lapser

at 10am it's hard to muster
sensibility in the
face of injury

and in the doorways of this
scramble to sensibility from
dulled inoperative
anesthesia hands
test the air for rain
making sloped
sensitive
movements in the humidity and
hover
waiting

in a cold private moment a
sweetly drawn agreement
becomes a heady
compromise and
dances with Shakti a
gathered moment feels
like rain a
young oath expires
ravaged at the
tide of
a strange smile

it's a free country

on some days there are
the daggereyed
the impatient creatures
waiting for equipment and moving
benches around molesting grinning
trainers and stank-ass accomplices run eager trains
on pullup bar fonts and spend fifteen minutes or
more on flavor of the month ab machines or grunters lift
right at the barbell stand leaving crumbtrails
of dropped dumbbells or the
encircling characters mortgaging the chest press and
it's right there stuck in my headphone universe
dodging the pulldown cult and draping
a towel over my shoulder polite and
secure and
insecure dodging the bolder strident fucks
and fuck you

charging out of the locker room and fuck your
weight dropping and fuck your
friday night genetics and get the

fuck

out of my way

quietly

sometimes it is as if and
never and later on always and
in the secret heart down the
bannister of sloppy ideals in
rare hours of bravery it is as
if it used to be and maybe
in a little while longer it is
self-composed and then in the
minutes or years that follow it is
as a cruel shadow some
fragment of a whole and
while it compels it is
complete and then it is
shattered and sometimes
it is as if it was
always
silent

stray

dust particles make it hard to make it out
the lopsided memories the
leopards recycle paradise
the recall is a recital of lost years and we -
paralyzed by self-projected miracles &
tricky distances -
recline mockingly suave, coolly surveying these disguises

in the ten eyeblinks when we are
absentmindedly rearranging
personal elements like a
favorite writing desk or a
bingo table or a
love letter we find
excuses to undo the foundations and
cruelly deconstruct
the fossils of old flames until we are
writing
new
stories and encounters as if
to do so was akin to being an organized person as if
to not do so was akin to being an organized person and

far past the horizon on chilly bored evenings the strays collect with
thumbs sticking out of pockets
murmuring like spent machines maybe
walking their dog or an old bad habit
bumping into their equals like tokens on a board
aging and bearing pained expressions and
scuttling their ambitions into the moonlit grass

i remember pages
warm from multiple reads
and pink-night sky and streetlights and
bagels at 3 in the morning and
freezing early hours and the infinite tongue of a life endlessly
extending almost
boring in its length and
looking for engravings or mottled signatures anywhere to mark my
passing by the moored ghosts of others and finding microscopic
traces that could have as easily been mirages or even my
own stimulated handprints and in their presence feeling
some stupid fulfillment or amusement

it moves so timidly slowly now and yet strangely brutally
emotionally beautifully and the insecurities die so frequently in the
next daylight the ones that were felt so deeply they defined every
motion now cringe into pockets of understanding like
crickets under leaves and
populate who i find myself as and with
what hands and poisons i
draw the
rest
to
view

rumble

strands of perspective melt around the sunrise and we
wake like reporters, journalists of
war, riders of the bad weather thinking
it's a good day to

dice rolling cross the street in manhattan when
i retrace my steps to the the daily duress and i
humm to myself appearing cheerful but
it's surgical distraction from the bad
songs fucking with

you share victories
minutes outside the cafe
curls of smoke punctuating what amounts to escape
returning to the cyclical cache
no drama but the ones that

separating molecules of time in a rented hole
bartering curious misery
envies cascade like clumsy chess moves and
pondering the patterns why not just

walking with chaos she's got
tight jeans serene voice wavers when
it's haunting your dreams
over too quick rocking the visine
an obvious scene but you

the same sky

in the rumble cold in conditioned air on summer days as a lost mincing
soul breath staggering half-clenched breath scrap by scrap is how
a creative kid dies not

fucked sweet or
hells ride
bludgeoned expression or
wicked knowing smile or
drunk on visions or
sacrificed for ideals or even
back to the wall but

so engaged to a well of endless days he can
drift on paid somnambulism and aggravate an empire
of brutally indulgent fantasies in the ticks between a
document load

was never a big dreamer after all just
a malfunctioning bad luck spigot trying
to splash past the low enthusiasm
convincing the former dedicated
middle finger thrust to stick around and make good on teenage threats

these were strange weapons back in those struggling years
of unthinking immaculate genius when almost
nothing was understood

this is a theft of years

manos sucios

Dirty Hands: the art & crimes of david choe. Many years in the waiting.

Maybe you don't know Dave. It's cool, it's not a hipster thing. I've been staring at his drawings, his paintings, his spray can shenanigans, his gta:sa photos, his toys, his t-shirts, his comix, his pervy pics, his Thumbs Up!, his cooler-than-thou snapshots, his corny haircuts, his video escapades, his unnervingly shoulder-shrugging family, his excellent blog and his food for about 10 years.

My grandmother is cooler than your grandmother, and my uncle has always used a great expression to describe her: "she's an institution." I can't think of higher praise for Dave, or a more phitting frase. The motherfucker is a force of nature. Emotional, high-strung, powerfully talented, bullshitless, sand-line-drawer extraordinaire, self-deprecating (self-defecating), perverted saint brainfucker and at a loss for testicular storage. Motherfucker is running out of space and will probably be renting a garage in LA somewhere to store the better part of his left nut and the fucker's a growing boy.

Maybe you don't know Dave. I didn't think I knew him. Slow Jams remains a truly mesmerizing text that no one gets to read (you ain't gettin my copy motherfucker), lovely and chaotic and grotesque, the kind of comic that doesn't come around too often. If you're crafty you'll catch his other sequential art bits and scraps, here & there, in books only nerds know about but that'll fetch a premium on Amazon for his errant pages. The guy can write and I've always said this. That asshole bouncer that works extra hours in your brain and stops you from writing & saying your most honest & ignorant shit has always been on his take and is not to be trusted. Pure id meringue, baked fresh, deposited in serial-killer lettering, accompanying scrawled vaginas and darkly poignant facial features. Porno for pyromaniacs. His pages want the city the burn.

I don't know Dave. I've met him a few times and all I can do to describe him is say that this perpetual high-school stairwell-dweller is genuinely charming, generous, lovely and grateful. He's a bonafide drug addict except his tangled inner cables never led him to intoxicants like the rest of us suckers; rather than fill himself with chemicals he excretes them boldly, covering the world in evocative dream-imagery, machine gunning cum blasts til the krylon's cashed...then coming back the next day to fill in missed details or draw stick figure orgies in the blank spaces between sneaker treads. I think his output is some of the most rewarding artwork of the past two decades, it draws me in and insults me and inspires.

The film Dirty Hands is done in the dirty style, the Choe style, the whole thing is completely uneven, cut with dull scissors and chock full of tidbits for the fans. I've been waiting for this DVD for years and I will admit right off the bat that I knew it was going to fail my expectations. I don't even know what I wanted from it. Coming off a recent read-through of the hardcover art book he released I found quite a bit of crossover but, on that note, you kinda wish there was more of a scoop in here.

It completely disregards a lot of documentary rules, although it does do its best to stick to some kind of timeline. You get about 10 years of Dave with startlingly enormous holes of time that are never interrogated, a few talking heads (including Dave's dad which is one of the more surprising inclusions), a lot of talk about his girlfriend (is she even still around?), some miniscule lip-service from his contemporaries (I actually love hearing his buddies weigh in on him and would've loved even more of it), but best of all you get an assload of Dave just shooting the EVERLOVIN shit. Dave talks the camera's mic to death and there's nothing to complain about there, Harry just lets him fire off and the attentive fan will find something in there worth the price of admission. If you're anything like me, you've been training your inner voice to sound like him and push you towards your dreams, so it's good to add more audio to the database.

Overall I don't think the movie's great. I can't help it. I set it up for failure years ago when it still didn't come out, and I have no idea what the film could've delivered to conquer that. If you're a fan you'll have seen quite a bit of this footage already but there were definitely snackables that were new to me. I can't for the life of me imagine someone going into this cold, they'd probably come out with a very different experience than I had. I can't watch it that way cuz I know who these krazy korean kids are.

Telling those who know Choe to watch this is like telling a cokehead to cut a fatter line - have faith that they'll take all they can get away with. That being said, Harry DOES deliver the goods, they're past the expiration date but remain just as nutritious.

I know Dave: he's that arty truant who couldn't get laid and collects action figures, right?

now go read Slow Jams already. And if you have Son of Slow Jams I fucking hate you.