Prints

We slip through our own fingers in bluest forget-me-nots, and keep on slipping wondering where the falling leads.

Artwork by Chua Ek Kay

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Time Enough At Last

Time, the sound of time racing through our ears, slipping past us, children’s bicycles the sound of brrrrrringgg brrrrrringggg, bells on bicycles brrrrrringgging, and the children become more or less old then more or less dead and we hold funerals for bicycle bells and old dead children, old, new, alive, dead, terms of flippant interchangeability, rabid the rainwater flees down the drain hissing like pissed off baby snakes, at our funerals the cheery racket of bicycle bells bringing us back to life brrrrrrringgg brrrrrringgg even if for just a few fictitiously warm seconds.

Artwork by Louis Jover

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Walk This Way

There is the future. There is other future when tramps ambling shuffle-footed across failed roads, across dust-pecked destinies, along citywalks imitating lizard-toed pigeons, tramps with newspaper hats and brown bag hearts billowing and contracting and reeking of long past lunchrooms, these tramps molded into aluminum foil busts and scrap heap sculptures, we don’t remember them, but there is this word—tramp—it was a word once upon a time, a designation, a class, a dead word with spited history and fleas, and  when I see myself projected into the boxcar, the cameras following me, I will look around and smell around and hear around, and the word tramp will be resurrected as living homage, and there will be one, a rare yet archetypal specimen, with a too tight calico vest corseting his girlish frame, a doll’s wiggly fish of a moustache, dark, hyphenated, and there will be torn baggy trousers, a dusty bowler, lopsided bowtie, and this tramp will expose me to famous golden silence, the ultimate celebrity of all silences, and the stalking camera will proceed to zoom in on the tramp’s ghost-born face to show long opaque eyelashes and impish glee making of his features a creased cakewalk, and in our communal boxcar he will penguin-waddle from one end of the car to the other, and again the same splay-footed strut repeated, tirelessly, he is saying without words, with his feet functioning as mode of speech—How you walk in the world is everything. And then as our train rumbles thunderstruck along the tracks, there will be time allotted for further tutelage, he the tramp will teach me how to fall, how to take falls, the fall is all, it is the be-all end-all, how to walk, how to fall, how to execute these things and conjure the spirit of your own indefatigable tramp in a world that once upon a time roasted tramps on spits, or spit on them directly, or simply erased tramp from the vocabulary of the every day. You, he will announce through his famous golden silence, you will learn how to walk in this world and fall in this world as this is all there ever was or ever will be.

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In Our Solitude

Near to the bones of warming solitude. Within vagrancy’s timelocked spells we wander you could say we are wanderstruck. Modes of lyrical living allows us to bask in living alone in the company of words stories voices. For them we are grateful. Gratitude extends many hands. Tentacles of light everywhere everywhichway in this raging carnival. Here now we wander timedumbed down as vagrants seeding trust to the word and seeking truest home in every port in the storm through every bugled call. We wander and with the gravest most tender intimacies of spirit alone we cherish the gifts bestowed upon us by solitude. Many voices frothing bubbling in which the witch’s cauldron in which we bathe because spells of all variations work upon as balms. We are seekers for songs. And the word when inhabiting the slow burn of rising arc. Symmetry as a lucid whole provides us daily bread and nourishing manna. Symmetry calls to us as opportunities to cherish to bless. All the lost hours cradled within symmetry’s crooks and nooks hold us tenderly hostage. Near to the bones of warming solitude the crises do not touch us in the same way. We are sealed within sanctums of humming gospel heard only by the ears of the broken. Some hearing is not about listening it is about aching. Communion through shared aching through blues that becomes hearing beyond ears intimate rapport secured through the merging of the broken blessed. The broken blessed scarred and singing as we breathe them in. Near to the bones of warming solitude everyone is the same everything equal. Sorrow the great equalizer. The blues as innate democracy sans politics to ache is to share in the song of our lot and grist as human collective. In My Solitude remixed as In Our Solitude micro macro in swing and exchange of jazzy vernacular. Lingo be the beat of our exile’s solitude rendered explicit. We word so as to warm ourselves. Near to the bones of warming solitude we parlay the thrift of embers into something magical seeming. Necessity the mother tongue of all things speaking all creations bonding. We a species of dreaming of remembering of seeking. To sing is to go on. To word is to give ourselves a lighting chance. Every ember flagrant. Every spark a chance at the infinite. Within the flames the images of women dancing keeping the dreaming alive keeping hope held high above mass spells of crises ongoing. Beyond the crises a choiceless root calm at the center. Near to the bones of warming solitude we are guided by the company of words stories voices we don’t know how or why.   

Artwork by Mark Rothko

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Company of Echoes

Near to the bones of warming solitude we wildly graze. We are out here in this place where our vagrancies are enabled by the mass grace of words stories voices that roots us home. At home with solitude we are at ease here. Near to the bones of warming solitude we jazz we expand we bask in tenderest most grave intimacies. We are at home here. Outside barred windows we hear autumn’s winds gusting in noisy volumes with brisk suicide yellows flaring everywhere as funereal raptures as summons from other worlds flashing life like before our sleep storied eyes. The bones of autumn a sonata. The soft papery crashing of yellow the feathery death plunges of reds browning. The ground becomes a plein air cemetery. We stalk memories in softest slippers. The season gets into and behind our eyes. We project cinema of memories patina of old griefs resurfacing in montage snippets. Near to the bones of warming solitude we expand internally. We expand infinitely within a swelling expanse of grief and tenderness exploding into seeds scattered upon the earth. We yield and the force of all things moving moves through us at the pace of autumn’s dying. Near to the bones of warming solitude we bless and inherit the risks of shedding. With crises accumulating and tensions tightening we look to the leaves for guidance on the necessity of shedding. We draw distances nearer to us and nearer still. We reap the softly singing pollen deaths of yellows. With the nearest bones of solitude we warm ourselves by the embers of words stories voices expressing gratitude for warmth generated. We partake slightly of echoes. We remain alone in the company of words. Near to the bones of warming solitude we grow favorably tender and bear the follies of sorrows of being here now with plasmic yield. At best cosmic acceptance but that may never come. Or it will when death brings it along as a customary parcel a gift from the world of unexpected. Unexpectedly we go on. It is the infinite groove everyone’s drummer different though the sameness of source. Near to the bones of warming solitude we bask in volumes of words stories voices we as wandering vagrants adrift in the company of echoes.

Artwork by Linda Stojak

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Woven

In the beginning the dreaming not the word. The word came later. It came whenever and betrayed silence and this was the beginning of fiction. Now you’ve got what passes for a world of dreaming of fiction and parallels splintered into multiples merging. Metaphors moved worlds. People grew from wilds. From the bones of sound. Someone heard someone else talking and that someone and someone else were born through listening and talking. When this happened no one knows. To say it happened a long time ago or that it has yet to happen amount to one and the same thing. The bones of sound rest on symmetry. Time is required to keep a beat a rhythm yet music itself resounds timelessly. Symmetry is proof of the dreaming. Within the dreaming there are many stories beginnings parallels multiples and everything everywhere dreaming going on dreaming going on dreaming going on. The bones of sound endless. Symmetry indivisible. Let me tell you a story someone once said and in telling this story they were also saying Let me tell you a story about me telling you a story. In the telling is the me and the me and you. In the telling parallels merge then split and merge again endlessly. Stories cannot die. They are the impossible.

Painting by Jackson Pollock

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Cameo

Our lot is a sorry one also blessed. None of us object. Out here we feast on slimming heaps of gratitude. No one is greedy. No one complains. We no longer expect answers from the answerless even though we keep asking our voices parroting empty exercise. Like practicing scales in a small mirrorless bathroom. With no alibis forthcoming. Daily savvy is our moveable manger. We merge as best we can. A sorry lot but yes blessed. Texts to be read aloud inside your head. This the music the proof of lasting born. From the volumes of echoes cycling we heard it said If music be the proof of love then play on. We can’t discern the source of that voice saying what was said. The volumes of echoes comprised of many voices with no citations no references no footnotes no anything to dissimulate one voice from another from the next. None of the voices attached to name. The volume of echoes being a catalog a compendium of anonymous voices forever auditioning. But to go back to what we heard said If music be the proof of love then play on. We decided this was us from what we were made. The gist of our essence raveled in this core phrase. We have become a hymnal species kissing our motherless want on the lips.

Artwork by Cris Qualiana

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Tramps

It has become hymnal. The lasting proof. The lusting after the lasting proof the music. This is not proust. Then again everything is proust because everyone in search of lost time cycling through guises manias assassins guesses all the rest. Blessed be the alchemy of our gist our lore. We the cause the effect with hymns seeding. On the ninth day everyone revolted realizing there wasn’t gonna be a tenth. In truth no days at all no edges so everyone went on as is. And went on going on. From the pinched nipples of clouds we received this pearl this chance glisten To cherish to bless is all. We held that in store in our chests. The lot of us trespassers fools tramps. From the grainy past from the sourced cinema of our graves the image of the ringleader the anointed one with the too tight calico vest crooked bowtie torn baggy trousers spindly joints dustcaked bowler clipped stache the one deathless in the annals of burlesque. The camera followed him as it does us. The camera hissing like snakes in rapture like rain pelting slats. The camera’s sleepless eye of many minds conjuring all at once. Perpetuity of simultaneities the cause the effect. The camera our deadly ally our fiend. We must remain hymnal in our creed. The camera doesn’t want our words. The only time our tramp idols spoke was when he sang otherwise nonsense otherwise mute and ambling onward with pluck and vim.

Painting by Van Gogh

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Found Lost

We recall fondly. We recollect. The good old days in which we titled windmills redolently and rode clanging dusty boxcars across the glaring horizontal spread of america. What a lay we said hitching up our pants sticking our peckers into every gopher hole and indian eardrum we could wrestle or manage. The good old days an unrolling panoramic canvas of america painted over with screaming reds graying blues mudpacked browns other colors running together like luxuries found lost. We posed as stiff hipped sheriffs marshaling laws to frontiers unexplored my god we were real artists then painting with the light just right to conceal any shadows creeping unwanted across borders. From beyond history I sit here now in this abandoned boxcar a tramp with torn baggy trousers too tight calico vest dustcaked bowler writing songs no one will ever sing or listen to but that’s fine just fine. A train trackless running outside of time is concerned solely with mythology. Mythology in this case being the preset moment expended upon infinitely within the mantling of lore.

Photograph by Josef Sudek

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Watchword

Grief lies here like an insomniac pining for sleep. Like scissors running dull to the touch of fate. We paper over grief its ruins and brittle slates with hordes of torn pages. Forget me nots band aids christ sporting a porn stache. In this romance worn down to plots of kitsch. With words amassing to memorialize to clarify the haul of plague doctors wandering roadsides barking Bring out yer dead Bring our yer dead. Ten pages twenty thirty. Nothing novel here. The words both deed and barrow to the bones. We give graves to our young. Our candles rage mirages that merge with fall winds. Beneath the shadow of all things moving we incubate. We are sworn to the word to worlds unseen because the rules of the game assure us that paper covers rock. Grief an insomniac attending its own coma nightly. From near distances we keep close watch.

Installation by Yoko Ono

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