Roses Are Dead

by Tim Clark


You've pulled me apart
just to pull yourself together.
Now I'm partial to seperation,
repeating an era like it's a
chorus to my great depression.
Anxiety is my chocolate noose.
You'll have to eat your way out
or digest the emptiness soon.

Would you ring your wrists for me
If I decided to engage familiarity
and leave intimacy at the altar?
Your metal bridal gown will weigh
down spendour under the marquee.
I forced my vows, forging a crowd
around a crown worse then thorns.
There's a stampede singing...

"Give me the gun."
I shot a flower once
but the bullet wilted
before it hit her stem.
When the smoke
cleared the lead
grew to full bloom.
I'd choose pollen
over gunpowder;
allergies over eulogies.

The breeze squeezed the trigger,
casting seeds to spray in every
direction; falling like lost stars
cast from a galaxy of dandelions.
I inserted clips into the dirt,
learning this earth is worlds away
from the roads were dark roses
allure us with fragrant stains.
I'll keep pedels in my pocket to
heal the pain she planted, though
these sentiments aren't organic.

She consumed me in her fire-arms.
There's no wholes in her black heart.

Two Weeks

by Grizzly Bear
video directed by Patrick Daughters

Skwerm

aka David Ellis

David Ellis is an artist born into a family immersed in music. In his youth Ellis had little patience with piano lessons or reading sheet music. Instead he absorbed everything on The Super Mix, a Saturday night radio program broadcast from the nearby Fort Bragg military base. Each week a new cassette tape of emerging New York hip-hop found its way into the life of a child growing up in a log house in North Carolina. By the time Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 released The Message, Ellis was writing rhymes and banging out beats with his friends on the desks at school. Things have since become much louder.

Ellis' work continues to interpret music and sound. His paintings are often recorded in a form of digital time-lapse animation Ellis calls motion painting. Like jazz, these works provide Ellis with an opportunity to combine ideas with collaborators or work solo within a form that promotes improvisation and spontaneity. For a recent commission the artist painted a truck from sunup to sundown over five consecutive days. Ellis often stages events when exhibiting his motion paintings, inviting musicians, performers, and sound artists to interpret the work live. His motion painting, Paint on Trucks in a World in Need of Love was recently exhibited at MoMA.

Ellis' paintings are frequently improvised. He works directly on the walls of spaces that remain open to the public during installation and shares the making of the work with viewers. The experience is much like a band playing in front of a passing audience.

Ellis further explores sound with kinetic installations that produce analogue sequences in rhythm.

my winnipeg

Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD) casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in MY WINNPEG, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. A documentary (or "docu-fantasia" as Maddin proclaims) that inventively blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths, the film covers everything from the fire at the local park which lead to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads to pivotal and factually heightened scenes from Maddin's own childhood, all laced with a startling emotional honesty. MY WINNIPEG is Maddin's most personal film and a truly unique cinematic experience, winning the best Canadian film at the Toronto International Film Festival and the opening night selection of the Berlin Film Festival's Forum.

Eloisa to Abelard

excerps written by Alexander Pope


Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.

Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

muto

amazing series of sequencial street art pieces
done by south american artist, Blu:

http://www.blublu.org/ The new short film by Blu: an
ambiguous animation painted on public walls. Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden

the wrong brooklyn

old photography of mine,

notlikethis

by Spoken Oh


Slumped

In the labyrinth of seconds.

Slumped.

I caught your screams
in a bottle of prozac pills
They echo -
just like your memory

Your torso, so carelessly
strewn over bath tubs
Holding life
in twitching veins and kitchen blades

Every blood-tuned scream
echoes dead romance
Slow dance til’
the pale blue turns scarlet

Sunken

Sunken in her wretched contempt.

Sunken

She hacks, limp in her anger
at the throbbing hand
that I once held
once so tight in our grasp

Her words trickle in residue
“suicide is quite attractive”
while she etches
her tombstone in scraped flesh

Love/hate with it’s scar
no pun, a knife’s potential
is outdone
mop the tiled floor in red fashions

Singed

Singed notebooks no longer read

Singed

My own sickness reflected
in blunt emotion;
to lip-lock
my own personal apocalypse

suicidal tendencies
, but you mean more to me
than a slashed wrist.

I love you
not like this.

The Morning

by Maven

i closed the door when i saw you wake up;
your blinds were still open though.
the light showed me what i needed,
or it would have,
if i hadn't been so stupid
and closed the door before i could catch a glimpse
of life in your eyes.

this was the last poem i would ever write about you,
i promised, remember?
i guess you never heard me.
i broke that promise a thousandfold and lost another muse.
next time you wake up,
i'll be sure that you can see my face.

i hope that yours will be smiling.

Gabe Leonard

prints/info: www.gabeleonard.com

"katherine"

"anoter one bites the dust"

rev(olution) lover in reverse

by Atti?

spit glass through my spine
and pretend you’ve shred the back of my hand,
to heal your fragile head-
as the mattress spills its metal jackets
along the open door,
I’ll juggle slugs with open hugs
and use my shoulder blades
to save you the task of time it would take
to stab my back
before you blow that kiss
through hollow lips too careful
to hear the clicks
as two stripped bullets undress the barrel.

ten paces before we draw-
and as you drew a gun to fire I traced conclusion
too short before soon turned
and began to shoot
for sheer amusement;

and as I look into each of your eyes-
at separate times,
as they take turns dancing
adjacent edges on the switchblade
buried in my face-
I find our knife in my pocket;

and watch your pointing fingers
continue down the ridges of my spine-
until the judgement in your eyes
grow sharp enough to dive.

go ahead,
drive that tip of silk
so slow that it feel more cold,
than painful;

more humane
than what it actually is,
more to proper stage
as its performer takes the reigns-
and the action
matches the fire that it’s raped;
despite the fact the flames
feel so cold before they blister
the ridges of mistake.

just fucking stab me!
-or, shoot me first.

I’d love to swallow your jagged edges
for the sake of looking in those eyes
for the final seconds
before the skyline fills my mind;

but as you sit their like a stranger;
lips slightly open
with fresh smoke rolling up your face,
I turn my back and imagine just how it would taste
to end this bullshit without the same old seconds
to waste on forgetting
just how great it was before the final blade
cascaded by.

so, stab me in the front
-shoot me in the back.
I’m so over this old additive-
I’d rather see your blade then taste your bullets,
because at least this way
I never see you pull it.