BLUE COUP D’ETAT

There’s a wound on the kitchen ceiling, a puckered gash that never heals. Sometimes it bleeds rusty brown water that gushes into the sink then slowly subsides into a urine colored drip. I went upstairs and asked the lady about it, she told me her baby spilled the tub as three children seemed to be dragging her to the floor behind the cracked door.

I know her face better than my own. I see her when I blink, when the lights dim, in the corners of my eyes at twilight she appears to me for days, delightfully uninvited and then she disappears.
She gave secret half smiles to all the strangers that she met.

Her gray shorts hugged her thighs. It was early fall and the sun still warmed but the detached smoothness of her features held no warmth, only a vague triumph. For a moment she had won an emotional battle. It was almost like beating someone up, she thought as she hit the volleyball again.
She felt his eyes upon her but refused to look. Instead she hit the ball harder, forcing herself to jump to keep the ball from going over her head. “Ow!” she pulled her finger to her mouth instinctively. She hated it when she jammed her finger, especially at that moment is seemed to belittle her victory. It made her feel like a clumsy little girl. “Are you alright?” a concerned and sickeningly familiar voice asked.
“‘I’m fine,” she quipped trying to cover her embarrassment. Her finger did hurt and she could feel it swelling and tightening up the skin around her ring finger. Ordinarily she would run inside and get an ice pack immediately but not today. Nothing would keep her from playing today.

Russet pink sky
Horizon burning red fingered clouds
Sun a gaping wound
I hope I find you before it is too late

Poetry has never been restricted to poetry. It is everywhere and in everything.

We’re all moths flying towards the light. Some of us are a light for others but that light is just a moth too, trying for another light. That’s when the light’ll burn you, that’s when you gotta make yourself a moth light so there’s two suns in the sky smiling at one another and drifting into each others arms.

to anyone who checks my site:
i had a turn of bad luck and lost everything on my hard drive
all my pictures and writing from the last two years except the stuff that made it on this site and the things that were emailed to friends were lost
i didn’t back up
didn’t know it was a hard drive problem, sent it in to apple because i have applecare and they replaced the drive without telling me
they told me they own the drive now
and won’t give it back
it was like talking to big brother
regardless all is well
i am currently editing a feature film called lovely by surprise and working like crazy so there has been little time to pick up the pieces of my shattered digital existence
to those that stick around and keep checking the site i promise several huge updates in the upcoming weeks
this site has been such a good thing in my life, thanks for checking it out
be well
jim

The space between you and I is limitless unless we will it to be otherwise, only together can space be fulfilled.

a fingernail of sunshine
Sun in the ground, shadows on the sky

Obi-one, the reason I have a website at all.
Miss you buddy, I don’t think you look like a crack addict in this one

Dry eyed beyond tired rainy mornings soaked sweating sticky skin pigeons and dead mice smelling older without feeling grey skies splattering tires endless traffic everybody stay home today fat chance noise stands still nervous ready to run or fight don’t corner it or the car alarms swell slow and unabating dreams wet behind the ears at war waking every few minutes to breath or beat my dead arm or both blood flow barks angry lonely baby used to aloneness happy yellow misery myth hugs tight distant memory and make believe speculating and prophesying the never dawn instead of the ever day

Suitman Invasion
Hong Kong
November 2005
suitman.org
****It is a big file (30mg) so it might take awhile to download****

Music - lotrane, mogwai, brianjonestown massacre, yo la tengo, coco rosie, (smog)

outsidehk

The leaves fall slowly into the creek passing through waning shafts of light whisking across the rapids that cloth the jutting rocks.

Some Oscar Wilde:
“…punctuality is the thief of time.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.”
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

Hong Kong, beer on a boat with Young Kim and friends, a speedboat chased us down and delivered more beer when we ran out, bar-b-q on an island outside of the city, secluded lights at night, and the return to the heart of the city. Young is the man, check out his Suitman site suitman.org, he had an art show out in Hong Kong that I had the pleasure and privledge to attend. More footage of that later.

Music - Oracle Says Wander by Sufjan Stevens

outsidehk

“Here’s to sugar on the strawberries.”
- Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill in the Swimmer.
“My lost kingdom!”
- Jack Palance as Jeremy Prokosch in Le Mepris (Contempt)

A wild happiness, strange and somewhat unwarranted - Why now and not yesterday or the day before or even earlier this afternoon? Can’t be ecstatic all the time or you become scattered, can’t do anything too much or you become scattered - a good rule of thumb. Need constant change but with a positive bent. Watch the bitching, watch for the users, be up front and unambiguous (decide these things ahead of time and stick with them) don’t withhold help, just think about who you’re giving it to and why. Do things for yourself, everyone else is not depending on you nor should they, ”in order to be effective you must be selective” - be a good man, don’t worry too much about what others think, be your good man not their’s. Don’t be afraid to give, the water runs in a strong current when you do and dries up when you don’t.

A pit bull has been tied to a fence and left there for about a week now. The poor girl barks at anyone who passes by, barks in fear. The resident bum of my street, a vaguely Hispanic man with a beard and a drinking problem, told me that she was his dog and rather defensively added that she eats well and he treats her much better than the others. Every time I walk by this dog I feel as though I’m betraying her, I rebel against the filth and suspicion of the neighborhood, the cruel children with their bird calls and the thugs shouting, drinking, and playing dominos. They hate this dog that barks in fear, they want her to shut up, to go away, to disappear. They throw shit at her, provoke her, slap her. She was gone for a couple hours today and her corner was soaked with water or blood. I want to help this animal, I went outside at four in the morning and sat with her, she growled and barked and when I did nothing she quieted down and watched me suspiciously. I moved closer and then someone passed by and she started barking again. Finally the bum appeared and quieted her down, told me she’d probably bite me. I figured that pit bull was the only real friend that guy had and I forgave him and didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was terrible to chain this magnificent animal to a fence all day and feed her rice and beans. Leaving her at the mercy of children and drunks, the city dirt . . .

The train was being held when I arrived breathlessly. A woman hastily vacated her seat so I sat down thinking, “What luck” until I realized that I was sitting across from the reason they were holding up the train: a deranged looking man who would suddenly shout, “Stay the fuck away from me!” or “Leave me alone, just leave me alone god dammit!” Of course no one was within two seats of him and I was under the impression that this was rather tame behavior compared to earlier antics. At any rate he had really pissed off the guy sitting to his left who suddenly said, “You better chill the fuck out”. The conductor was so pissed off that, in the midst of telling the guy that we weren’t leaving until he exited the train, he threatened to kick his ass. He was a macho Hispanic guy and he said, “If you keep yelling at everybody, I’m gonna kick your ass”, which just caused the man to fume and curse even more, waving his arms through the thick air of the summer subway car and shouting, “Get this shit going!” After a few more minutes of this the conductor came out again and told him that we were just waiting for the police to arrive and “escort you off the train” to which the man shook his head in dismay and for a moment I thought he would change his tune but he looked up and said, “Why don’t you suck my ass?” before huffing off the train in the fumes of his own anger, choking with rage and hurling his anger upon the empty subway platform. The conductor watched him leave with satisfaction and with every taunt and insult that the man threw at him the conductor responded, “Yeah you say that as you leave. Real tough guy. If I wasn’t working I’d whip your ass.”

ON THE SUBWAY
Evelyn Hawkins pointed to a picture of Matthew Barney sitting in a bathtub full of naked Asian women and said, “There he is, that’s Satan.”

THE WAY OF CAREY part 4 words - more from Carey Westbrook circa 1999
music
son house

CAREYwords

I lied twice today, it is really fucking me up. Don’t want to lie in my life, no matter what the consequences. Tactfully omitting the truth is a different matter but outright lying–can’t live like that, it never stops growing and choking all sincerity into oblivion.

from an hour after dinner one warm evening in may
a walk in fort greene park
hanging out in the living room at the place back on south oxford
starring walker, shannon, derek, me and a saint bernard
photographed by chiz

music
sufjan stevens
derek cianfrance
chopin
devendra banhart

1summerevening

Does the light play on the water or does the water play with the light?

The screaming swing sets protest the setting sun.

Looking for answers where there are none. Silent confessions. Loving reflections that seem so real, indefinable and unspeakable for me now. I wait and live in a limbo that I must pretend is full and rich, must pretend is complete. The alone, must believe and find comfort in the alone, must speak with a happiness I don’t feel, must make happiness out of the mud of my thoughts, out of the sludge of my desires, out of the brief moments of wonder, the shooting stars on clear summer nights when the sky never really turns black, only the deep blue of Sheba’s skin - in all of this longing there must be an equal and opposite fulfillment that can stem from the same place. The deep feeling must be multifaceted. Ask and ask and ask again.

I noticed a scar on her hip. Mom always said if you don’t have nothing nice to say don’t say nothing at all but what happens to that nothing? Something has gotta happen to that nothing. Taxi ride: there’s a stream of green lights, if I could ride around in the back of a car all day . . . or actually night, late night when everybody’s asleep, the streets stand empty and traffic flows. This Madison Avenue flow feels so precarious as each light turns green right before the last instant to brake without ending up in the intersection. So often I stare up ahead through the windshield but tonight all I can see is inside the car, hundreds of night shadows dancing in rhythm and then I’m out on Riverside Drive, standing on the bridge overlooking W. 138th Street. The cloudy Hudson, Riverbank Park, and the sewage disposal plant that it shares space with are looming in the darkness to the West. There is a hush on the bridge, the muted sound of the Westside Highway, nothing more. A mist of halos surrounds the orange and purple street lamps, she steps onto the bridge. I feel the Hudson tremble and the faintest of wind; then nothing, just a sentimental dream, the kind that hurts, the kind that fools you. Another nothing that’s got no place to go so it strives for some kind of inhuman detachment, an un-emotion, cold and calculating arguments, that’s all twenty-twenty hindsight, living vicariously in the past. NOTHING goes IN - that’s where it goes.

Conspire with the dust, contrive with a sunbeam; a moment that would realize you.