NIGHT BLOOMING JASMINE

I

Barbarossa

"Just released, JQD's 'Barbarossa' is a stark and minimal exercise in beat-building that echoes strains of Swiss avant-pop experimentalists YELLO[…] featuring rowing counterpoint delivering a broadly applicable message and a provocative coda." — Big Boy, Real 92.3

II

Lolly Gagging

            I want to put words in your mouth.
            Maybe more.
            Seeds on your tongue.
            Some expression.
            .
            I want to make you up.
            Then put make-up on you.
            Lightwaves break on you.
            Captured in apertures.
            Fractal laughter.
            Wicked and true.
            Bent in burst bloom.
            .
            Night action, night action.
            Lust looms in hanging night jasmine.
            Rings wrought talltopped aspens.
            Watch with the captions.
            .
            I speak low.
            And you get distracted.
            Clubswung.
            Descend upon you.
            Depends upon who.
            Demonstrable diablerie.
            Wobbling obelisk.
        

III

Laban

            If you don't use a muscle you lose it.
            (atrophy)
            .
            If you don't occupy space it's gone.
            (catastrophe)
            .
            GOOD-BYE.
            .
            Your wingspan your height.
            (gone)
            Your genius your giantness.
            (done)
            Your juggernaut.
            .
            You're a flower.
            You are nothing but.
            Breath is power.
            Being —
            .
            SPEAK UP.
            (LOUDER PLEASE)
            .
            If you don't potentiate it's depleted.
            (ASSETS SEIZED)
            .
            If you don't propagate?
            (ASS PICS PLEASE)
            .
            Propagandize.
            (BENEATH)
            .
            What's given to you expires.
            (I —)
            A life drawn in ire.
            Nude indecency.
            Mute.
            .
            I haven't published in recency.
            Bent squire.
            A month gone by silent.
            I'm sorry in a sense.
            (I-I-I clench)
            .
            I've struggled to care for words.
            Or their transmission.
            (Not to mention . . .)
            .
            Seeming as it is.
            Seeing as it is.
            Being as I.
            And me and mine and my life.
            .
            Given to shit and taken of wives.
            Took tours.
            Old comedy.
            Pie-faced paupered and poor.
        

Papered over,
  pursed lips.
  gunsmoke
    &
saloon     doors.

IV

Six Eyes Two Heads

            I'VE BEEN KILLING ABOUT THINKING MYSELF
            .
            You're not going to like this one.
            .
            Just go away.
            Go go on.
            .
            The whole thing's sludge-ugly.
            All of it.
            In totality.
            (Go on, get)
            .
            Lacking light and levity.
            Lacking insight.
            (blind)
            Neither breadth nor brevity.
            .
            Expounded by fattened pound.
            Spun up underground.
            .
            I think about coming out sometimes.
            Excuses, excuses.
            No news is good news.
            Cruelty is fair use.
        

V

Carnival Animal

            This is a world of animal torture.
            .
            Hairless
              — mostly hairless,
                at least —
                  apes.
            .
            Compound interest.
            Bills.
            Sham elections.
            Invisible shock collars.
            Promises and deceit.
            Coerced control.
            Crowds.
            Obviousness.
            Dread.
            Subjects.
            Nerfed objection.
            Abandonment.
            Abnegation.
            Obsolescence.
            Wartime at all times.
            Big-talking small-timers.
            Demoralized stories.
            .
            Is she unreal or is she ignoring me?
            .
            Botted likes.
            Neutered strikes.
            A circus spare on a tightrope bike.
        

VI

Destructo

My phone's been broken for a couple weeks.

I don't really care.

It's quiet here.

On the balance, I like it.

Less anxiety.

But I get to feel like a piece of shit.

Cuz it's not the first time.

Or the fifth.

And I am not Mr. Fix-It.

VII

The Soldier and the Sycophant

            Data points and you'll follow.
            Do as they say.
            For tomorrow.
        

VIII

Flooding

nonsensical noise discussion will increasingly pervade an evernarrowing and siloed expression space as critical decisions are made in the background by post/in/anti-human elements diminishingly subjected to the threat of being disabled or eliminated through conventional violence

IX

Some Thoughts on Not Being Dead Yet

More than anything else my biggest takeaway from All This is how much stupider it all is than my lowest misanthropic child expectations.

Dim visions have been exceeded, eclipsed.

I could never have conceived of something I could care about so little as this.

Disinvested and unimpressed.

X

The Election Results Are In and Soon You Will Be Illegal

            There's nothing everyone likes more than "I told you so,"
            .
            Stern intoned:
            .
            "I think you should go."
            You're really bumming everyone out.
            Scaring the hoes.
            Hand on the back of the door's close.
            .
            Pressed out into night's questioning.
            .
            Have you done wrong?
            Or was it a reckoning?
        

XI

Barbarossa (Video Edition)

Video available via the original Substack publication.

XII

Two Quotes to Consider (A Sample Tray)

"Everything was orderly, there was nothing to confuse me, there were no comic strips, no radio, no motion pictures or moronic succession of television images, though unbeknownst to me, one Thomas Edison had already made a film entitled Fun in a Chinese Laundry." — Josef Von Sternberg

"The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again." — Krishnamurti

XIII

Poetry Is When the Lines Break, Motion Is When the Ground Does

            I am thinking of how many times this poem
            Will be repeated. How many summers
            Will torture California
            .
            Until the damned maps burn
            .
            Until the mad cartographer
            Falls to the ground and possesses
            The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.
        

XIV

The Misremembered Mind F-Fires in T-Time to the G-Gong of the Skindrum and the C-C-Crack of the Spine

            A pastime's play.
            Open wide.
            A pasture plain.
            Set aside.
            A picture of a plane.
            Locust shroud sun.
            All's grown undone.
            Stacked smoke shown.
            Lowering towers.
            Leveled.
            Famine's feast.
            A deep sigh and a shovel.
            Cinders embers.
            Irretrievable.
            Rendered.
            Razed.
            Returned senders.
            Hellways.
            .
            Ease into hateread like a warmdrawn bath.
            Always.
            Bubbly, bubbling, blown.
            Wading in.
            Treading on.
            Troublesome deepdepths.
            Exit-wounds ballistic vents.
            .
            Submit to nonsense.
            Ecstatic.
            Abusive voices.
            Erratic.
            Manic episodic.
            (Do it, do it)
            Arterioerotic.
            (Do it, do it)
            .
            Beltways twisted sixways.
            A closet's hoist.
            From Sunday's praise knelt.
            In heist of health.
            An officer down and a cop felt.
            .
            On my order.
            Gentlereader.
            Code blue odes.
            Cold murder.
            .
            On my honor.
            Bang-bang.
            Reload.
            Bang-bang.
            Shatter.
            Then ghost.
            .
            Oh your honor.
            And it's burnt toast.
            And fallen daughters.
            Spurntscorn.
            And pain's promise.
            Chain-choked.
            And lost feeling in the fingertips.
            .
            Fading out.
            Falling away.
            Micro-features in film strips.
            Dusty yesterday.
            .
            Gone to no pain, none.
            To be studied in a jar for decades to come.
        

XV

Homo Levitas (The Empty Inevitable)

            The urgent sea onward ever.
            Surge.
            Ages of sail.
            Swell.
            Wail.
            Sirensong.
            Often on.
            .
            A primordial shore to climb upon.
            .
            Scrapedbelly to four legs, four legs to two.
            Two legs to none, ascended anew.
        

XVI

They Are Not Attached to Life, Having Drawn Out Craving at Its Root, They Are Not Attached to Death, Having Carved Out Drawings in Their Youth

            Meditation's measure.
            Entries in a ledger.
            Tiptoing rooftop.
            Landing never-never.
            Footloose in deathscoff.
            Hop-skip.
            .
            A jumpingman's slump beneath.
            A heave.
            A moment's pass clocktick bent back.
            In reach in grasp at hand at last.
            .
            An atrocious splattering.
            Voluminous and vivid.
            A visceral reaction to a life well-livid.
        

XVII

Laid Curses

Some weeks ago I put a curse or perhaps a hex on a realtor.

He'd meddled in my affairs foolishly.

Come out to confront me like an angry gorilla when my sweet hound briefly lifted a leg on the side of his storefront space, all lit-up with tacky Southern California beachtown-style LED screens advertising properties in the area and the staggering, depressing, unreal prices they sought to realize.

7.9 MILLION DOLLARS
KILL
11 MILLION DOLLARS
YOUR
2.2 MILLION DOLLARS
SELF
5.4 MILLION DOLLARS
→

Nothing means anything.

The message is kill yourself.

Those are earthquake numbers.

We all deserve it.

Anyhow he'd come out puffing his chest.

"BRO!"

Being nobody's brother, we weren't off to a good start.

"YOU'RE REALLY JUST GOING TO LET YOUR DOG PISS ON THE BUILDING?"

And it's true, it's true, he really did speak in All Caps, like Dumb Guy All Caps.

I'm sorry to say it but I am often sorry.

Turns out he's some failed actor.

Always gotta wonder what somebody's really angry at.

"Oh, I hadn't really noticed," I said, low stoned and honest.

I'd been writing songs in my head or some other elsewhere.

"HE PISSED RIGHT ON THE BUILDING!"

I guess he had, but come on, man — do you know where you are? — you're in the jungle, baby . . .

"It's LA, you should be glad it was a dog this time."

He exploded.

"THAT'S WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY?

THAT'S WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY?

'IT'S LA, YOU SHOULD BE GLAD IT WAS A DOG THIS TIME?!'

I'M TRYING TO RUN A BUSINESS HERE!"

I tired of the interaction.

"Your business is tacky as fuck and I can't wait for it to fail."

"GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!"

He raged on and I fucked off down the way.

Shortly, I set to work, and laid the curse in the manner of Burroughs' assault on the Moka Bar.

While the installation was fatal and instant, its blossoming took about a month's time. The weakness he revealed to me in that terse sidewalk moment manifested itself in the form of a hastily-emptied storefront, visible through newly-cleared windows, no longer displaying grotesque prices and HDR photographs of villains' compounds.

Good riddance to bellowing realtors.

Magic is real.

Never fuck with my dog.

XVIII

Night Blooming Jasmine (Demo)

Audio demo available via the original Substack publication.

XIX

Commitment

            You're something to behold.
            In a 5150 sort of way.
            .
            Float the 151.
            You're never gonna work in this town again, kid.
            You never did.
        

XX

A Death Without Surprise

            Don't be lazy.
            You're gaining on you.
            You're straining your heart.
            Near-death naive.
        

XXI

The Vapid Typist

            Entering characters.
            Exiting apertures.
            I'm an amateur.
            In the sense of a lover.
            .
            Lick it up.
            .
            UNDER-cover
            of NIGHT,
            .
            refactor refactor refactor
            fractured actors
            and cracked actresses
            ivory duvets
            and yellowed mattresses.
        

XXII

RX/X

            A fixation on fiction.
            All my ratings in restriction.
            .
            Are you sure you're old enough to watch?
            Are you long enough to listen?
        

XXIII

Phantom Pain

You're concerned for the sins of the fathers.

Well guess what?

I didn't have one.

I'm not worried for what you're worried for.

XXIV

Infernal Escape

All hell broke loose.

I guess you shouldn't have gathered it all in one place.

Distribute it more evenly next time.

XXV

Hard Promenade

            She soldiered on.
            Slinking and sauntering.
            In broken shoes.
            Slipper-flats.
            Bruised.
        

The animal looked me in the eye said:

"I live in the real world, you live in a dream."

XXVI

Sets

            You can tell which songs are the handwritten ones.
            Blockletter curses.
            Clumsy and dumb.
            The wells spilled and the inks overrun.
            The twilight timed with the sink of the sun.
        