Items by Levari
The Night Book
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3/06
Posted: May 7, 2008, 4:07 am by Levari
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When My Desk Got Away From Me...
Posted: May 5, 2008, 4:43 am by Levari
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When My Desk Got Away From Me..., originally uploaded by levari. -
Brattleboro Exchange
Posted: May 1, 2008, 4:44 am by Levari
You had dreams
but they slipped away
so quietly
that we failed to notice
until we had stacked
them up in boxes.
Standing now,
years later,
along these tracks,
sun beaming down,
through the thin, blue air,
black birds overhead,
two of them,
slicing south
through the
north wind,
then landing on the
flashing crossing light
to pick and clean each other's
wings.
The train pulls in.
The birds scatter.
I board for you
to take us further.
Sitting with my back facing front,
wheels churning,
rust stained snow,
past lakes outlined in white,
past abandoned houses,
and houses that should be,
and all New England's playgrounds
buried in the ancient ice;
where have you been,
where once was your home?
What am I looking for?
Where you have been,
where once was your home.
Always following your tracks,
that is all I ever did,
Waiting for our eyes
to whisper to me:
where you have gone,
where once was our home?
A long time ago
we,
the deepest sleep beneath,
this always onwards,
though we only ever
sit facing backwards,
always will be my way home,
you.
~Burlington, VM to Amherst, MA - 2/96 -
Portrait of My Father - 3/08
Posted: April 29, 2008, 3:56 am by Levari
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Portrait of My Father - 3/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Fate
Posted: April 26, 2008, 5:24 am by Levari
"When the Gods wish to punish you, they answer your prayers..."
~African Proverb née Isak Dineson (attributed) -
San Gabriel Foothills - January, 2004
Posted: April 25, 2008, 2:44 pm by Levari
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San Gabriel Foothills - January, 2004, originally uploaded by levari. -
Matisse - The Piano Lesson
Posted: April 23, 2008, 1:53 am by Levari
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Matisse - The Piano Lesson, originally uploaded by levari.My favorite painting...ever.
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The Wind Storm - 3/08
Posted: April 22, 2008, 4:23 am by Levari
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The Wind Storm - 3/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Poet Laureate of The Blogosphere 2008
Posted: April 21, 2008, 6:04 pm by Levari
The good people over at Blogging Poet were kind enough to nominate me for the Poet Laureate of the Internet award they give out every year. I'm very honored, however I can only say this:
PLEASE DON'T VOTE FOR ME.
There are so many other poets, men and women who live, die and eat poetry every day as teachers, as writers, as readers and they are far more deserving of this award then I could ever be. The past winners, Ron Silliman, Jilly Dybka and Amy King are poets in the finest and realest sense of the word who have devoted their life to the art and the craft of poetry, and all that this devotion means. They live it every day.
Fortunately, I do many, many things for work and pleasure, and I've been able to make a living as a film writer for the last couple years. I can't tell you how grateful I am that I have been lucky enough to do this. When I was younger, no, but as I get older I see how truly rare it is to be able to work in a craft whose possibilities, given the right circumstances, are endless. Film is, in many ways, the true love of my life. Perhaps many movies now are not what I wish them to be, but as long as the possibility exists for me to help in creating the ones I've dreamed since I was a child - sound, vision, drama, comedy, and, yes, poetry - no matter what form the movie may take, then I'm in as long as someone will keep me around.
In any case, the films that I write, the photographs I take, the poems that I scribble down here are merely pieces of a whole. This place is my living notebook, not dedicated to any one art or craft, but whatever is available to me in the moment, like a kid who scribbles in his journal late at night when he's supposed to be sleeping. That's all this is and all, really, I've ever been, that kid, flashlight on, scribbling away beneath his covers because he can't sleep.
Hopefully the desire to share, to communicate in these ways through this medium for all to visit or discard as they see fit, keeps me honest, real and centered so I never lose sight of why I wanted to be an artist to begin with.
So, please, vote for one of the other candidates, they are fine poets and far more deserving of this award.
If you're interested you can check them out here:
bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/ category/poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere
I'd post as a hyperlink, but I don't even know how to post hyperlinks.
-Levari -
The Golden Gun
Posted: April 20, 2008, 6:51 am by Levari
"Some people's photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that's fine. But that's not why I do them. I'm a gun for hire."
~Helmut Newton -
The Neo Gilded Age - Biltmore Hotel - 3/08
Posted: April 17, 2008, 8:41 am by Levari
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The Neo Gilded Age - Biltmore Hotel - 3/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Versailles
Posted: April 16, 2008, 3:57 am by Levari
Waking mind refusing to let its guard down.
Clenched body lying here, following its own orders.
All the things you did not do today.
All the gestures thought about but never made.
All the whispers you thought you heard,
but could never quite make out.
Dreams of untwisted lands twisted.
Then the real desires come
as if they were never lost
and never could be:
family,
life into old age,
the forest after rain...
grasstreesabookahouseawarmbedmygrandfatherwrappedinaredwoolblanketfishingtheriverandunhookingthesunniesformetothrowbackin...
Finally, the sun peaks up
and through the curtains
to see if I'm all right.
Then it tells me:
You are,
so go to sleep now.
Hollywood - 1/07 -
Tera - 10/07 -The Short Stop, Silverlake
Posted: April 15, 2008, 4:57 pm by Levari
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Tera - 10/07, originally uploaded by levari. -
These Days
Posted: April 13, 2008, 10:41 pm by Levari
"Both in and out of
the game, and
watching and wondering
at it..."
~Walt Whitman -
Both in and out ofthe game, ...
Posted: April 13, 2008, 10:41 pm by Levari
Both in and out of
the game, and
watching and wondering
at it -
The Sun Bathers - 3/08
Posted: April 10, 2008, 2:19 am by Levari
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The Sun Bathers - 3/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
The Battle
Posted: April 9, 2008, 3:55 am by Levari
my conscious wants the vegetarians to conquer the world
(for once.)
my subconscious only wants a bloody piece of raw meat;
most of the time it's all reversed
(...to be continued...)
Philadelphia, PA - 2/08 -
"Do you know Rubek, the sculptor?Dead ...
Posted: April 8, 2008, 5:45 am by Levari
"Do you know Rubek, the sculptor?
Dead now. In an avalanche with only his model.
He did two or three things that were pretty good, in marble...
He could have been great, it's a pity.
You get stuck inside what you are searching for:
possession...possession...possession...
They're all after a possession.
They don't know it's impossible.
Giving up everything is frightful."
~Edouard Frenhofer -
Surveillance - 2/08
Posted: April 7, 2008, 5:35 am by Levari
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Surveillance - 2/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
The Greatest Poem Ever Transcribed
Posted: April 5, 2008, 3:59 am by Levari
"It nearly cancels my fear of death, my dearest said,
...to rot in the earth
is a loathsome end, but to roar up in flame---besides, I
am used to it,
I have flamed with love or fury so often in my life,
no wonder my body is tired, no wonder it is dying.
We had great joy of my body. Scatter the ashes."
~Robinson Jeffers -
The Passion 1/15/08
Posted: April 4, 2008, 7:01 am by Levari
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The Passion 1/15/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
First Page
Posted: April 3, 2008, 11:02 pm by Levari
In this moment
along the beheaded
path of time
so begins
the book
of your life
whose words you
will conjure
without
asking permission,
and
without
ever learning the rules.
You will make them up
while turning
these coiled,
cocked,
ruined pages
and transcribe into them
the infinite whiteness
of the desperate night,
and this morning's
mourning
that tiptoes
between the
seconds
of you.
~New York - 9/19/01 -
The Valet - 2/08
Posted: April 1, 2008, 6:25 am by Levari
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Valet - 2/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Meet The Press
Posted: March 31, 2008, 5:30 am by Levari
To maintain theories of renovating the human race through systems...is about the same thing as to maintain that man grows milder with civilization. Logically, perhaps, this is so; yet he is so prone to Systems and abstract deductions that he is forever ready to mutilate the truth, to be blind to what he sees or deaf to what he hears, so long as he can succeed in vindicating his logic...civilization develops in man nothing but an added capacity to receive impressions-that is all. And the growth of that capacity increases his tendency to seek pleasure in spilling blood. You may have noticed that some of the most enthusiastic blood-letters are almost always the most "civilized" of people.
~Nietzche
"Western Civilization? Yes, I think that would be a good idea."
~Ghandi
"You have to be something of a butchering murderer to be a politician."
~Henry Miller -
Golden Bars
Posted: March 28, 2008, 6:43 pm by Levari
What were you always waiting for?
All this "getting through..."
What are you waiting for?
All this so-called knowledge
before you begin.
One last book,
one last sentence,
one last word,
one last film,
one last theory,
one last conversation
that will finally end all this,
let it begin.
One last piece that will finally
allow you to say
goodbye,
goodnight,
I'm selling everything off,
I'm burning everything down,
going straight out of business,
and it's about time.
Maybe stand on you own,
speak your own,
hear your own
just this once.
And just when you believe
there's nothing left,
and
it is finally time to begin
there is always one more...
One more question,
one more curiosity,
one more mistake,
one more experience,
one more overgrown path
stretching before you.
So you take the step,
start chopping away,
dive in,
believing this is the last
and afterwards
life will begin,
you always promise this.
Los Angeles - 4/26/06 -
The Dance - 1/08
Posted: March 24, 2008, 4:18 am by Levari
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The Dance - 1/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Lady in Blue - 8/05
Posted: March 19, 2008, 6:31 am by Levari
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Lady in Blue - 8/05, originally uploaded by levari. -
14:12
Posted: March 17, 2008, 2:54 am by Levari
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La Brea, Los Angeles - dawn
Posted: March 14, 2008, 5:27 am by Levari
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La Brea, Los Angeles - 4:14 am, originally uploaded by levari. -
"So much in writing depends on the ...
Posted: March 13, 2008, 7:32 am by Levari
"So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconsciousness continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk; and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked on a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends."
~Grahm Greene -
fragments for a song never sung
Posted: March 12, 2008, 5:00 pm by Levari
up in flames
we're up in flames
no pain
we're up in flames.
lost the game
no one to blame
numb the pain
our method
by any means.
up in flames
we always go
up in flames
so take your picture
have a ball
it really doesn't matter at all,
you and me
we just went up in flames
11/06
with no shame -
cinema=JLG=cinema
Posted: March 10, 2008, 6:23 am by Levari
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, originally uploaded by levari."First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we are entering the age of the ass!"
~Jean-Luc Godard
Pierrot Le Fou -
Bus Stop, Echo Park - 3/5/08
Posted: March 7, 2008, 8:43 pm by Levari
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Bus Stop, Echo Park - 3/5/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Last Words
Posted: March 6, 2008, 3:45 am by Levari
"Do not fill your life with gaps, but fill your gaps with life."
~Paul Bowles -
Poets and Pornographers
Posted: March 4, 2008, 9:58 pm by Levari
The poets and the pornographers
meet in the same place
every night
after the city has emptied out.
Not the tourists
nor the police
can tell the
poets and pornographers
apart.
In fact,
the poets and pornographers
can barely tell
each other apart,
let alone notice
the absurdity
of the situations
that has brought them to this
state
of comraderie.
The pornographers
provide the cognac,
the poets bring
the cigars;
it's been like this for
longer than either
can remember.
Anything that happens
between the hours
of midnight and dawn
has no
precedent
and is decided on
a case by case
basis.
The poets and the pornographers
laugh at each other's
foibles, ticks, indiosynchrocies;
they admire the same women and men;
they mix freely,
judge each other solely
on moral grounds,
and enjoy the missing
hollows of each;
sometimes they even
crawl in.
The poets and the pornographers
often pair up, make love,
spend days, weeks, even years
only
to split apart and recombine
without wisdom or madness;
it is only the pornographers
that truly lament
the passing of time
while the poets
invite gray hair
and wrinkled skin.
The poets and pornographers
repeat, repeat, repeat
all the same mistakes
over and over again
proudly.
And often,
the poets and pornographers
cannot tell
who is who,
what is what,
where they were last year,
or even this morning.
(They switch sides all the time.)
The poets and pornographers
keep their own secrets,
agree to no memory,
fight each other to the death,
laugh at the rotting body's nakedness,
weep at the rising sun,
think everything of traffic and rain,
and meet in the same place
at the same time
each and every night,
but I'll never tell you
where this is.
Korea Town - Los Angeles 3/31/06 -
Morning Correspondance
Posted: March 2, 2008, 9:03 pm by Levari
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Morning Correspondance, originally uploaded by levari.Morning Lee,
Are you working away on that screenplay that has this Friday's deadline?
I am happy to tell you I am feeling much better today...
Two nights ago I had quite a horrible dream that today I have come to understand has everything to do with what I have been going through, may I tell you about it?
In this dream, I am 4 months pregnant, and I am starting to have heavy contractions. I am in one of the country hospitals where I was shooting the births during my Vietnam trip a couple months ago. Anyway, in this hospital the nurses tell me that I am in labor. I am so confused and scared and am wondering how I could possibly have the baby at such an early stage, and I am terrified that once the baby comes out it is going to be too premature to live.
Then I suddenly find myself roaming on this mountain road high above the hospital, in ridiculous and horrifyng labor pain, wondering how my baby is going to be delivered. I know that I am going to have a baby with no one helping me and it is going to be in this mountain wildnerness. Aside from the pain, I feel this endless sadness, a sadness I've never felt anything quite like, simply that there is no one to help.
So, I think what this dream signifies is my fear that whoever I love will end up leaving me stranded and alone. The pregnancy represents all my pains and emotions that I have to carry with me about this. Having no one there to help, this is my fear becoming real. Being back in the Vietnamese hospital and mountainside where I took those photographs showed me that when I get sad, usually the only place in my mind I can find peace is to dream about the mountains of Sapa; this is where the tribal regions of Vietnam exist.
I don't know why but about eight years ago, when in
one of my darkest stages, I began to have two images of myself that morph into and out of each other quite at random:
For the first 5 years of the the 8, this image is of me sitting in a small, completely dark room with a small window and there is a tiny speck of light peeking through, but that is it, nothing else but darkness.
Then for the next 2 years, I see an image of myself as an older
lady, roaming around alone in strange, foreign lands, alone,
but finally in peace with myself....
Lee, these dreams, these images...it's always me ALONE. I am starting to wonder if it's also because I do believe that we
are all born alone and too will die alone? I wonder if I believe this, or is it just a phrase that has no more truth than any other philosophy.
Just thoughts...
Hope you are well.
And, oh, dinner on friday, you will be done with your
deadline and good to go right?
k.
---------------------------------
reprinted with the permission of Katie Luong -
Evening
Posted: March 1, 2008, 9:02 pm by Levari
"They grope before them like blind people and find each other as they would a door. Almost like children that dread the night, they press close into each other. And yet they are not afraid. There is nothing that might be against them: no yesterday, no tomorrow; for time is shattered. And they flower from its ruins...
"They will give each other a hundred new names and take them all off again."
~Rilke -
Atlantic City - 2/20/08
Posted: February 27, 2008, 5:35 pm by Levari
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Atlantic City - New Jersey - 2/20/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
art 1
Posted: February 25, 2008, 2:47 am by Levari
everyone's watching everyone else.
jealousy has eyes, especially at dawn
(it gets so you can't notice anymore.)
hunger's started living outside the stomach,
but the townspeople won't say where.
last night someone showed you
how the planets continue on
in their repeating orbits
not because of some subservience
to the so-called laws of gravity,
but simply out of fear
(just don't ask him how he knows this.)
~Saltine Sea - 11/00 -
Las Vegas - 2/12/08
Posted: February 21, 2008, 6:43 pm by Levari
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Las Vegas - 2/12/08, originally uploaded by levari. -
Ocean
Posted: February 20, 2008, 6:39 pm by Levari
transition as
tradition,
eternal
return,
togetherness
separeteness
aloneness
bridge-less.
forever us
less
than it is
and has always
been,
except
for your now
becoming
mine,
then breaking
without shattering,
passing onwards,
through:
painless.
nature, as it is called, has
never been less
than clear with us.
~Longport, New Jersey - 2/18/08 -
Father and Son
Posted: February 19, 2008, 5:00 am by Levari
"All I want is to enter my house justified."
~"Ride The High Country" as quoted by Mr. Peckinpah to his son Sam. -
"I don't use the accident. I deny ...
Posted: February 17, 2008, 4:16 am by Levari
"I don't use the accident. I deny the very idea of an accident."
~Jackson Pollock -
The Concert Goer
Posted: February 13, 2008, 6:31 am by Levari
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The Concert, originally uploaded by levari. -
Night
Posted: February 12, 2008, 7:33 am by Levari
"It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing."
~Brian W. Aldiss -
To The Climbing Tree
Posted: February 10, 2008, 10:03 pm by Levari
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To The Climbing Tree, originally uploaded by levari.Your simple, sturdy branches
between scratched legs and
bare feet once transformed
a simple boy into
a king,
an emperor,
a conqueror
of jungles, oceans, deserts, mountains -
so many that I believed
your powers were endless,
and were mine.
Just a boy, we are always being reminded.
Just a boy, we are constantly being told.
But you let me have it, for as long as I wanted,
in whatever way I could imagine,
as long as I stayed within your budding grasp.
Now
I have come back to this backyard,
these woods, and I am
so tired from living with the brutality of the decorated world, though I know it is my place, and I must return.
You stand here dying, my old friend,
on this February morning,
in snow falling too soft and meaningless
to ever stick.
You stand here dying, you son of a bitch,
and it's only a matter of time now
as I sit
leaning my back against
your hollowed trunk
wishing you
would now
lean against me,
that I could take the weight,
any weight,
let alone yours.
If I could, maybe for a moment,
we could make each other young,
strong and fearless against all comers,
while laughing at these seasons,
the way we once did
together.
Dresher, PA - 2/9/08 -
After The Performance - 1/22/08
Posted: February 8, 2008, 8:20 pm by Levari
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After The Performance, originally uploaded by levari. -
Flower Pots
Posted: February 6, 2008, 1:55 am by Levari
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Flower Pots, originally uploaded by levari. -
Crazy Horse
Posted: February 5, 2008, 4:52 am by Levari
"He would have preferred, I imagine, simply to avoid them and go on living a traditional Sioux life, raiding, hunting dreaming; but the option of avoidance was not available to him for very long. The whites were too many, and they weren't satisfied with the Holy Road. They weren't satisfied with any one place or one road; they wanted everything. So he fought: on the Bozeman, on the Powder River, on the Yellowstone, in the Black Hills, on the Tongue and the Rosebud, at the Little Big Horn...He didn't win the war. What is hard to judge is how long he really expected to, if he ever expected to. Despite much urging, and unlike Red Cloud, Spotted Tail and Sitting Bull, he never went east, never saw the whites in their seats of power; had he done so, he might have drawn the same conclusion they drew. But he went his own way, travelled his own road, until it dead-ended at Fort Robinson in September of 1877. Looked back on from the perspective of one hundred and twenty years, Crazy Horse's doom seems Sophoclean, inevitable, but perhaps all dooms do, once the roads taken and not taken deliver the character to his fate."
-Larry McMurtry "Crazy Horse" -
Oliveira Street - Los Angeles - 11/07
Posted: February 3, 2008, 8:24 am by Levari
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Oliveira Street - Los Angeles - 11/07, originally uploaded by levari. -
"You see, in this world there is ...
Posted: February 2, 2008, 9:25 am by Levari
"You see, in this world there is one tragic thing: everyone has his reasons."
-Jean Renoir -
Kitai (Protection)
Posted: January 29, 2008, 7:08 pm by Levari
-
"Nothing matters except pleasure--which is the opposite ...
Posted: January 26, 2008, 6:06 am by Levari
"Nothing matters except pleasure--which is the opposite of happiness; it's the tragic part, I expect."
-Lawrence Durrell -
Boy
Posted: January 24, 2008, 6:27 pm by Levari
If you look closely
you can see him disappearing
(few ever do for
beauty does
seem to have
that effect.)
He does not mind, though,
not like he thought he would.
He does not mind,
it does not hurt his pride
to be the center of attention
in this way.
He does not mind,
he has watched others
and studied well...
-some with grace
-some without
-some he loved
-some he pretended to love (for reasons he still cannot quite understand)
-some he did not even try
With all this experience
he did not mind,
and pretended to disappear
with nothing more
than his own signature.
He did not mind,
it was easy
even without a working pen.
He did not mind,
he would not return
this much he knew
was right now.
No promise,
no seed planted,
Just his body,
Just his eyes,
and the impermananet edges
of them seperating him
out.
Just his position
at the center of the universe,
that small and meaningless stage,
with his happiness and hatred, finally.
But every once in a while
he does have an urge
he cannot explain:
He wants to tell them all.
He knows he should, could;
He knows now he can say it
without nostalgia,
as the parasites
gather
around his empty shell,
he wants to tell them
how he is finally fearless---
and crumbling.
Los Angeles - 7/28/07 -
Bud - 1/18/07
Posted: January 22, 2008, 6:18 pm by Levari
-
Portrait of Buddy - Los Angeles, 1/18/06
Posted: January 21, 2008, 6:34 pm by Levari
-
Birthday Letters
Posted: January 17, 2008, 6:40 pm by Levari
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Birthday Letter, originally uploaded by levari. -
The Realist Manifesto
Posted: January 16, 2008, 6:15 am by Levari
"Language was invented to hide one's thoughts."
-Talleyrand -
You
Posted: January 14, 2008, 3:47 am by Levari
I'm in the clutches of the living
even if it will never be
quite right.
So let the daylight have its formality
as long as you become my myth
tonight.
9/21/07 -
figure - Winter, 06
Posted: January 10, 2008, 11:10 pm by Levari
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figure painting - Winter, 06, originally uploaded by levari. -
"The point is, art is something subversive. ...
Posted: January 7, 2008, 12:05 am by Levari
"The point is, art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things one must steal, to be used against the established order. Once art becomes official and open to everyone, then it becomes academic. If art is ever given the keys to the city, it will be because it's been so watered down, rendered so impotent, that it's not worth fighting for...So this business about art defending or freeing culture is absurd. One can defend culture in a broad, general sense, if you mean by the heritage of the past, but the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given."
-Picasso -
To The Notebooks (17 Years)
Posted: January 4, 2008, 5:34 am by Levari
meaningless history,
clouded photography,
attempts at nobility,
natural instinct for idiocy,
tossed off drawings,
the blade of reality,
studied lies,
fumbling towards honesty,
infinite pretense,
the sometimes redeeming gift of creativity,
endless violence,
bottomless delicacy,
the hole,
the ecstasy,
noble cowardice, stupid bravery,
infallible fallibility,
all the enemies,
friends,
loves,
family,
and the only proof of this residency
I've tried to record,
(for some reason
I still can't understand,)
ever so faithfully.
Los Angeles 3/1/07 -
#1
Posted: January 2, 2008, 5:50 am by Levari
-
Plant 12/05
Posted: December 24, 2007, 3:28 am by Levari
-
unexpected poem
Posted: December 22, 2007, 6:14 am by Levari
(for some of us)
"There are
no
frivolous moments
this
time of year."
-Judd Trichter -
Famous Gambler, 2007
Posted: December 21, 2007, 5:27 am by Levari
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Famous Gambler, 2007, originally uploaded by levari. -
Famous Gambler, 1937
Posted: December 20, 2007, 6:43 pm by Levari
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famous gambler, 1937, originally uploaded by levari. -
Profile - 3/07
Posted: December 20, 2007, 5:31 am by Levari
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Profile Of A Girl - 3/07, originally uploaded by levari. -
Metamorphoses
Posted: December 18, 2007, 6:28 am by Levari
...My soul would sing of metamorphoses,
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes.
-Ovid -
Staring At The World Through His Rear View
Posted: December 17, 2007, 3:23 am by Levari
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Staring At The World Through His Rear View, originally uploaded by levari. -
Los Angeles @ 3:13
Posted: December 16, 2007, 4:06 am by Levari
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Los Angeles @ 3:13, originally uploaded by levari."Los Angeles, come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town."
- John Fante, "Ask The Dust" -
Laurel Canyon
Posted: December 16, 2007, 3:08 am by Levari
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Laurel Canyon, originally uploaded by levari."Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town."
- John Fante, "Ask The Dust" -
the subtle, quiet policy of scorched earth
Posted: December 12, 2007, 4:23 am by Levari
Unroll our history and,
yes, it's true:
we have lost much country
in each other,
to each other;
more than can ever be
remembered,
much less written down
(even if old Homer
was still around.)
Slashed and burned the landscape out mercilessly,
ripped the dogs from the porches
and the babies from their cribs
as we marched through,
no regrets/no remorse,
sometimes continue to,
(for this is all animals with our stripes
ever know how to do.)
But somehow,
through all our battered hands
and sutured, unbleachable selves;
through all these useless, no longer fitting feet
we have left in our wake
we have yet to surrender
an eye lash, a toe nail,
a bone, or a dawn
to any of them.
Boulder, Colorado - 11/07 -
Withdraw - 1994
Posted: December 7, 2007, 7:21 am by Levari
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Withdraw - 1994, originally uploaded by levari. -
Girl At The Counter
Posted: November 29, 2007, 2:30 am by Levari
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Girl At The Counter, originally uploaded by levari. -
Kitai 2/07
Posted: November 26, 2007, 4:08 am by Levari
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Kitai 2/07, originally uploaded by levari. -
"For while the tale of how we ...
Posted: November 19, 2007, 8:43 am by Levari
"For while the tale of how we suffer, and how are delighted, and how we may survive, even triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."
-James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues" -
Percy and Max
Posted: November 19, 2007, 4:02 am by Levari
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Percy and Max, originally uploaded by levari. -
Kyle
Posted: November 13, 2007, 1:16 am by Levari
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The Clock Was Red
Posted: November 12, 2007, 7:37 pm by Levari
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The Clock Was Red, originally uploaded by levari. -
my tribe
Posted: November 10, 2007, 7:56 am by Levari
megan's in the bedroom
drawing and watching TV,
brian's in the garage
dreaming impossibility.
junk Man's in his bedroom
re-painting again,
jeff's banging on the backdoor
just trying to get in.
danny's on the telephone
trying to calm Jake,
adam's in the bathroom
thinking about the money he could make.
liz went to New York City
and she ain't ever coming home,
now kyrsten drives around L.A.
singing to herself alone.
judd's in his apartment
noon on Tuesday
trying not to think.
lee's lying on the couch -
he hasn't moved in five hours -
drawing humming birds
in invisible ink.
max is with Natasha
trying to make love last.
marko's with everyone
high again
floats on past.
mazzi's pouring coffee
philosophically,
mike's at the gym
rehabbing his blown out knee.
beau's busy wiping the bar down
watching the world get by,
you wonder who will be the last of us
to call the bet
and
finally say
goodbye
Los Angeles - 8/02 -
Autumn Pages
Posted: November 6, 2007, 9:07 pm by Levari
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Autumn Pages, originally uploaded by levari. -
2 Autumn Pages
Posted: November 6, 2007, 9:02 pm by Levari
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2 Autumn Pages, originally uploaded by levari. -
Pipes' Ping
Posted: November 6, 2007, 4:48 am by Levari
it's supposed to be winter and
i'm officially tired
of all their
grand gestures,
symbolic meetings of solidarity,
rallying cries,
and statement games.
right now
i want the forgotten,
the never noticed,
the pushed aside,
the beetle's wing,
the offscreen,
bob marley's toe,
the surrendered,
and useless shadows
at 4 o'clock.
it's supposed to be winter,
and
my biology's
hammering
for a long overdue hibernation
curled
behind closed doors
with you:
what we
see, feel, smell, taste
and nothing else
for a while;
and down blankets,
and snow,
and windows
translucent
from frost.
tonight i turned the heat on for us,
listened to the pipes' ping
for a while,
pretended
i was waiting for you
somewhere else.
Los Angeles - 2/15/06 -
Envelope After Phone Call
Posted: November 4, 2007, 5:52 pm by Levari
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Envelope After Phone Call, originally uploaded by levari. -
Sounds
Posted: October 30, 2007, 6:37 am by Levari
The pigeons calling to each other from roof to roof.
The Lubavitch children playing secretly behind the dumpsters.
The shattering of bottles across the street at dawn.
The sirens and helicopters and spotlights shining through windows all night long.
The ocean and its waves that somehow don't break.
These the sounds of our routine, sleeping and awake.
I admit that I have little memory for dates, anniversaries, birthdays, or all of those unforgettable moments...
I have no memory but
for the sounds of sounds,
another morning I've been given again,
and somehow you
I found.
Los Angeles - 1/22/07 -
The Double Flame
Posted: October 26, 2007, 11:17 pm by Levari
"The dangerous nature of poetry is inherent in its composition and is a constant in all periods and in all poets. There is always a schism between social and poetic expression: poetry is the "other" voice. The voice beneath."
-Octavio Paz -
The Tripping
Posted: October 22, 2007, 11:58 pm by Levari
Driving...
No, her driving
and him in the back seat
trying to make sense of the map
on that one lane road
just as it is starting to rain...
This is the journey,
the journey they had both been anticipating
for weeks,
waiting for without ever admitting it
to each other.
I'm talking about how
it all comes down to
him wanting some strawberries
from the bag in the backseat
and from there, well, it just goes...
First the innuendo, then the accusations
then the stories of each of their
mutual abandonments,
finally, the silence and the fear.
Then her saying she has to use the bathroom,
and him saying there's nowhere to stop,
that they'll just have to push on.
And then,
not able to hold it,
she begins to pee in her pants
while
simultaneously
confessing
EVERYTHING.
Her jeans and the seat
are seeped
in the wetness, but
she just continues confessing.
She will not stop confessing.
Would you please stop confessing, please?!
He doesn't want to know
the list of
names
dates
and exact locations,
only because he can't match her
sin for sin--
he has nothing to confess to her...
sin for sin--
In their love
he wasn't innocent
only without mystery,
without secrets,
without myth nor shadow
(so much worse.)
This ride
the pavement
the rain
her words
all of it is just happening,
all of it mixing together
and he can't tell anything
apart anymore;
not the road nor the wheels,
not the sky or the ground,
not the rain, nor the air,
not him or her...
And how did a joke about
strawberries turn into this?
He grabs her by the shoulders-
he tells her to look at him,
his face, his eyes, his lips,
to study it
every detail
to study it
hard
because you only
get one chance
to try and tell the difference
between each other.
He asks her
if she remembers him
if she remembers her.
She stares back as the rain
blasts against the wind shields,
the white streaks
of the headlights
of the pounding
semi trucks
coming right at them...
You stare at me and begin to move
your lips, but I can't hear what you're saying
between our heaving chest.
I can feel you breathing through my skin
again.
L.A. - 6/10/06 -
The Big Hold Out
Posted: October 19, 2007, 9:44 pm by Levari
How long can
all this speculation
go on,
all the maybes,
the perhapses,
the we'll just wait and see(s?)
All the buying,
and the selling,
the negotiations
for some supposed space
like it's our most precious
commodity.
How long can we stare
at computer screens
always waiting,
always on,
always telling us
who we are
or who we are
supposed to be?
How long can we stand
to watch each other
plastered to our seats
thinking we're moving
closer
when we're only drifting
farther away?
How long until it feels
like this is ours
and not some interview
you've seen a thousand
times before
on late night TV?
How long until I find you,
the you who can make
this real with joy, pain
and everything in between,
make me finally accept
the transience of me?
How long until we surrender
and let ourselves age and decay,
bloom one last time,
then finally fall away?
Please, can someone, anyone
just tell us
how long until this hold out ends,
and the subways start running
again?
12/27/05 - Brooklyn, NY -
Try
Posted: October 16, 2007, 6:20 am by Levari
"Let's be new people."
"What?"
"Let's be new people, completely new people, people who don't know each other and never did. We'll have no past and no future, nothing, it'll be like we just met right now."
"That would be very difficult."
"Why?"
"Because it would mean I've broken into your apartment."
"Stop it, I'm being serious."
"Is this even possible?"
"I don't know. I never tried it with anyone before."
"Neither have I."
"Do you want to try? It'll be like a game. We'll just, just start over."
"I don't know, man. There's a lot of history. It's not like you can just forget..."
"Sure, we can forget. Maybe we could forget. You know, I know I could forget."
"You never remember anything anyway. Ever since I've known you. You can't remember where we went to dinner the last time we saw each other."
"That's not true."
"Then where?"
"Okay, I have a lot going on in my life, I can't remember exactly where or even when, but I remember. I mean, I remember, the gist..."
"The gist?"
"The spirit. The spirit of our last meeting."
"Ah yes, the spirit, that would be hard to forget, wouldn't it?"
"And that's just want I want to do. That's what we should do. Just for a little while."
"A little while? There are many, many spirits to forget, in this case. I think it might take more than a little while."
"I could. I would. You could too."
"It's too easy for someone like you. That's what I don't understand. How can it be so easy for someone like you?"
"Someone like me?"
"Someone so smart and funny...How can you choose to forget, to ignore, not just this, just, everything?"
"It just is. It just is. That's all. That's it. Like a zebra. Like a zebra having stripes. These are just my stripes. It's just the way I am. I'm smart enough not to question it. It's just how I am. How I was made, decorated."
"Look, I admire your stripes, the stripedness of them, but I don't understand them or where they come from and I certainly don't want them hanging up on my wall."
"I should hope not."
"Most people would. Most people would take one look at a girl's stripes like yours and the first thing they'd do is get out their knife and skin you up good. Skin you up so there was nothing left of you underneath, just the stripes on top. Would you like that?"
"It sounds like bliss. Momentary bliss. But bliss. But not you, right?"
"No, not me."
"Why not? Don't think you could catch me?"
"I'm afraid I would."
"You never know. That's why we play this game, right?"
"I'm tired. Must sleep. I'm leaving tomorrow. Early."
"C'mon....Please! Try. For me."
"Okay, what time is it?"
"Ten of twelve."
"Yeah, for like, I don't know, a half hour we'll be strangers, okay. Tabula Raza. And then I have to go to bed."
"It doesn't have to be like that, y'know, so practical all the time. You were always so practical."
"Well, you know me."
"Yeah, I do."
"So how do we do this? How does one, or two, begin to forget?"
"It's amazing, five minutes ago, when I first had the idea, it was perfect, I swear I could have written a dissertation on how two people can disappear completely together, but now, I really don't even know anymore."
"Hey..."
"I assumed there was complicity."
"Complicity?"
"Between you and me. An innate complicity. But there's none, is there?"
"I don't...
"I don't know what I was thinking with you...You don't even know me at all."
"I just don't...
"You dummy. You're so dumb, you know that? All I've ever wanted to do is forget, and all you've ever wanted to do is remember.
"Those are my stripes."
"Well, you can only hang out in between for so long before one or the other breaks."
"So which one of us is it going to be? Who's going to break?"
"Guess we're going to find out."
"I guess so."
"Well, it's about time."
"Would you shutup and turn out the light?"
"Yeah."
Atlanta to Los Angeles -
akhmatova - 1924
Posted: October 13, 2007, 3:21 am by Levari
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akhmatova - 1924, originally uploaded by levari.Alexandrian Society - 6/23/07
The ancient Alexandrian Society every day played a game where in they convinced themselves that they were condemned to death in order to make their every day observations more poignant.
In their minds images appeared in the memory as vivid fragments: Their memories do not proceed in sequence but run after one another in a jolting wave, a stream of images - once forgotten eyes, someone's light blue dress, the voice of a passing stranger - because the concrete fragments carried the perception of imminent death, readers would associate them with important moments in their own lives...
Mikhail Kuzmin - "The Collected Poems of Anna Akhmatova" -
Home
Posted: October 12, 2007, 6:04 pm by Levari
"Keep away from fantasy. Shake off the image..."
-Sam Shepard, "The Tooth of Crime"
Philadelphia -
scraps found in pockets at dawn...
Posted: October 11, 2007, 9:24 pm by Levari
you stare through the window
at the end of the hall -
the bunches of blood roses
against the blue wall...
wake up dead for all you had shouted,
all you will never say;
wake up dead and badly rhyming
day after day.
-------------
phones die
people pry
cats cry
on occasion
even lovers try
we always lie
no one can say why.
(language comes early,
and without any mercy.)
phones pry
people still die
cats always lie
(that's the secret of their strut)
lovers almost always try
again
even after prying through each other's lives.
on occasion - I assume - someone knows why.
(language came early,
my only mercy.)
-Brooklyn, New York -
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Posted: October 11, 2007, 5:31 am by Levari
...is like Berlin Light. -
Hop Scotch
Posted: October 8, 2007, 7:24 am by Levari
Anything you can't walk away from, run away from. -
Tragedies of The The Technological Age - Vol. 7 (What He Said)
Posted: October 5, 2007, 4:01 am by Levari
"These days
Yeah....
You could get away with murder.
It would be easy,
Because
For all our so-called technology
I just as soon figure
Nobody's really watching anyone else
at all.
We think we are, but we're just staring at
a TV show, a football game, a magazine cover
all the while imagining ourselves.
We think we're looking,
but we're just dreaming
our lives away.
That guy over there?
You could kill em' durin' a commercial break
because
we don't even know how to see each other anymore." -
Last
Posted: October 2, 2007, 7:12 am by Levari
Hanging, yellowed notes and epigrams:
scribbled reminders
of meetings and moments,
of pleasures and hedonism.
Quotes by the known
to you (and perhaps me,)
the unknown.
Those carved, fountain lines,
your elegantly restless handwriting;
there were so many words
lining those mirrors and walls
they often reminded me
of leaves falling from trees
as they blew around
that room
in the last autumn breeze.
But more than
ink and paper,
these
were your talismans,
totems in miniature
to protect you
from ever
losing yourself
again;
I will never know if they worked.
Tonight
it's so quiet
on this coast
relentlessly jutting
towards Africa,
and only now,
staring out
at waves
I can never know,
do I finally realize
how little
pleasure and hedonism
there was
for you,
the fading ballerina
of my ocean mind.
Frigillana, Spain - 6/07 -
M.C.M.
Posted: September 28, 2007, 10:55 pm by Levari
The fearless mistakes of tonight,
the shameless facts of tomorrow.
9/26/07 -
from the unwritten history
Posted: September 25, 2007, 9:22 pm by Levari
#113 - silence has killed a lot more people than bombs ever have. -
Visiting Day
Posted: September 24, 2007, 4:12 am by Levari
Don't you know by now
your kind is better at wanting
then you will ever be at having.
This is your gift and your tragedy
that you chose and did not,
your fault alone and
can never be your fault.
(blame the generation before, and the one before that, and the one ad infinitum...)
This, you, is nothing but an animal nature.
But you cannot know this, can you?
Otherwise it would be different,
and for it to be different would mean
that your time is now.
But, no, your time is not now.
Soon enough, yes, but not quite now.
So don't know yet.
Not yet.
No, not quite yet...
Be patient and perhaps there will still be some time left?
No promises.
9/22/07
Blah blah blah
Fish cakes
Alas a fish cake.
Yet more fish cakes
Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.
The end of the fish cakes
