Van Stanley

The American macho is only a rabid drive to avoid at all cost the feeling of embarrassment, and to...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 17:51:53 -0500

The American macho is only a rabid drive to avoid at all cost the feeling of embarrassment, and to moreover display that satisfied avoidance of embarrassment to a public that may or may not even be paying attention.

"I still love words. When we make love in the morning, your skin damp from a shower, the day..."

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:42:00 -0500

“

I still love words. When we make love in the morning,
your skin damp from a shower, the day calms.
Shadenfreude may be the best way to name the covering
of adulthood, the powdered sugar on a black shirt. I am

alone now on the top floor pulled by obsession, the ink
on my fingers. And sometimes it is a difficult name.
Sometimes it is like the world before America, the kin-
ship of fools and hunters, the children, the dazed dream

of mothers with no style. A word can be the boot print
in a square of fresh cement and the glaze of morning.
Your response to my kiss is I have a cavity. I am in
love with incompletion. I am clinging to your moorings.

Yes, I have a pretty good idea what beauty is. It survives
alright. It aches like an open book. It makes it difficult to live.

”

- Terrance Hayes, “God is an American”

Pictures taken by Jess Villesana from my...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:39:00 -0500

Pictures taken by Jess Villesana from my band Pocketknives’s gig this past Sunday at The Doctor’s Office off Nance St, in Houston’s warehouse district.

I love the idea of switching back and forth erratically between chest voice and falsetto. The two...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:42:00 -0500

I love the idea of switching back and forth erratically between chest voice and falsetto. The two are distinguished as if two different voices: chest voice and head voice. Suddenly, I am one person with two voices. I like the idea of having two characters at play, making conversation by way of finishing each other’s sentences.

Photo

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:53:44 -0500

Interpretive Dance

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:53:00 -0500

A container of the universe is a poem:
tell us what you think.

I’d help you deal with your selfishness
but I’ve got my own to concern me.

Don’t you want to be that place for others
where security is no question?

Blinded by a fear of wool over the eyes.
Don’t go always in the habit of loving in hindsight.

If we weren’t boxing away at waves in the ocean
we’d be bruising our own children, heiroglyphs

for the ones that reared us: tread marks, a fence,
a hole in the backyard, a swinging door, what’s for dinner,
a dark bedroom hour where no peep dare sound,

on the mantle a rack-of-ribs christ on a crucifix hanging
by his nails forgiving some not-know-what-they-do’s on skull hill,

perhaps a bit of ourselves agonizing, “Look at me now
I have performed the steps of time like a conversation

with many complaints, but it was an interpretive dance
and my theme was complaint. By your many hands
I was passed, like in transit, like the peace pipe.

Look at me now, I forgive you. Look at me forgiving you.
So many years, you never told me. You’ve got no clue

what you are doing here, how you affect anything,
and you think you’re going nut-so. I forgive you, but

if I’d’ve known, I would have crushed you instead
of feeling like the only one.”

The Pit Of It

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:47:00 -0500

Great taste is a matter of
attention.
We’ven’t the time, sometimes
& sometimes
the sun
will shine when it is raining & you know
this kind of bright sprinkle
is how I first came
to love
Houston, in the first days? When the air’s
thick w a smell
like rain
& car exhaust & dumpsters full
of plastic bellies
& I
think of Saigon.
We’ve categorized the whole planet
to our liking — the wholeness of one’s
outlook:
an intimate secret.
An historian picks a word
then threads it across time
& civilization.
Then the folk talk of
something about…
“It’s all relative,”
aye, yes — of course —
but we only mention it when one of us has got
to shut up
when the bridge has already been built
as a flag of what separates.
I laugh
these days, long enough to wonder
if the laughter sounds at all
of its sincerity.
Then, the tragedy
of a foot risen over the edge of the bath
then, the other foot
out of the bath, & the whole
body just
drips with the flushes
of having misunderstood.

Jacek Yerka

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:32:35 -0500

Jacek Yerka

Of all my life’s curses, gravity was first.

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 02:17:41 -0500

Of all my life’s curses, gravity was first.

These photographs document several of the various types of...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:54:50 -0500

These photographs document several of the various types of mould which can be found growing on your average loaf of bread, given enough time and neglect. I am interested in the inherent contradiction of finding aesthetic beauty in something almost universally perceived as disgusting. I was also fascinated by the extraordinary structure and microscopic nature of these life forms, something that those of us not involved in the biological sciences are probably only vaguely aware of.

"When we say something is beautiful we mean we can laterally bisect it. The moon for instance has..."

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:53:34 -0500

“

When we say something is beautiful
we mean we can laterally bisect it.
The moon for instance has the day side and the night.
A manta ray has two black wings.
A girl’s face has one green eye, one nostril up-turned
like half a ski jump, 16 teeth,
and then again.
Elizabeth Taylor, the most symmetrical of us all.
A peach with two soft sides, two halves of a poisoned seed.

Even the five-pointed starfish fits into our group.
The best time to bisect a starfish is at night
after a shipwreck when they grip the shore.
They say they are the hands of sailors who didn’t make it.

”

- Matthew Rohrer, “Beautiful Things”

Audio

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 15:57:00 -0500

It takes a very precise imagination to do captions contests, like, why is it so hard, man…...

Thu, 30 May 2013 15:16:00 -0500

It takes a very precise imagination to do captions contests, like, why is it so hard, man… Whenever I try to come up with a witty caption, I want to write something like, “Gee, I hope this text accompanies the image well. But probably not, because I’m dull. It’s hard to tell, but I’m dull. I have not yet begun to earn my self-value points through programs such as this caption contest. I’m sorry. Maybe the cartoonist knows what the giraffe is saying?”

You are tired,(I think)Of the always puzzle of living and doing;And so am I.Come with me, then,And...

Thu, 30 May 2013 14:43:00 -0500

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.

Come with me, then,
And we’ll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!
I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I’ll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea.

E. E. Cummings

Guy Bourdin

Tue, 28 May 2013 20:43:47 -0500

Guy Bourdin

a love song for mia

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:25:14 -0500

wildflowerveins:

I think I am leaking-

Imagine:
A woman pours her heart into a bowl
and feeds it to her cat. The heart
becomes a liquid thing- like heat,
a shocking,

but not so shocking red,
like my mother’s lipstick, like the first drop
of blood, like the tone of a poem
written all wrong.

Sometimes I look at people I don’t know
and think “I could love you”. My ribs tremble
with survivor’s guilt, and the branches of my
wrists spell out my future.

I think I am leaking-
and this is the sound of fragility.

We are capable of kissing
bruises and watching mothers cry
over lost children, who are not actually lost,
but hiding;

under the kitchen sink,
or in the upstairs closet, or in the concave
that is the human heart,

plucking ribcage songs.

It’s about believing in your ideas — actually having feeling for them, and such....

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:40:17 -0500

It’s about believing in your ideas — actually having feeling for them, and such. It’s about cultivating a sense of deliberation. It’s about critique. It’s about pitting taste against talent. It’s about testing your taste against your creative capability. It’s about constructing a home with the impetus — feeding, warming, romancing, that kind of thing. It’s about staying in for breakfast-in-bed with your impetus. But it’s not about trusting yourself.

Why do you want to speak when you do not yet know your place in the world? You can’t know your place in the world. Speaking is only one form of mis-communication. You speak because it feels good, lapping that tongue against your teeth, like french kissing the image of you, the image that you are portraying at that very moment, just moving — moving the lips, shaking the throat, warm air or cigarette fume rolling out, fat tongue, firm tongue, tickling yourself for whatever comes out. Your lips lean back, your tongue crosses its legs, your esophagus smokes a stogie. My, my, what a character, that mouth.

lianaelise replied to your post: A Little Bit Of Ahh, Stan, I absolutely love this...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:27:00 -0500

lianaelise replied to your post: A Little Bit Of

Ahh, Stan, I absolutely love this one!!

Ah, thank you! It’s a silly poem.

A Little Bit Of

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:52:00 -0500

substance can make you very charming.
Marijuana makes me feel very charming.

Everything you look at is in its own little world.
Everything is so fine, so fine in its detail.

You contemplate yourself in finer detail.

I feel like an 85 year old man who just woke up in a 25 year old’s body and the first thing he notices is that his sex organs work again.

My body is swollen with warm blood.
Headaches like it’s been leaning against the window, kind of thing.
Sunbathing in my own imagination.

Being at work is so easy, here I am writing a poem, brewing iced tea, and flirting with customers.

A little bit of substance can make you very interesting.
Flirting can make you very interesting.

There’s no pair of words dirtier than “always” & “never”.

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:28:44 -0500

There’s no pair of words dirtier than “always” & “never”.