I’m back on Boogie Street...

O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,
I never thought we’d meet.
You kiss my lips, and then you're gone:
I’m back on Boogie Street

THE DESIRE TO PAINT (Charles Bauldelaire)

Unhappy perhaps is man, but happy the artist torn by desire!

I am consumed by a desire to paint the woman who appeared to me so rarely and who so quickly fled, like a beautiful regretted thing the voyager leaves behind as he is carried away into the night. How long it is now, since she disappeared!

She is beautiful and more than beautiful; she is surprising. Darkness in her abounds, and all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery dimly glistens, and like a lighting flash, her glance illuminates: it is an explosion in the dark.

I have compared her to a black sun, if one can imagine a black star pouring out light and happiness. But she makes one think rather of the moon, which has surely marked her with its portentous influence; not the white moon of idylls which resembles a frigid bride, but the moon torn from the sky, the conquered and indignant moon that the Thessalian Witches cruelly compel to dance on the frightened grass!

That little forehead is inhabited by a tenacious will and a desire for prey. Yet, in the lower part of this disturbing countenance, with sensitive nostrils quivering for the unknown and the impossible, bursts, with inexpressible loveliness, a wide mouth, red and white and alluring, that makes one dream of the miracle of a superb flower blooming on volcanic soil.

There are woman who inspire you with desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

NYC week 2.3

(I want you to notice when I'm not around.)

When you were here before,
couldn't look you in the eye.
Just like an angel,
your skin makes me cry.
you float like a feather,
in a beautiful world.
wish I was special.
you're so very special.

and I'm a creep
I'm a wierdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.

I don't care if it hurts.
I want to have control.
I want a perfect body.
I want a perfect soul.
I want you to notice
when I'm not around.
You're so very special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a wierdo
What the hell am I doing here
when I don't belong here
Woah, woah

she's runnin out again
she's running out she--run--run---run runs
Run.
Whatever makes you happy
whatever you want
youre so very special
I wish I was special

but I'm a creep
I'm a wierdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here.
I don't belong here.

NYC week 2.2

NYC week 2.1

I need some sweet assistance while I'm stealing some of your time

Would you help me pack my bags, I might be leaving
I need some sweet assistance while 'm stealing
Some of your time
I hope that's fine

And I've got photographs of all, you're all I'm needing
Forgiveness if I left you all believing
That I'm the one 'cause I feel like none
And I need something to direct me to it

'Cause I'm a frequent flyer, a notorious liar
But I can't get close enough
I never get close
I can't get close enough

I would love to tell my story from the ending
But the story's getting thin from heavy spending
And I need my man, and I need a fence
And I need someone to protect me from the wrench

I'm a frequent flyer, a notorious liar
But I can't get close enough
I never get close
I can't get close enough to the ending

I can't get close enough
I can't get close enough
To the sun

I'm a frequent flyer, a notorious liar
But I can't get close enough
I never get close
I can't get close enough... it seems

NYC week 1.2

NYC week 1.1

you're innocent when you dream

It's such a sad old feeling
the fields are soft and green
it's memories that I'm stelaing
but you're innocent when you dream
when you dream
you're innocent when you dream

I would change for you but, babe, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be a better man

Favorite song.



(The National and St. Vincent)

Cold ways kill cool lovers
Strange ways we used each other
Why won't you fall back in love with me?
There ain't no way we're gonna find another
The way we sleep all summer
So why won't you fall back in love with me?

Combing over Broken Cross I held on you
Haunted by the ghost of something new

dream come true

Modern day "ojos de perro azul"

Vitalic - Poison Lips from Seiji Ito on Vimeo.

Frank O'Hara

In Memory of My Feelings

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.
He has several likenesses, like stars and years, like numerals.

My quietness has a number of naked selves,
so many pistols I have borrowed to protect myselves
from creatures who too readily recognize my weapons
and have murder in their heart!
though in winter
they are warm as roses, in the desert
taste of chilled anisette.
At times, withdrawn,
I rise into the cool skies
and gaze on at the imponderable world with the simple identification
of my colleagues, the mountains. Manfred climbs to my nape,
speaks, but I do not hear him,
I'm too blue.
An elephant takes up his trumpet,
money flutters from the windows of cries, silk stretching its mirror
across shoulder blades. A gun is "fired."
One of me rushes
to window #13 and one of me raises his whip and one of me
flutters up from the center of the track amidst the pink flamingoes,
and underneath their hooves as they round the last turn my lips
are scarred and brown, brushed by tails, masked in dirt's lust,
definition, open mouths gasping for the cries of the bettors for the lungs
of earth.
So many of my transparencies could not resist the race!
Terror in earth, dried mushrooms, pink feathers, tickets,
a flaking moon drifting across the muddied teeth,
the imperceptible moan of covered breathing,
love of the serpent!
I am underneath its leaves as the hunter crackles and pants
and bursts, as the barrage balloon drifts behind a cloud
and animal death whips out its flashlight,
whistling
and slipping the glove off the trigger hand. The serpent's eyes
redden at sight of those thorny fingernails, he is so smooth!
My transparent selves
flail about like vipers in a pail, writhing and hissing
without panic, with a certain justice of response
and presently the aquiline serpent comes to resemble the Medusa.


Frank O'Hara

Rilke

Girl

Others on lengthy wanderings
to the darksome poets are forced to fare;
must always be asking a traveler
if he's not seem one singing there
or laying his hands on strings.
Only girls will never ask
what bridge leads to images;
will smile merely, brightlier than necklaces
of pearl against silver bowls unfurled.

All doors from their lives are entrances
into a poet
and into the world.


-Rainer Maria Rilke

sound of silence

Favorite version.

when you're meant to be

no, no, no, no, noise
a new song untitled.
words on invisible lines
ripped from the dotted line.
ads on walls,
ripped corners four sides.
riptide monuments
wash ashore rest assured.

fly

ursula: painting and magical powers seem very much the same. sometimes i’m unable to paint a thing.

kiki: you mean it? then what happens? without even thinking about it i used to be able to fly. now i can’t even begin to remember how i ever managed to do it.

ursula: at times like that, you know what i do? paint. that gets rid of my frustration.

kiki: but still if i can’t fly..

ursula: then stop trying. take long walks, look at the scenery, doze off at noon dont even think about flying. then suddenly you’ll be able to fly again.

My head. My world. My life.

the doctor

I saw myself climbing out through the driver seat window.
It was the strangest thing to see in your peripheral view.
I was driving, so I pulled over to the side of the road.
I sat there for a moment, expecting what of the thin air?

It could have been an ordinary morning but now it's a morning
emblazoned deep into the grey matter of the brain itself.
If only I could find the exact spot where it lies I would dig in
with a scalpel or anything sharp and sterile for that matter
and cut it out while whistling a pleasant tune, light and airy.

What is it that we feel we are owed when our jaws clench
and the eyes twitch and the muscles in the neck jerk?
The finger tips and palms rubbing up against one another
with a rhythm that could only be described as maniacal
because there is something so unsettling and unintentional in it.
Not praying, nor praising nor begging then what says it?

Undisclosed desires

Such an incredible song.




I know you've suffered but I don't want you to hide

It's cold in lovers; I won't let u be denied,
The soon then, I'll make u feel pure
And trust me, you can be sure

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

you trick your lovers that you're wicked and divine,
you may be a sinner, but your innocence is mine


Please me
Show me how it's done
Tease me
You are the one

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

Please me
Show me how it's done
Trust me you are the one

I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart

Breadballer

Breadballin' is a new sport I invented out of necessity, fun and madness.

And now, I.CAN'T.STOP.



you can do it in the middle of nowhere...



or you can do it in the city...

good morning Sunshine

Late at night we dream about the morning

I love the sound of the train outside my window
I think I am falling in Love with you
I mean, I am in love with you,
and I'm falling

We're going to watch the sunrise one morning
over our city with a beer in our hands
and cold breakfast burritos
shedding pieces of egg and cheese
on the tracks under our dangling feet

The beer was your idea
and the breakfast burrito was a bad idea
The look on your face after the first bite,
I can't believe you ate all of it

I'm sipping on the beer
but getting drunk off the air
You have a piece of something
on the left corner of your mouth
I think, kissing you would be perfect

This, was an offering

There's a button you push
a door you pull down
a screen you slide across
and then you're in

Today bravery took me nowhere

There are books on the table
One that makes me want to die
One that makes me want to Live

Today bravery took me nowhere

Scattered around them, Thoughts
One that makes me want to kill
One that makes me want to save

The eyes never saw
if the hands never felt

Honesty is a sort of a sacrifice
Your hand, the knife
My lips, the wound
This was an offering

There's a button you push
a door you pull down
a screen you slide across
and then you're out

The way I feel

"Ever since I began writing this book, which is completely devoted to the cult of a dead person with whom I am living on intimate terms, I have been feeling a kind of excitement which, cloaked by the alibi of Jean's glory, has been plunging me into a more and more intense and more and more desperate life, that has been impelling me to greater boldness. And I feel I have the strength not only to commit bolder burglaries but also to affront fearlessly the noblest human institutions in order to destroy them. I'm drunk with life, with violence, with despair."

Jean Genet from Funeral Rites

MAGIC

Filmed in Paris, November, 2008

In dreams, emotions are overwhelming.

Life feels like all the good parts in "The Science of Sleep."

Yes, please.

New (on-going) series

"Homecoming"







"In kase of fire"

February through August

February through August I listened to the clock watch serenade.
The tick, the tock, the sinking of Titanic all came and went again.

I would understand better, I thought, if forgetting happened to forget me.

I love your eyes that mimic freshly baked croissants from the patisserie
or the golden brown yam and goat cheese empanadas I'm craving now.

They're beautiful, the quiet giggle under your breath, and delightfully mischievous,
smirking around the outer edges for that perfect and decisive curve up
where the brush lifts off satisfied "voilà!"

voilà!

This was Chicago. I'm in my salt crusted black jeans behind you.
Walking up the stairs, your thighs are the cruelest set I'd ever seen.





Let us be anything but reasonable I

6" x 8"

Beating a dead horse with paint brush

Such a good little boy.

Oh, wait.







The boy that warms your mother's (fucking) heart, 1992

Sunday afternoon

I could watch internet porn for hours
or go do something productive.
But what's more productive than sex?
Even if it's other people having it.

I'm sending you signals.
But they keep bouncing off roof tops,
and falling to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
There's no life down there.
What good are words?

You're still pretty.
But not as beautiful
as when I had a chance.





It was hopeless, from the very beginning

Love and Poetry and Love

Frank O'Hara passed away today in 1966.

"I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven't."




In love with You at Age 6



I think the lines should come out through the back (and open up) so there's a visual balance. But for now, this is fine.

Le Petit Prince

The little prince was overheard saying to the boy in the bed next to him "What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere it hides a well."



The Little Prince after the surgery

6" x 8"












Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to have to explain things to them always and forever...

이별은 美의 創造

I was looking for Korean poetry on-line and stumbled upon a beautiful poem-


Separation is Beauty's Creation

Separation is beauty's creation.
Separation's beauty is in the intangible yellow-gold of
morning and the textureless black silk of evening
and eternal life's deathlessness and even in the
unwithering sky's blue blossoms lacking.
You. If it were not for separation, I would be
unable to die in tears and live again in laughter.
Oh, oh! Separation.
Beauty is separation's creation.


Manhae Han Yong (1879~1944)


이별은 美의 創造

이별은 美의 創造입니다.
이별의 美는 아침의 바탕 없는 황금과 밤의 올 없는 검은
비단과 죽음 없는 永遠의 生命과 시들지 않는 하늘의 푸른 꽃에도
없습니다.
님이여, 이별이 아니면 나는 눈물에서 죽었다가 웃음에서 다시
살아날 수가 없습니다. 오오, 이별이여.
美는 이별의 創造입니다.


만해 한룡운 (1879~1944)




Also in the process stumbled upon a nice blog featuring Korean poems both in English translation and in original Korean. Check it out here.

Separation is beauty's creation/Beauty is separation's creation. This leaves me speechless...

White Ropes II

Something brought me back to the white ropes earlier tonight.

Then I found out I just missed your birthday.



9" x 12"*


9" x 12"


6" x 8"


*Please excuse the poor scanning (top right) on the bigger drawings. Thank you.