THE DAYS ARE LIKE PEOPLE TOO

2010-06-07T15:47:00.001-07:00

this blog will no longer be updated, but here's a new one:

http://jankins.blogspot.com/

excerpt

2010-04-14T13:25:00.001-07:00

new comic

2010-03-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

coming sometime before the end of the world, but sometime after the beginning of it

the world

2010-02-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

I want to eat the world

I want to close my eyes and

I want tomato rain to fall on me,

the last unconscious being, and then

wake up

I want to sing forever

and then stop suddenly

I want to destroy this desk

and throw pieces at you

people I want to

be invincible but still wonder

what death must feel like

maybe I could kill someone

and then apologize and wake him up

and ask what it was like

maybe I could eat

one piece of the world at a time,

sure, that’s what I’ll do, and eventually

I’ll get to all of it.

I think I’ll start with the edible things.

Maybe I could sit down and talk to someone

on the sidewalk and learn the purpose of

matching color schemes.

My stomach feels like I swallowed a yell

and I want to vomit it out.

but maybe a yell is part of the world,

so I’ll keep it down.

You can learn something, sitting on the

sidewalk talking to strangers about the old wars and

watching them tear up and choke with crazed crazy grief.

I’ll have to swallow this paper eventually too

and then all of this will be gone forever

unless it’s somehow

miraculously

metaphysically preserved,

or the collective unconscious

commits it to memory.

this time

2010-02-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

Time is a leaking faucet,

annoying as hell and

persistent as a bitch.

In the same way

blood can be wiped nicely off

a leather seat if you clean it soon enough,

I can clean my mind

of everything, and you’ll never see

what was there. It’s

clean

and empty

as the back-seat –

the man whose blood’s been cleaned

probably dead by now.

But we still can smell the unseen

blood underneath the seat

that I missed with the once-over,

smell it cook

in the heat of the sun.

Friends get in my car and ask,
what’s that smell?

and I tell them,

I don’t know.

If he’s dead, he’s dead.

Is it true that

the pain of the lost

is God’s smile

and their torment

His grin?

Is it true of the man burning in hell,

oh well,

he deserves that shit and we don’t,

and right is right

and wrong is wrong,

is it true I am right,

you are wrong,

is right true?

is wrong?

I sing my own demise.

Greet me sweetly,

oh demise,

come when I’m not looking

come when I’m down

come like the first time I saw a woman

come like a sunset

if the sun was a mass of burning truth.

Muse, sing in me

if the muse is my demise,

and my demise is love given to me but

withheld from me to others.

Time is a bleeding man

moaning MY FUCKIN ARM when he’s conscious of it

and otherwise dead wait.

WHY

2010-02-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

YOU'RE YOUNG AND SO AM I BUT

EVENING IS COMING SOONER THAN WE THINK

AND WE WILL NEVER FIGURE OUT THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION WHICH SITS QUIETLY IN THE BACK OF OUR MINDS - THAT SAD QUESTION - THAT INERTIA - 'WHY?' - WHY, WHO SITS AND WAITS BUT WE'LL TELL HIM,

NEVER MIND

AND ENJOY EVERY DAY OF OUR VAIN LIVES UNDER THE SUN

somewhere

2010-02-02T03:28:00.000-08:00

2010-02-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

THE DEVIL IS UNDER MY SOUL
AND THE DEVIL IS COMPLACENCY
AND THE DEVIL IS KIND
AND HE IS LOVELY
AND I LOVE HIM
AND I WILL KILL HIM MYSELF
IF I CAN,
IF I WANT -
I ALWAYS WANT
AND NEVER DO,
NEVER CAN

2010-01-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

gone
all told
to the silver man,
freezing in no hopes
shaking head with cap
and saying
"Oh dear me,
dear me,
this's the -
the big one!
we're all dead
for sure."
Life is a leaking faucet
because no-one can stop it,
even if you die,
the worms live on.
Say, worm,
do a happy worm-dance.

it airplane

2010-01-14T01:28:00.001-08:00

You’re sleeping next to me

in an airplane

suspended in the dark sky of

Raliegh to Los Angeles

meanwhile gangsters kill

each other in parking lots

until the survivors sell frozen yogurt to us

in Texas layover.

Now more than halfway to LA –

we’ll stay there and

call it home even

and abide

the bullshit

and love everything good

until we leave,

and we will love

everything good.

Time is a folded napkin.

We will get there,

Lord-willing of course,

and if we never

see a million

flower petals

falling like rain

from a benevolent God

of beautiful miracles

but instead sit in

the dark with

pain hunger temptation

anger loss and shame

let us say

still and always

this is the best shit

because God put us

here, and God

is good.

Lapse not into

absurdity and keep

me sane.

Sane without humanity?

Floating duck

spots of light floating

like burning bugs

erratic

quack

float

fuck,

I say, sing

something enrapturing

for luck

but quietly and

where no-one can

hear you.

Loud constant hush of

the airplane

sings to me now.

This is the sky-song

of the prosperous and

rich: silence,

rushing of wind,

darkness, oh,

I love to think

of the other

times where

we knew everything

would be okay –

we still know

it, of course,

I do, I sing it

every day.

Remember

the sun?

You talked about visions of the

sunset, described

in words that people

use about heaven,

with the attendant

“oh my God”

of praise.

The sun behind clouds

seen over the ocean

in the West where

it sets.

Dynamic like

the waves

and the heavens and

earth and angels

and souls,

souls, dynamic,

souls, changing,

changing up or

down or separating

at the seams

where two have

been haphazardly

stitched together

or tightened with

the signs of

years of wear and

mending.

Souls and their

love are

the beauty

of God,

sunsets, His

power.

Evil

death?

songs

sad songs

tears

oh,

fear

all this I thought

while

you described the colors

and apparitions

and sprites

angels

and songs

that you saw in the

clouds with

the sun

that no-one else

could see.

your words were as

beautiful as you are

and with the same

suffering – your hair

blown by the wind

covered your face

you turned it down

and brushed it away

like you do all the

horrors of your mind

and of the world by

God’s grace.

I look now

to my side and

you’re fast asleep still

still no lights outside

clouds maybe but

for us only

dark

until tomorrow.

We’re going West

along with the sun.

We’re prolonging the

darkness for us.

The more the better

because usually it’s the

days that linger

with no end.

first woodcut

2010-01-11T18:25:00.000-08:00

there was a crew called "FOI"

2009-12-16T19:33:00.000-08:00

it stood for "FULL OF INSANITY"
I like that name

I never met any of them, but they used to write things on my street

these pictures are unrelated

sophia

2009-12-16T19:24:00.000-08:00

The dull light, green
and yellow, flares
around your
neck and shoulders
and your face blurs out
in a picture
in my mind
and foreign charms
rattle on your chest --
keep smiling, like
you do, like you've got
the darkness to disprove,
like you know the
path and can show me to
the source of life
and light, that narrow
path, and winding, and
binding, and treacherous,
but it's alright,
the horror of hell
does not overwhelm
when we glimpse the last enemy
and rattle the gates of hades
and hear the gnashing and
weeping that sounds
like a song of profound
truth and I'll start
weeping too if my eyes
and heart fail and if I
look down or even
at you and fear
like the grip of a python
is waiting for me,
so smile like you do,
because you've got the darkness
to disprove.

first oils doodle

2009-12-16T19:13:00.000-08:00

arrow

2009-12-10T09:34:00.001-08:00

beelzebub

2009-12-06T02:57:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-04T19:14:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-12-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

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

the end

2009-11-25T16:22:00.001-08:00

mike

2009-11-25T16:12:00.001-08:00

the drains

2009-11-20T21:10:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-11-16T11:24:00.001-08:00

2009-11-14T16:01:00.000-08:00

old one

2009-10-23T16:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-14T01:52:00.000-07:00

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.

wall paint continued

2009-10-11T16:29:00.001-07:00

“I don’t like that one,” he says about the painting on the city's concrete of a blue man with the caption written out,
JANK?
-ABK-
I know, I say to him, I need to get better. I’m trying to get better. Why am I trying to get better? I don’t know. That’s it, chasing the wind.

bottle paint continued

2009-10-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

“Finish your beer.” “What do you care if I finish my beer?” “Come on, douche, just do it. I want the bottle.” And I give it to him – he takes the bottle, fills it with paint, all colors, takes a few running steps and throws it at the wall, and what a satisfying smash, that smash is better than a gunshot, or a hand grenade, or a bomb.

sinaloa continued

2009-10-11T16:16:00.001-07:00

There’s a roach-coach taco stand on foothill where Yasmin has been going since she was a little girl. Two women are inside, and they cook the meat and flatten the dough, and Jas talks to them like old friends. On the sidewalk there’s a few tables and some chairs, we sit down and eat and drink and I kick the beer into the bushes when the cops come for their tacos too. This is the kind of spot most people miss out on.

trees, continued

2009-10-11T15:53:00.001-07:00

There’s a tree above me. It has thick branches and the sun is hitting it and I’m lying on my back looking up at it, the sky is bright blue behind it. Silence, only wind. Nothing touches me except the breeze. Everything that has ever happened in the world or to me is not here, it’s not anywhere. The only thing that is here is the breeze.

all is vanity
and chasing the wind,
come on, let's go and chase the wind.

trees sinaloa bottle paint wall paint

2009-10-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

2009-10-05T16:09:00.000-07:00

a day

2009-10-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

the moon, and a little later

the sun.

days keep coming and going, and in any given day there is happiness, sadness, confusion, elation, and hope, and in the night we stay awake as long as possible until we don't even know where we are, but we're not lost. The morning is the time for being lost. The night is the time for lying down.

2009-09-09T18:56:00.000-07:00

a new something, and a better capture of an old something

2009-09-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

jank-ear

2009-09-07T01:23:00.000-07:00

something

2009-09-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

lowlight

2009-09-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

I can’t sit, wait,
watch, and do nothing,
just watch and listen -
I can’t stand it –
It’s like a cage – the
theater is a cage,
I can’t sit here and
wait – for what? for –
the end –
this is a cage – the theater
is a cage.
Now the theater is
a cage that holds us
all by its three
dark walls and its
bullshit fourth wall.
I’m stuck here until it’s over.
there’s no way out
for me or for anyone else.

I mean,
the movie is fun.
I can’t speak, because every time I do I expose my own bullshit.
I point the finger at myself.
But I watch movies like this and I’m convinced
nothing is worth anything.

bullshit.

later

2009-08-28T00:29:00.001-07:00

laodicea

2009-08-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

2009-08-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

there is something missing from the words of Christ:
confusion.
but there is constant confusion in the disciples,
up until His resurrection.
And even after, that unfortunate rift between Paul and Barnabas.
Christ has shared all our burdens.
Does He know what it's like to be confused?
I don't know,
but I know I don't want confusion
and the words of Christ dispel it
and then all the Christian bullshit doesn't matter.

found these from turkey/greece '08

2009-08-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

I should go to bed. I got four hours of sleep and before that I was awake for 24. Now it's three fifty three in the morning and I'm sitting on the porch listening to crickets. They're loud tonight. They have a good tone. They're just like us, making a lot of noise and commotion to try and find another who hears, who will hear. who likes their sound.

but not me,
I'm silent
and all the noise
in all the world
all of it
will never wake me
up again,
it will take a
miraculous
resurrection.

Ha! someone tell me to stop being a bitch when I write like that.

2009-08-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Once I read a poem where coleridge compared something to a sieve. If I knew what a sieve was, I'd use words like that in my poetry too.
At the end of the day,
life is like a sieve;
you can only wonder
what the fuck it is.

night

2009-08-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

the heart is a fantastic muscle

it never stops

(until it stops)

I’m sitting dozing on and off

with the zsound of a relentless line of boxcars.

now it sojunds like thunder.

go to this

2009-08-12T20:07:00.001-07:00

the woman of the drain

2009-08-05T21:39:00.001-07:00

5:11 AM

2009-08-01T05:11:00.000-07:00

5:11 AM mostly finished cleaning the gobs of flesh out of the back of my car, any I missed will probably cook when the light on the horizon turns into the day's heat. whoever he was, the anonymous man with the 10-inch wrist laceration to the bone, I hope he does alright. His friend who told the cops they were fucking pigs for asking too many questions when he was only trying to get to the hospital was a good friend. When he said that, the cops threw open their batons, cuffed him, bullied him.
"give him a break he's just trying to help his friend."
"No, step back. Why is your car parked in the middle of the road. Get it out of here. Why are you still here?"
"because my back seat is covered in blood and I'll need to take this gentleman to meet his friend at the hospital."
"well he's going to jail."
Cops threaten jail a lot even when they know they won't deliver. They had nothing to keep him on.

amen

2009-07-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

thou shalt place thy tasty treats into thine microwave, and shalt nuke thereby the treats on high for two minutes and forty-five seconds.

comic bus.card

2009-07-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

somewhat wip, probably change completely before I print them

terra bella street

2009-07-01T02:13:00.000-07:00

(Look, they don’t belong here - a couple gringos in a Saturn. Pull up next to them. All with open beers in the car): Hey foo where you from? And his homies laugh. I answer nowhere. I tell my brother to turn. He does. That’s worked out all right for me so far but I saw a guy with a sheet thrown over him who got gunned down that way. That was a couple blocks away. The kid on this beautiful ground didn't have a sheet yet,

There is ugliness mixed in with the beauty, and beauty is somewhere in the ugliness.

I don’t know why. But the meaning of everything is in there somewhere if you can find it.

silence

2009-06-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

silence
will overcome, finally—
it has followed at my heels
because I always keep a treat for it with me
in my front pocket on the other side of my wallet—
it’s waiting, maybe,
for that day when it will finally
overtake me.
then I’ll be ready.
I’ll be more ready than anyone else,
cause I got practice, see.

to byron

2009-06-22T02:55:00.000-07:00

On the way up, I met a girl with a streak of pink in her hair and a Siren Studios Hollywood shirt – we were introduced by a man I later found out she didn’t really know, who she called a weirdo, I said “he seemed nice enough,” and then a pervert – and we only spoke briefly, while boarding a north-bound train, she to Modesto and me to Byron, CA., about the breeze and the bad shit she’d been into before in Modesto. “Real bad shit,” she said. I wanted to talk to her more, and look at her more closely, study the way her eyes were. But then she put on sunglasses and I sat far away from her; I can’t forget, I’m the outsider, I’ve got to perpetuate that. Because I have to. We rode for hours, and suddenly I realized we were twenty minutes past Modesto, and, well, she’d be gone.

la sidewalks

2009-06-20T02:35:00.000-07:00

Children of the sidewalks
and the gutters
of LA,
old children -
a woman a year too old for this
blotto on the sidewalk, seductively:
"only fifteen minutes till they stop serving alcohol,"
she moans. "the liquor store closes in fifteen minutes."
She pouts and then laughs and puts her cheek on the sidewalk,
holds up a cigarette,
in glitters and high heels,
"you want to go?"
"it's up to Allen."
she stands up, stumbles, sits against a wall,
meanwhile
the music from inside is like a lake
that everyone swims in

soft silent sight - some slow slightly sightly sprite

2009-06-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

not brand echh

2009-06-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

The opportunity never presented itself.
(I mix up some energy drink and scotch.)
It kind of slipped by, I guess,
it went away.
(I swirl it around in a dirty stained coffee mug.)
I don’t think it was ever
meant to be.
(it’s gone.)

unifro

2009-05-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

downcast

2009-05-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

someone told me i ripped off sam flores...sorry sam, it was an accident

ballerina brute

2009-05-30T19:31:00.001-07:00

debris

2009-05-30T19:25:00.001-07:00

something

2009-05-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

"The Grapevine looms before us
like a grape vine"

- a great poet

2009-05-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

when death has wrapped his fingers
around my simple soul
and taken me away
into the great unknown
and like a whisper spoken on the wind
I’ve been lost,
then I’ll never say
it doesn’t make sense
again.

coconut crumbs mingle with car oil on the asphalt

2009-05-13T20:56:00.001-07:00

there's a woman who is homeless who stands outside the K INN doughnut shop at Van Nuys and Woodman, she was there tonight at 8, when I went in the store she was just coming out of it and when I left she was standing there outside with her elbows on her shopping cart and one foot up on the undercarriage by the rear wheels. I saw her four or five years ago and was worried for her, but I guess she does okay.

megan

2009-05-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

sacrifice is a great honor. the abandoned buddha eats only the choicest maidens to appease his great anger toward the santa claritians.

special limited edition post

virus

2009-05-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

i gave up on this painting several times

2009-05-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

the turk speeks

2009-05-06T00:21:00.001-07:00

"Plastic munchies? Plastic munchies! Time to eet the plastic monchees? Plastic monchees? Plastic monchees! Time to eet the plastic monchees!" -Turk

the sleepy ones

2009-05-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

mini comic

a line of dialogue that will be cut

2009-05-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

JANKINS
I know what it feels like to lie. I know what the heart does. I know what it’s like to hide in the dark when authorities are looking for you with flashlights. I know what fear is like on a dark street at one AM. I know what it’s like to watch a man fire a gun, all nine rounds, and the smile that can be on his face when he kills another man. I know what it’s like to see a man bleed to death on the sidewalk and to be too scared to help him or call for the paramedics. I know the splitting wail that comes from the patrol cars and the blinding red and blue lights, and when I see them, I know to hide. I’ll show you what fear can do to a man. I’ll show you what money can do to the mind of a man. I’ll show you what pride can do when blood is easily spilled. I’ll show you the darkness of the jail cell and the madness that overtakes the mind of a man, slowly, a little more every time he goes into the camp. It affects you. It gets to your head. You’re a worm who goes into a cocoon and comes out not as a butterfly but as a mosquito, and you’ll never lose the taste for blood.

the royal sun

2009-05-01T01:47:00.000-07:00

The day, if you’d call it that,
is mostly done
Nice people have become ugly
Smoke chokes my throat and
starts to sting my eyes –
it’s alright,
smoke in the eyes is alright…
Let’s talk about forsaking
everything and everyone
over smokes at the Royal Sun…

X

2009-04-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

until the abandoned buildings are finally forsaken even by the homeless and the vagrants and the downtrodden and the disenfranchised,

until all the spray cans are empty and the last black sputters have dripped down my fingers,

until the hot sun above has scorched my skin and the dark underground has chilled my bones,

until the heavens are opened up for me, or hell has wrapped its fingers around my soul,

until everything makes sense, or everything is finally rendered meaningless:

Blessed be the walls in this city, the beautiful ones and ugly ones, the walls that give warmth, the walls that receive markings and spray from the artists and gangsters; blessed be the walls, until the day that they fall.

headhands?

2009-04-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

no apologies

2009-04-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

she was almost as black as the night
and her eyes were clear;
her eyes judged all things.
her hair caught highlights here and there
from the street-light behind her,
and clouds came from her mouth when she spoke.
“oh no,” she said when I told her my name,
“that’s his name,” she said.
(the guy who was the asshole
had the same name as me)
Otherwise she was nice to me
and her smile was bright,
except sometimes it went away
and then there was pain in her eyes –
the pain of memory
as she explained things that
I felt like I shouldn’t hear.
I think she told me because she knew
tomorrow I’d be gone.
Where am I now, _______?
Where are you?
(I forget your name...)
have you decided whether or not to smile?

i hope i walk

2009-03-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

I didn't hear it because it happened while I was banging on the drums, but there was more blood in arleta today
on terra bella st. (beautiful ground)
-que sucedio aqui?
-no se
but we knew, they don't block off the whole street like that unless there has been blood

the junkyard

2009-03-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

steal from the richest

2009-03-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

throat is warm, chest is warm, mouth is sour, eyes are closed, tears still don't come, can't come, but they should - will you cry for me? I can't do it.

anctious

2009-02-26T22:43:00.001-08:00

I often talk about mourning
and weeping
And beauty to make you weep,
and disaster to make you mourn,
and the mess of the world
that creeps up close next to you
while you sleep
or wake
or eat
or dink,
or whatever you do,
and every tear will be wiped away.
but I don’t weep:
I’m not moved enough to weep,
I’m not angry:
I’m too complacent for it.

Anctious says:

at the protest

2009-02-25T00:26:00.001-08:00

some years ago. this guy asked me to take his picture. he gave me a business card so I could send the picture to him. I never sent the picture to him.

Αθήνα

2009-02-23T00:47:00.001-08:00

why

2009-02-23T00:24:00.000-08:00

I flew across the world;
your eyes were like stars,
then like rivers,
then like mountains
topped with ice an chilled with frost,
and I left, lost in
foreign lands and loud, echoing chants,
(but somehow someone or something
always brings me back again.
until then I'll wander
with your eyes following
me like guilty flying
sprites to brush the
dirt off my shoulders
and then fly to new heights of beauty.
but the dirt is mine

who stepped in the water at 4 am?

2009-02-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

the upside-down man

2009-02-12T14:56:00.001-08:00

diamond-plate reverse

2009-02-06T13:14:00.001-08:00

beef

2009-02-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

but the grey eyed goddess said

2009-02-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

my painting is back there

sweetman in 2005

2009-02-02T00:48:00.000-08:00

live poetry reading at the Los Angeles Unified Detention System, myles accompanying on uke

la

2009-02-01T19:52:00.001-08:00

"you get the stink of LA in your bones"
-bukowski

typewriter case

2009-01-27T22:51:00.000-08:00

if you study well the artefacts herein displayed, you will find the case is set at an angle in relation to the camera lense

can't hold on to anything

2009-01-24T02:45:00.001-08:00

as I start painting, stories retreat from me
when I start writing, pictures go away

new bookshelf

2009-01-23T19:30:00.000-08:00

walmart spray paint on such a small canvas is one of the most nervewracking experiences there is

no title

2009-01-20T17:37:00.000-08:00

the extra's plea

2009-01-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

While I was working as an movie extra I found a piece of paper folded up and stuck into an empty tea tin in a coffee-shop façade. The piece of paper said:

"The Extra’s Plea

Let’s go to Los Angeles, every-one, and when we’re there, well – we’ll make it, we’ll make it. Like the isolated and lonely and drama-filled souls baring their souls or feigning their souls on the screen for fun, and they usually hate it unless they’re smashing cars into each other. Let’s go to Los Angeles with good posture and good structure and figure out exactly what people want to buy, and we’ll do anything, we’ll walk in circles and eat shit and pray for a glance or a meeting by chance, which will, because it must, pull us out of this wretched and friendly mediocrity. Our face is always downcast, especially when we smile; our laugh is never genuine, from over-use. We have our own language, it’s very handy. The language of packages. Pre-packaged conversation is the easiest kind. Prepared beforehand for easy access, we never have to converse or interact – pick and choose. We are the depressed and the downcast, we are the pre-packaged, unknown, pick-and-choose, desperate clones, and please, please, make it, make it, because it will wash us, it will make everything better, because everything sucks and it could be so much better, if people knew our name, and our face, and asked us to do things and to be places and to pretend like we’re someone else. That’s all we want anyway.

-An Extra"

jank

2009-01-15T03:31:00.001-08:00

trying
hand at writing

something else

2009-01-13T15:41:00.000-08:00

augor

2009-01-12T01:53:00.001-08:00

favorite writer, hands down:

http://www.augsdraws.com/streetart.html

grecian graffiti

2009-01-10T00:46:00.000-08:00

Grecian Graffiti:

mini art book coming soon

2009-01-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

sneek preview

they have stolen my things

2009-01-04T21:23:00.000-08:00

WE SINK TOWARD THE WATERY DARK MUDDY CITY
OF NO HOPES
ASPHALT LAKE FLOWING DOWN INTO THE
RAPIDS OF NO RAFTS
IN THE SLUMBERING
CITY OF DREAMS
AND NO HOPES
AND SMILE, BABY, PLEASE,
OR DON'T
WALK WITH ME DOWN THE GENTLE SLOPE
WHERE ANCIENT FOOLS
WOULD LAUGH AND CHOKE
ON UNPALETABLE THOUGHTS
AND GREEN LEAF LAURELS
ENCIRCLED MOSTLY BROKE
HEADS BROKE UP BY
flowing streams
of thought and things
and things too
not just thought
but things