Sex

Last time I had sex she was dressed like a man with a white face, a mannequin smooth and hard. Her hair slick as black shoe polish. Eyes dead, tear stains of blood on the bed. The bedroom was dark. Nothing was true. Everything was permitted. The sky was gray. She was pale and smelled like sex. But she lied about not liking sodomy: she liked it and she knew I knew she liked it. She loved it and came back to it like a dog who couldn't escape the vacuum cleaner, the knife, the deranged psychotic. The more I got to know her the more I didn't know if I liked her better as a man or a woman or a dog.nothing is as tempting as pleasure twisting helplessly from a rope. We didn't merely have sex: we stopped being coherent. We made a mockery out of it. A mockery out of paradise. She rubbed my chest trying to make me be somebody. Gave herself orgasms in front of a mirror. Gave me oral sex which was more important than a conscience. I was dominate and she was submissive. I had a tongue like fat flesh. She loved my mouth. Loved my mouth inside her. Loved my tongue inside her brain. Loved the blood in my hypodermic. I was so proud for never having an original idea that I made her beg for every bad thing I did to her.She made me forget monotony. I gave her my undivided attention. We did speed in the kingdom of heaven and I'd watch her stagger down the street and come to my dirty little space. I touched the skin under her nose. Played with eyelashes. Made her sleep on the floor afterwards, chained to the bed. She was the one thing needed: forbidden fruit of a girl who waits on tables. She remembered being in a dirty laundromat, a dirty basement of a dirty hotel in downtown Dirty Town. A place where everybody lives sooner or later. It wasn't wrong to irrigate the field. I tried to find some balance but still couldn't get a taxi. I put gypsies in my arms and sometimes I missed the vein but it was still worth it.one night a few months ago I got a phone call. It woke me up. I answered it. Said hello. She wanted me to drive over to her place. Wanted to be tied up with a bag over her head. Wanted me to do it on all fours from the back end. Wanted me to bite her neck and leave deep teeth marks. Wanted to pretend she didn't know who I was. So she left the door unlocked. I let myself in and out.... in and out....... in and out in a reenactment of the Tribulation in the Garden. Sex was loud and painful. She passed out. I was the prince, she was the dead princess. After that night, I slept on subways. Bought tickets for the long and fast. I got sick from a cold wind that blew under the door and fell asleep. Something woke me up. It was the woman next door masturbating in that virtuous holy place of eternal consciousness. She was dressed like a man with a white face, a mannequin smooth and hard. Her hair slick as black shoe polish. Eyes dead, tear stains of blood on the.

this is what death must be like

is this what death must be like..... standing in front of endless doors painted black in a back alley, waiting to come back in another body just because you can.

teeth reflected in a window somewhere between the heaven and hell of one's imagination.a dark tunnel under an empty highway, only much longer and without the light.

distorted construction site that never gets finished, a mansion that never gets built, windows that look out to emptiness, elevators that dont work and lots of white space.

rolling down the road attached to a wooden board with no legs, going nowhere fast and nobody paying attention.

waiting at a bus stop for a bus that never comes, and if it comes it never stops, and if it stops we never have the exact change.

tables and chairs set for nobody to dine, walking down the street going nowhere in particular and lots of empty parking spaces.

an open mouth laughing at nothing, a kitchen with no food, some dull lights, windows that are locked and nobody there to see it.

looking back and trying to change things you dont like, unhappy with the way things turned out, pointing the finger looking for someone to blame.

a washed out memory, blurry and pointless like a cold wind hitting the back of the neck, and lots of white noise. an easily forgettable past life.

the sad blue light

it was 6am. i'd been working all night. it started to rain. grey skies. black clouds. black skies. cold rain and lots of it. i could use a drink. i walk to the corner. the bar is open every day. "night and day, you are the one." it's wednesday or tuesday. i'm sitting in the corner in the back. in the dark. minding my own business. staying out of the way, trying to get out of the way of the sad blue light.

the sad blue light shocked me like a cop on a raid and there i was -- sleeping with goats. i painted my fingernails with blood. i wrote words across my face. sweat came out of every pore of my body. i had my yes and my no. in the spring it rained. it the winter it snowed.

all i wanted to do was sit in the corner upstairs in the booth with only one chair near the window and be left alone. i wanted to stay away from the sad blue light. so i pawned my mind for a bowl of rice. i disguised my voice over the phone. it was a shadow of things to come. it was the curse, the beginning of the worse. i carried the rugged old rusty cross like a crucifixation around my neck. it rang like a cow bell. it kept me up a few days. i walked around in a trance on a night highway. i stood in doorways waiting to be slaughtered.

i tried to shut off the sad blue light before i went insane. i drank a few more, enough so i could see paint on the water. i saw the grave in the garden. i saw the bathroom door and the alley behind the bar, out back behind the dark corner. i saw the coward in the mirror. i tasted the mud of the ordinary. i fell in the mud. i walked through a maze of hallways and doors painted black. i saw an angel inside a cloud. i saw a demon inside my skull. i heard my voice begging for the end of the world. i ripped up old photographs of an angel with blood on its lips laughing at me. a slow song dripped like saliva from the corners of its mouth. it was bleeding on virgin snow in winter. i saw an angel with emerald eyes. it was crying inside the mountain. it was buried alive inside the colon of the mountain. i wanted to hang myself in the sad blue light.

i fell asleep and forgot to close the window. my foot fell off the chair. i woke up with an appetite for the strange. my glass was empty. my breath smelled bad. apparently, every word i ever spoke had turned rotten like rotten meat and smelled bad in my mouth. so i looked for my coat, my baggy pants, boots and a sharp pencil. then i hid in a closet to get away from the sad blue light. i slept on old faded yellow newspapers.

Going thru life with a square head

(Or being a square peg in a world of round holes.)

First time I knew I was different from other boys and girls was when crazy Virgo menopausal psycho bitch from hell tried to get me to sell out for a middle class income. Rather than blame failure on bad karma, pretending to be happy when it was all in my mind, I settled for no income at all.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I read a story about this girl's father and how he got arrested. As the story goes, she tucked the newspaper clipping about his arrest in an envelope, tucked away safely in a drawer by her bed. It was a private place she set aside for hating him. A place of unforgiveness. A place she kept for remembering sodomy. A place for keeping lies about being at the beach with dad. Looking at photos of grandma and grandpa. Little 5x7's. Never a square. Drank Barcardi to forget her lowliness. Next morning she'd still be drunk. Father went to prison. Did his time. Got out. In the morning she'd still be drunk. Always lonely, willing to be hurt.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after Kessler said I needed a psychiatrist because my thinking was all wrong. He slumped behind his christian pulpit like a back-alley bully. He was a coward, a serial killer stalking a smug Mexican resort. Pointed his finger at me for never sleeping. Accused me of being a homoerotic insomniac who had no right to sleep. Kessler begged to be offended. I hated him for manipulating me. So I abused him. Smashed his phone with a hammer. Threw it in the dumpster. His face all swollen red and flushed. Black circles under his eyes. Breath smelled like piss. Religion smelled just like him.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I discovered that to be queer meant to be under the influence of the piano. Nobody wanted to go where everything was nothing. Didnt matter. This was the real deal. Sex was torture. I suffered and struggled. The beast couldnt cause anything. Couldnt work. Stayed up for days without sleeping. Hitched a ride on a bus to Fresno in the middle of the night. Finally got to sleep. Slept like a baby: woke up every two hours screaming.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I got a job as a hustler, panhandler, politician, truck driver and a magazine advertisement. I was never forgiven for being a square art form in a museum of round holes. No big deal. Did a few drugs. Never went back to Sleepy Town, not ever again. Had recreational sex online with other weirdos. We were high risk individuals who loved ourselves more than we loved the shepherd.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I went to Gethsemane's religious festivals. Golgotha was more shocking than a thrift store. Nobody wore robes. Nobody got naked. Everybody was the same as everybody else. They did terrible things. If you lived there, you could kill yourself twice! One guy did it once outside his parents house on Xmas day and again by setting himself on fire drinking gasoline mouthwash. His first suicide note was brilliant! A masterpiece! But his second death was the envy of us all! After that I lived in a mirage. There never was a god to begin with. I cut it loose from my mind. That's when I started cropping photos in the shape of a square.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after I got drunk and came home after an all-niter. I'd throw things around the room., Bang into walls. Knock things over in the dark. Neighbors would be afraid. Pretended to sleep. There was simply too much grief and sorrow all in one place to get any rest. Not enough to go around. Scarcity everywhere. The solution? If someone had more unhappiness than they earned in one lifetime, a portion of it would be taken away from them and given to someone who had less. This was socialism and I liked it.

Started cropping photos in the shape of a square after my eyes went white up inside my head. Eyeballs rolled backwards. Upwards. Looking inwards. Glassy. Vacant. Dead. I slept with aries and aquarius rising. We had sex like dogs. Without a dream there was no reason for us to talk. Because of the dream, square photos were more beautiful than I ever imagined. After that, there was nothing left for me to do except pack up and go. Once I was gone, I started cropping photos in the shape of a square.

Junky

junky's connection lived in a trailer park, but junky lived in long beach. so, what's the difference? junky hung out at a corner bar. drank till he passed out. junky made boring confessions of sin. walked home down an alley behind the rockabilly50. stood under a streetlight. lit a cigarette with a silver lighter with his name engarved on it. junky smoked his cigarette between his cracked lips. held it between his first two fingers betty davis style. he blew smoke out his nose like exhaust fumes from an edsel. junky was a defiant queer. a militant limpwrist new york city jew. one shoulder lower, another higher than the other, twisted by a handicap.

junky took showers with boys from the paradisio in amsterdam. he was well-hung like a chain suspended from the ceiling. junky hears a door open and shut. someone puts away the keys, hanging them on the door. they dangle and rattle his soul after five days of bad. junky gave the landlord two days notice. he pasted it on the bathroom wall. junky had a hangover. he prayed on the cement floor. junky's motel room reeked of used tampons. it had the nauseating stench of sincerity cascading down from the top of a cathedral. "just a cheap aphrodisiac", he thought. "urban fat for the new art. for the new jazz. for the sake of the dead." junky had nothing to say. pointed his middle finger in an obscene gesture: a red tattoo of a heart painted below the bottom knuckle of his middle finger, right hand.

junky had a short fuse. his world was a pothole. he slept on the floor of a rock house, jonesin' bad and sickly. his black junky netherworld bottomed out. he had a vision: estimez qu'il n'y a rien ici qui est (think that there is nothing here that is). junky thought about it. "to know is to die", he thought, "but to not-know is to live." knowing was inhumane. not-knowing was human. to know was mortality. to not-know was immortality. so junky hung upside down with his mouth open wide hanging by his neck from the center of the room. junky was exiled from the jazz city. he saw the new order. he ate on the floor with dogs. he saw creatures nobody saw but him and the dogs.

no matter how bad it got, and it got really bad, he could still get an erection. he was a mean drunk who smelled bad. addiction was a gift. a big bass drum pounding in his head gave him visions of the apocalypse: pregnant women beating their fists against their stomachs to wake up the fetus. worms in the womb.

junky slept on roses and thorns, and he gave himself an enema. he slept naked and dreamt that he planted his germ inside the woman. she was collateral damage. it was right for him to irrigate her. he had dominion of the earth. it was right for woman to be his property. he swallowed the oracle for the sake of the world and transformed hatred for the many into love for the few. he was a predator. a farmer with a tractor. in the end, junky was traumatized and drowned in mud. his semen floated in the trash can in an alley somewhere in a big city. in the end, he floated face down in the waters of decency. his breakdown was a failure. we were all pathetic. he didnt want to suffer but for junky, life itself was suffering enough.

women of las vegas.........

.......worked all night with exotic dancers in jazz ghettos. picked up trumpets off the street pregnant by every horn in the city. tried to get out of vegas but the evacuation smelled like a toilet. even the retarded ones, illiterate ones, everyone who had ever been thought of in the entire history of time gathered in the desert. drank from the cactus. everyone burned to the ground. only piano and drums remained beyond the ashes. the next day the dog died. they looked for the body. it was in the casino. nobody knew where. nobody cared.

6am in the kitchen, next day. elbows on the table, her head in her palms looking out the window at nothing in particular. bored, she forgot about her sickness. her eyes drifted aimlessly. cigarette ashtray was nasty. her mouth inside her boots. her red hair smelled like irony envy. sleeping beer breath. she woke up coughing.

jasmine from new york on a visit. passed out with pale white dirty sheets barely covered her below the waist. kicked off the blankets during the night. things got sweaty. jasmine wrapped her legs around libra. pulled the sheet against her ankles tied up with a piece of electrical cord she found under the bed. cigarette smoke drifted into the hole of zero where things were everything in a circle and in a god damn'd hurry! naked wearing a collar, a braclet and a leash. a phone hung on a chair next to the bed. picked up the phone. dialed a number waiting for something to happen. eyes back and forth waiting for someone to answer. it was the end.

a las vegas lounge act: cement casket going to vegas where everybody was a whore. where psychotics were not enough anymore. where under age teenage jail bait entertained and did animal noises when they were drunk. where being awake was a deep coma, a space distorted, collapsed. it was the end again. the end of the snake pit.

jasmine stirred in bed swearing. wanted to get up go to the kitchen. she turned, pushed the sheet off the bed onto the floor. grabbed the brass bars at the head of the bed. Pulled herself up screaming: "i want you now! I'M READY NOW!" libra's head weighed 200 pounds. motioned her head towards the door. her head with a toss of her hair.

next thing happens: man opens jasmine's door. walks in. shuts the door. sounds of gagging, strangulation. chocking on something in the space of the what's so and the what is and all the rest of it. the final masterpiece was to die on las vegas blvd south using a monkey, snake, a live eel on the hottest day of circumstances. evacuating las vegas: a retreat unforgiving.

girls on the strip in a bad mocking tongued each others faces. tossed the magick on the table. turned the lights on but the lights didnt work. wooden table deteriorating. they sing a song "i can drink but i cant think...." ....behind the door blond babe was worse than meaningless. so one morning i crawled out of bed. rode hard, straddled on top until she bled the mexican woman next door. woman listening, the way opened. made the woman, "she is crying!" yeah. women cry all the time. you like it? she listens. you scream.

mexican woman with five kids in the back. her house on fire, huddled together on the kitchen floor. frightened children sang religion for the dead. an unspeakable concept. women brushed their eyes with mascara and went to the tomb to look for jesus. the white horse was at the gate but a wooden box separated them from life and death. women wanted it the way it was when they were unknown but not unknowable. they wanted to be buried in vegas. every morning they begged for the kiss of the inquistion. only saw futility. free to smoke and drink but now they smoke and drink no more.

it's all over but the crying.

we waited for libra's body on a slab without a face. she drove into the parking lot. got out of the car in a mini skirt. legs out the door hot christ thighs up to her hips. wet hair against the middle of her back. the collar of her shirt had a few buttons missing. a slender pearl neck, clevage and so much future. we stood in line. kneeled to lick the sores on her feet. we closed our eyes. the secret of an expectation is its unfulfilled mystery. in vegas there is no reality. just ugliness everywhere. mediocrity. cheap paint and block walls. a desert mirage. no jazz. no zennunderground. nothing but sweat.

there's only two kinds of people live in vegas: those who quit and those too desperate to quit.

walking so slow i fell over

drunk at Whumper's Old Man which used to be on grant street, north beach. head on the bar near an ashtray. bartender poking me to get up. called a cab. dont remember getting in. remember vomiting in the back seat. barely remember getting out of the cab. crawled to the front door. woke up on the bathroom floor. live-in g/f put me to bed with my clothes on. it was 6am. she sat at the window looking out at the cars driving down sacramento street. she smoked a joint. played guitar. a terrible folksong. something original that mostly wasnt. heard it all before. drunk. sick. hung over then sick some more. sang like a wounded animal. i slept on a small mattress in the other room close to the floor. could see the windows. could see the fog. heard the heater come on and off. felt safe. no worries. had cocaine.

side effects include temporary insanity

"how bad can it get?" i asked the doc before i swallowed the pills. fifteen pills. all different colors and sizes. took me two glasses of water and several minutes to get them down. i had a bad taste in my mouth. my eyes watered. my mouth was dry as cotton. as dry as if i had licked the top of a bottle of bleach. dry as burning rubber. dry as it can get from mainlining speed. that's pretty dry. i thought my tongue was gonna fall out. maybe i sucked my teeth down my throat. my brain was on fire. i could smell smoke from my body. the hairs on my arms were little firecrackers. my eyelashes melted off my face. i couldnt see my legs or feel my feet. my hands looked like a fat four-fingered cartoon character. oh yeah... and i never got an answer to my question.

the good dream gone

ten fingers light a cigarette. big block chords up and down the piano like neon paint. slow jazz. slow blues. sad. deep and full as the night, playing one chord next to the other. first one and then another. the lights wet streets empty glasses empty tables and an ashtray. two bottles of wine, the fog and a taxi the full moon the hotel the bed twisting and turning. the jazz band at 2am went crazy and screamed all over the room. more fog from consciousness. more music at a table alone looking straight ahead at space. the good dream gone. forgetting where i came from. forgetting my name. so i walked around the corner to ellis and powell and all is gone. the good dream gone. barefoot, no shirt just a scarf thrown over me. so many people on the street walking but i dont care. jazz blowing a midnight blues. it's something to do. a black and blue midnight blues. first i found a seat and sat there listening. then i got up and walked to the corner of grant and broadway. i stood there waiting for the cars to pass. i waited for the bus. i waited for the moon. by the time i got to the cafe, i had to wait for the nurses to bring me my meds and the little white tabs. but they're always late. so i stood at the corner of sutter and hyde and waited for the bus. i listed to jazz with the brushes pushing so softly that only i can hear. i stood on the corner of geary and taylor and waited for the bus and i waited to hear big block chords that go nowhere. drum beats that beat for nobody. sleep that is only good for me. melodies only i can hear. bright lights. big city. the good dream gone. i drink up and have another for the good dream gone.

getting away with it

it was tuesday the first week in august. it was the fourth day not taking my meds. kicking it the slow way. it was the fifth week of being (almost) sober and now i'm sitting on the toilet with the runs. my ears are hissing and buzzing. i didnt sleep hardly at all last night. sat in a sauna later trying to burn it out. drank water. showered, drove home slowly.

ive been in a dry spell for some time. i sit and look through old photos, admiring some of it, embarrassed by most of it. bored by all of it. some of it's intolerably dull. i dont know what i'm expecting. i dont know what to do about it, if anything. maybe theres nothing to do. maybe its time to quit the game early, see if i can get away with it.

when i stop working long enough to listen i can hear how really useless it is. a lit cigarette burning a hole in a rug is just as useless. but as long as i can stay busy.... as long as i have something to work on, the meaningless insult of it escapes me. it stops becoming dangerous, insane and vicious as soon as i step back and get away from it. the pointlessness becomes even more obvious, as obvious as people who pretend not to be afraid of homosexuals or who go out of their way not to appear to condemn them.

doing something, anything seems to mask the futility. i want to hide from it. hoping i can get away with it, i try to keep busy working on something to stay blind to how empty it really is, but that never works. the busier i am, the more empty i am. the more empty i am, the more i want to work to fill up the emptiness. it's a vicious circle filled with smoke blowing out the ass of a buddhist cow.

zen is all about the thick layer of dust and ash covering everything in life. as long as that dirt stays there i can avoid seeing that it doesnt mean anything. if i keep thinking it means something, i keep working, like walking out of the house one morning and going a little insane. well, all that dirt? those are the photos i take. if i stop taking pictures or writing about them then i'm face-to-face with nothing. a big zero. it makes me want to throw cold water on my head because ive got nothing to say but vague and unimportant things that are being said by somebody else in a more inarticulate way.

so its better for me to keep busy. although photography doesnt shape the nothingness that lies beneath the nothingness in the closet of life, this must be the state of consciousness from which all things arise. if i could get away with it, nothing from nothing would just be a bad dream.

like wet rags over a leaky faucet, dry spells are periods of rest when i can get my edge back without having to do much, without banging my head against the wall. photos are just another form of nothingness like anything else that doesnt matter or make a difference. making something happen or not: one isnt better than the other as long as i can get away with it.

Benny the Jazz says Goodbye

for Benny the Jazz, life was strung together with a series of "goodbye's". the faster he said goodbye the faster he moved to the next goodbye. each goodbye was more powerful, more profound than the last. his life was a demand driven by the next goodbye. a journey towards the next goodbye life could offer. instead of goodbye being the end of something, it was the beginning driven by all of life's endless goodbyes. satisfaction was simple: it came from knowing when it was time to go. knowing when goodbye had reached its limit: the ultimate intimacy. goodbye wasn't the end. it was the beginning, without which goodbye had no power. Benny the Jazz left us with his last goodbye.