beelzebub

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47OhgRF_Fl8

I’m thrown like a stone

and I skip six times

over still waters

and sink on the seventh.

I’m wasting away

like river rocks

washed out into the sea,

gone, lost,

don’t look for me.

I’m gone and free

as a man buried

eight feet.

Mr. Linux on left, Jank on right.  featured at the TOW Art Space.

the end

mike

the drains

            JANKINS

"When we get there, we’ll make a circuit around the block to see which houses have lights on, who’s awake and asleep.  Then we’ll park, and once the car stops, no talking, no noises, just get out and get the paint and go.  Once we’re away from the car and into the wash on our way down into the drains, don’t stop for anything.  If someone sees you or someone says something to you, don’t stop.  We’re vulnerable until we get inside the drains.  Once we’re in the drains, no-one will follow us.  There was a guy who shot at a cop and went down into the drains, and it took the cops three hours to even go in there.  So if it’s a cop who sees you outside the drains, run.  Drop everything and run.  Once you get through the mouth of the drains you’re safe.  You can pop out a manhole or keep going down for miles.  But it’s illegal to be holding spray paint inside a wash so don’t stop and chat with anyone."

I stop the car.  The four doors pop open, and then close, I unload the bags from the trunk, Anctious takes the battery pack and we hop the fence, slide down the bank into the wash, and walk north toward the drains.  Now, walking, there’s time to notice the coolness of the air and the clouds in the sky that diffuse the light of the moon. It’s silent except for the treading of our shoes.  On either side of the wash are houses, some with lights that come on automatically as we pass, and now at 10 PM people will still be awake, and if they look out their back doors they’ll see our parade, and if not, they’ll hear the dogs and know we’re here.

One dog yelps at us a few times and then quiets.  Another barks from the other side, and more dogs hear us or catch our smell and join in, but we can see the mouth of the drains, dimly, down there where the sides of the wash rise up into a ceiling and go down under a parking lot and under a shopping mall and on underneath the rest of the city.  At the last house three dogs bark and growl with fierceness that betrays their sixth sense about who is good and who is bad, if you heard these dogs bark you’d say they are convinced we are bad, we are demons and spirits like Mephisto who prowls disguised as a cat, and we, trying to be as quiet as the cat do not escape the notice of the dogs, they know.

old one

I wrote this a while ago and I don’t feel this way anymore.

*

I can’t help but wonder if this spot of earth is groaning a little louder than the rest. I know that it’s not, but I still wonder.



The horizon is gone
because the night has nullified it,
and with no real reason to stay out
I’ll walk inside
and close the door.
If you pretend it doesn’t matter
long enough
eventually
it doesn’t.

evening

It has been a while, quite some while,
since the evening
(with impeccable style,
and without asking,
and with its usual way of coaxing out
our unpleasant extremes)
has come upon us like the wilting of a flower,
where you don't notice the way it changes,
only, suddenly, that something has changed.
(is it dark out already?)

bookstore

I close my eyes while I walk across the parking lot. I wonder how long I can keep them closed without tripping. I open them before I get to the curb and step up onto the sidewalk. The book store has big glass windows and a sliding glass door that squeaks. I walk in and see the books set up on racks in a room where they seem out of place, wrong. Escalators go down to an underground level, except they don’t go down, they just stay still, blocked off by boards, and the underground level is empty and abandoned.
Two men sit at the cash register.
I ask them, “Do you use the bottom floor for anything?”
“What’s that?”
“Do you use the bottom level for anything?”
“Oh no, that hadn’t been used for years.”
“Fell behind code,” the other adds.
“You’dve been 10 or 11 since it was used for anything. The owner won’t spend the money to bring it up to code. Used to be a fair, for kids.”
Banners for the fair still hang overhead.
The kids are gone and I’m the only one in the store besides the two at the cash register. We’re surrounded by racks of books on all sides. The light is poor and it’s hard to read the titles. I wander around until one of the men calls out that the store is closing, and I haven't found anything, and I walk out.

JANKINS
Where am I going?

MR. LINUX
You don’t know where The Scene is?

JANKINS
No, I’ve never been there.

MR. LINUX
Left on Saticoy.

I nod, then it’s silent. As the summer light dies down, gray, we turn into a small parking lot, where a shin-high brick wall is falling apart at the corners, the asphalt is old and cracked, and in the front there’s a group of people, they all stand next to an old van with a flat tire and they look worried. We get out.

JANKINS
You guys need help?

MAN
No, we’re okay.

You wouldn’t expect a bar here, it’s a dirty side street in Pacoima or maybe Sun Valley. Mr. Linux and I grew up here. If someone asked de donde eres or where you from I’d say nowhere. We walk through the heavy wooden door into The Scene.

It’s small and mostly empty. Two people at the bar, another one at a table. Mr. Linux gets a pitcher and we sit down at a small round table.

MR. LINUX
You don’t care what your school says?

JANKINS
You mean about contract?

MR. LINUX
Yeah. What’s it say, you just can’t drink?

JANKINS
You can’t drink, you can’t smoke. You can’t dance. You can’t – what else? There’s more. I can’t remember all of it.

MR. LINUX
What happens if they find out?

JANKINS
You get a talking-to. Maybe you get kicked out. I depends if you’re repentant or not. As long as you act repentant, you’ll be okay. My problem is I don’t know if I can act repentant, or if I’ll just say, to hell with all your bullshit rules, you brood of vipers.

Mr. Linux grins,

MR. LINUX
So you can’t have fun, in the name of Christ. You have to be boring for Christ.

I raise my glass.

JANKINS
To boring Christians.

MR. LINUX
I don’t know. I won’t drink to that.

We drink.

I'll be okay if I can walk quietly enough

We paint our mess, and a man and his two young sons walk through, they're taking a shortcut through the closed road. They see us, and don’t say anything, and keep walking. They don’t even acknowledge us or seem to notice. I love them for that, they know. They know what it's like here.

When I see them, I’m sorry I’ve said that this place is mine. I’m sorry, it’s not mine. It’s not anyone’s. You can be here too. The other gangs and crews who have come through and marked it up, they can be here too. SOD, Newhall X3, they’re all welcome. We don’t have beef with anyone. We just want to paint, and destroy, and build. We want to love the dirt and the cracks and the walls, and the trash and the sky and the mountains and hills that surround us, and the weeds. It’s not just ours, it’s yours too, enjoy it with us.

They pass and we’re alone again. We keep going. We pull out more cans until we’re out of black, out of white, and out of colors, and every time we shake the last sputters out of a can we hurl it into the distance and let it sit among the weeds, and every time we finish a beer bottle we hurl it and let it shatter and let the glass settle into the dirt.

There’s paint on our hands and on our clothes. There’s paint everywhere. I can smell the paint. It smells like life, I won’t forget it. Every time I smell it from now on I’ll think of this fucking worthless action we’re doing right now.

ABK.

I hear a train. I can feel it in my apartment. I can hear it through the window and feel it through the floor. Its horn blows and I hear the alarms clanging and the wheels squealing, and the heavy rumbling carries through the floor, and I'd feel it stronger if I was on it, that heavy rumble, that bone-shaking rumble that you feel through your skin so thoroughly that it goes into your soul. That train-hopper's massage, like that beautiful kind of wine-wince you get, it takes over. It makes everything alright.