" 2006. Cai Guo-Qiang.

I could see the water spout over the crowded tabletop but my body wouldn’t move. A fever is my great weakness. Can’t think straight, can’t seem to move, only the pain of it. The press below cranked with classic rock from the early hours (say 4:30AM) through late afternoon. I could feel the chemicals lift up though the floorboards even if I couldn’t smell them. I just lay there making a plan. I could shift my feet and twist my torso up with the blankets if I couldn’t get up to remake them. Then If I could somehow manage to get to the medicine the headache could at least be partially slain. I thought about this, parched, for two hours and ultimately failed to make it happen. I brewed some tea but the tea got cold as I lay in a pool of sweat. I saw it there though, teasing from the corner of my eye in Z’s new mug, a mini replica of the Guggenheim he picked up for my birthday a few days back. So I nestled down and let the fever take me.

girl laughing, jersey

transitional exhibit