he's owned me for years

entirely inspired by Thomas Moore's "Skeleton Costumes" (buy it HERE!)

this is going to hurt you

 (partly inspired by Thomas Moore's "Skeleton Costumes")

sorry for the terrible photos, they're less shiny and more black in real life.

buy Thomas Moore's amazing "Skeleton Costumes" HERE!

hobart literary journal

One of my photos illustrates 4 poems on Hobart literary journal today.

LINK

books

Why?

Bob Flanagan - Why? (Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist)

inside an old notebook (fix me first), ca. 2007

My arms are warm

Freezer

by Sharon Olds


When I think of people who kill and eat people,
I think of how lonely my mother was.
She would come to me for comfort, in the night,
she'd lie down on me and pray. And I could say
she fattened me, until it was time
to cook me, but she did not know,
she'd been robbed of a moral sense that way.
How soft she was, how unearthly her beauty, how
terrestrial the weight of her flesh
on the constellation of my joints and pouting
points. I like to have in the apartment,
shut in a drawer, in another room,
the magazine with the murder-cannibal,
it comforts me that the story is available
at any moment, accounted for, not
dangerously unthought of. I think he kept
ankles in the freezer. My mother was such a good kisser.
From where I sat in the tub, her body,
between her legs, looked a little
like a mouth, a youthfully bearded mouth
with blood on it. From one hour to the next on earth
no one knew what would happen.


source: Pascal

Why

Why - poem - Artists' Statements
Art Journal, Winter, 1997 by Bob Flanagan


Because it feels good;
because it gives me an erection;
because it makes me come;
because I'm sick;
because there was so much sickness;
because I say FUCK THE SICKNESS;
because I like the attention;
because I was alone a lot;
because I was different;
because kids beat me up on the way to school;
because I was humiliated by nuns;
because of Christ and the Crucifixion;
because of Porky Pig in bondage, force-fed by some sinister creep in a black cape;
because of stories of children hung by their wrists,
burned on the stove, scalded in tubs;
because of Mutiny on the Bounty;
because of cowboys and Indians;
because of Houdini;
because of my cousin Cliff;
because of the forts we built and the things we did inside them;
because of what's inside me;
because of my genes;
because of my parents;
because of doctors and nurses;
because they tied me to the crib so I wouldn't hurt myself;
because I had time to think;
because I had time to hold my penis;
because I had awful stomachaches and holding my penis made it feel better;
because I felt like I was going to die;
because it makes me feel invincible;
because it makes me feel triumphant;
because I'm a Catholic;
because I still love Lent, and I still love my penis, and in spite of it all I have no guilt;
because my parents said BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE, and this is what I want to be;
because I'm nothing but a big baby and I want to stay that way, and I want a mommy forever, even a mean one, especially a mean one;
because of all the fairy tale witches, and the wicked stepmother, and the stepsisters, and how sexy Cinderella was, smudged with soot, doomed to a life of servitude;
because of Hansel, locked in the witch's cage until he was fat enough to eat;
because of "O" and how desperately I wanted to be her;
because of my dreams;
because of the games we played;
because I've got an active imagination;
because my mother bought me Tinker Toys;
because hardware stores give me hard-ons;
because of hammers, nails, clothespins, wood, padlocks, pullies, eyebolts, thumbtacks, staple-guns, sewing needles, wooden spoons, fishing tackle, chains, metal rulers, rubber tubing, spatulas, rope, twine, C-clamps, S-hooks, razor blades, scissors, tweezers, knives, pushpins, two-by-fours, Ping-Pong paddles, alligator clips, duct tape, broomsticks, barbecue skewers, bungie cords, sawhorses, soldering irons;
because of tool sheds;
because of garages;
because of basements;
because of dungeons;
because of The Pit and the Pendulum;
because of the Tower of London;
because of the Inquisition;
because of the rack;
because of the cross;
because of the Addams Family playroom;
because of Morticia Addams and her black dress with its octopus legs;
because of motherhood;
because of Amazons;
because of the Goddess;
because of the moon;
because it's in my nature;
because it's against nature;
because it's nasty;
because it's fun;
because it flies in the face of all that's normal (whatever that is); because I'm not normal;
because I used to think that I was part of some vast experiment and that there was this implant in my penis that made me do these things and that allowed THEM (whoever THEY were) to monitor my activities;
because I had to take my clothes off and lie inside this plastic bag so the doctors could collect my sweat;
because once upon a time I had such a high fever that my parents had to strip me naked and wrap me in wet sheets to stop the convulsions;
because my parents loved me even more when I was suffering;
because surrender is sweet;
because I was born into a world of suffering;
because I'm attracted to it;
because I'm addicted to it;
because endorphins in the brain are like a natural kind of heroin;
because I learned to take my medicine;
because I was a big boy for taking it;
because I can take it like a man;
because, as somebody once said, HE'S GOT MORE BALLS THAN I DO;
because it is an act of courage;
because it does take guts;
because I'm proud of it;
because I can't climb mountains;
because I'm terrible at sports;
because NO PAIN, NO GAIN;
because SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL THE CHILD;
because YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE.


Bob Flanagan's pain journal.

There is no death

I tell you they have not died,
They live and breathe with you,
They walk now -- here at your side,
They tell you things are true.

Why dream of poppied sod
When you can feel their breath;
When flowers and soul and God
Know there is no death?

I tell you they have not died,
Their hands clasp yours and mine,
They are now but glorified,
They have become divine.
They live, they know, they see,
They shout with every breath,
“All is Eternal Life,
There is no death.”


by Gordon Johnstone

love poem

Arthur

Arthur

Bruce Hainley

Desire

I wanted
to write something
in praise
of Macaulay Culkin’s novel, Junior
that wasn’t ironic


*


Hard-won

diehard
hard-on

*


Gay for Pay

Oh, please


*


Reality

really

my nightstand & a classic (for some of us) poem by Wolfman

PORNOGRAPHIKA

There were swords and whips of varied design
There was alcohol secanol poppers and wine
There were whimps and pimps and studs in the dungeon
And reamers in the torture garden

These scenes were Marquis de Sade
And were making me sweat I went dizzy then hard
And so enjoyed a schoolgirl I found
On a coked up luxury lollipop round

Then she was done and so were my parts
With vicars and highwaymen teachers and tarts
Until I came on a gothic girl
Refusing to wipe my holy swirl

Then she took off her panties and held them aloft
Then thrist them under my nose for a waft
They stank like a swamp but I was elated
But then from behind nearly penetrated

I swang around to punish the culprit
Who down on his knees was begging to gulp it
And said I was ready but not really keen
To have my lollipop licked by a queen

So I turned in attention to my knickerless goth
Who astride a fiend was dripping in froth
For around her stood six vibrant kong
That were sucking wang and banging thong

As I gazed upon this rampant flock
That now were into ultra-shock
I fancied the bar for my peace of mind
But they were at it on there from front and behind

So now the moral of my tale
Which is there isn't we're all up for sale
This is for those who love a jolly old romp
With circumstance and plenty of pomp

eclipsed

Salvador Dalí + Frederico García Lorca

The eloquence of the screaming - PATRICK JONES

(...)

between the billboard masturbation
across highways of metallic isolation
there
there lives the deafening screaming of you me us
wiping out the diseased pages of apathy
that bleed our eloquence
with words of amnesia
that forgets the feeling
that chokes our resistance
and
here
there rises the blood of the trees
the blue of the dolphins
the spine of the mountains
the tongues of the tied
arise
arise
a hate eloquence and destroy the death dreaming
and
out there
in there
somewhere
is where
here
there
i desire to speak;
somewhere without limits and fences
sometime without tenses
i
desire
to speak

to


speak: