Blood on the Leaves

Talk to me about who you were, who you’ve become.  Let’s go deep very quickly. Pinpoint the inaccuracies. It’s hard to make beauty. There must have been moments:

God, Sex and alcohol

People can get lost in all those things.  The community of Gemini watching the throne; perpetually in faux awe.  People don’t make the most of their lives – rushes of bombast and vulnerability.

Rock n roll and rap mute my voice.

Hurricane Katrina would have plenty to say. Sonic paintings. Completely destroy the landscape, like a prodigy – George Condo or Nick Knight or Takashi Murakami. But, I am the first me.  It’s hard to make beauty.

Black Skinhead, Gold Digger

I don’t think most people are comfortable with their own dreams. I’m trying to give people a little bit of context to the possibilities. But when we talk about love, I don’t have an answer.

Just enough religion, a half cup of alcohol,

a lot of sex

Twelve years a slave, Jesus walks before I’d even finished the second verse. He went to Europe, he went to Africa, he went to Mecca, and then when he came back to America, he stormed the stage.


Amanda Faye, 2015

Remixed work:

Interview with Kanye West, by Kanye West & Steve McQueen

Separation in the Evening

Lament with me.
Shuttling through time,
I have forgotten the word,
a red cluster,
a stream of gold honey.

O fields, O sky,
when the light of day fades,
depriving me of sea,
place midnight in the care of my hands.

Howie Good, 2015

Remixed Work:
Index titles of Modern Russian Poetry,
edited and translated by Olga Andreyev Clark and Rose Styron

October

looms dimly in the background,
like a hammer and chisel in arthritic fingers,
Rodin, old, goatish, nearly blind,
wearing a white summer suit and dark glasses,
a cigarette dangling from his lips,
while a young Russian-born French lady
strolls into the same time frame
gathering apples and winter pears

Howie Good, 2015

Remixed work:

Rare 1915 Films Show Rodin, Monet, Renoir, and Degas in Their Twilight Years,
by Allison Meier (Hyperallergic)

[My Life Fades, My Vision Dims]

My life fades, my vision dims.
Said the man to the dog.
Beauty is so boring.
Assimilation turns us all into friends.
I like being a sexual fantasy.
Actually I’m a very light sweater.
The sensations derive from the idea.
At night, I think of my piano in its ocean grave, and sometimes of myself floating above it.
And that’s not exceptional, that’s usual.

Make these your primary action items.
Put the stiletto to the metal.
A body is not just a collection of organs, but a place onto which culture inscribes itself.
I didn’t really taste the urine.

John Lowther, 2015

Algorithmic approach:
Text Analytics

Remixed works:
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, by George Miller
Wilfred (episode: Compassion)
Star Trek: First Contact
I like being a sexual fantasy (Facebook Page)
Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Social Justice, by John Stoltenberg
The Piano, by Jane Campion
The Asphalt Jungle, by John Huston
Fight Club, by David Fincher
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Please Select Your Gender, by Patricia Gherovici
Young Doctors in Love, by Garry Marshall

[You are an Epidemic]

You are an epidemic.
I replied with a smile.
Do you believe in prayer.
I thought there’d be Elvis.
If you’re Tarzan, she’s game.
Failure’s like so hot right now.
She has a very low pitched voice.
Stop hoarding weird shit on napkins.
Maybe you think this is a terrible idea.
The last refuge of the loser is to not be wrong.
Without comparison everything loses its value.
My cousin’s best friend is gay, so, I totally get it.
What makes you think I’m not interested in a good fuck.
It’s like saying “I hate you” without all the mean words.

John Lowther, 2015

Algorithmic approach:
Text Analytics

Remixed works:
All About My Mother, by Pedro Almodóvar
Being Human
Built for Show, by Nate Green
Lazz tumblr post 12.30.11
The Good Wife (episode: Net Worth)
Stuff Cis People Say To Trans People, by TransFixNorcal

The Pipe Floating
in its Imagistic Heaven

by
Florence Foucault

There are two pipes. Or,
rather, two drawings of
the same pipe which are
meant both to please others
& ourselves, & to make
others pleased with us.

Do not say there is no heart
in the work here—its basis is
the human heart. The sorcery
lies in an operation rendered
invisible by the simplicity
of its result—to make

the pipe new, but floating in
a natural silence where
attention to the small details
extends it more than
it illustrates it or fills the
void. To make it legend.

Mark Young, 2015

Remixed works:
This Is Not a Pipe,
by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette,
by Florence Hartley

Awakening

I stood isolated,
u     n     r     e     e     l     i     n     g
in the summer of your love;

lost my will and reason,
tongue stuck in my jaw –
a mind with all its lights
put out. I have lived

like a foot, standing
and fallen. Vaguely,

life leaks away in my arms.
I hold your crooked heart,
lifeless in appearance, only
half-meaning to awaken.

Shloka Shankar, 2015

Remixed works:
The Old Playhouse, by Kamala Das
Daddy, by Sylvia Plath
Spring and All, by William Carlos Williams
Conversation, by Elizabeth Bishop
A Noiseless Patient Spider, by Walt Whitman
As I Walked Out One Evening, by W. H. Auden