M̶Y̶S̶T̶I̶C̶ ̶A̶N̶I̶M̶A̶L̶S̶ ̶&̶ ̶T̶H̶E̶ ̶K̶I̶N̶G̶ ̶O̶F̶ ̶M̶A̶S̶K̶S̶
NKO
January 2012
Released in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement and protests, Sacred Animals featured a screen-printed and hand-painted Dorli Rainey mask by No Touching Ground (an image of the now famous elder Seattle protester who was arrested by police), screen-printed works on paper by Baso Fibonacci, and free prose style poem/essay about unrest by street artist NKO titled Mystic Animals & the King of Masks.
1.
Here I am, a book as my pillow, staring at nothing. The shuffling of high heels, motors running. A floor full of empty bottles - every one a lover. Empty vessels, broken guitars, failed songs; it’s morning and my voice is missing.
Maybe today I'll stand up and make something of myself, create myself in my own image, own my image, imagine myself.
2.
The streets are alive with voices.
The sidewalks are littered with words.
Lost under a deluge - an impossible number of words and images, I succumb to memory. Histories real and imagined, secrets told and untold, omissions, half-truths and bold-faced lies, fragments, whispers, mumbled messages, phrases masticated by broken teeth and spit out glisten on empty sidewalks.
Every word stillborn from my lips; unformed, imprecise, uncertain. At the boundary of meaning, a Siamese twin struggling to pull apart, the center escapes and all is lost.
I'm left somewhere under a circle of light. A cigarette in my fingers, I watch it disappear in a curl of smoke.
3.
Parties are desperate with their dead balloons. The voices are always confused - like the sound constellations would make if not muffled by the endless difficulty of space.
Outside a dilapidated hotel, a halfway house for artists on their way to anonymous death, a crowd of fresh faced youth stand smiling, smoking cigarettes. Eyes shielded by myriad veils appear as funerary flowers - glowering in shadows like white roses ring a new grave. These people are lost to their images; they are dead stars. Thin leather suspenders, asymmetrical haircuts, stripes; everyone black and tight, trying to mask their exuberance in drunken irony. I'm sobbing; gasping for air. As if I've taken my last breath, I turn away towards the cold night.
4.
The riot inside my chest is two plastic shoes being slapped together, while in another room a man sleeps in front of a television. Outside, a sonnet of trains endlessly mouth airless syllables. The earth vibrates...
It's a perfect crystalline form, this heart of mine. I keep coming back to it, examining it in the light - the refractions of a rose quartz, nothing so hard as a diamond. I keep diamonds in my eyes, falling out of my pockets. At this point every penny is a diamond and I'm so poor I'd rather have a grain of rice.
A diamond is a dollar is a dream. In my dream I'm walking on a field of broken bottles without my shoes. I'm stepping carefully...
My heart is filled up with rice; brimming with seeds and broken glass.
5.
I've cultivated this black heart; waited for it to fill up with despair. Now, I feel the dam breaking, I see it crumbling at the edges, the water trickling out of cracks and fissures. I'm waiting for the levee to bust, flooding cities and washing out the rats and lice, the beggars and bugs and garbage and gold. This despair washes me like a river: even then I won't be clean - I’ve got shit for brains and dirty teeth!
Get me some whiskey to wash out my mouth...
6.
Talking to D____, I realize things are hard. We've all got our own misery; our furniture filled up with empty glasses, love letters, forgotten flattened pennies, useless scissors, dice and boxes within boxes. Occasionally I open a drawer; the smell of lavender and musk. For one moment, so sweet!
7.
Somewhere in these alleys and ashcans is hidden an image of sublime beauty - I sense it, catching glimpses in the periphery, seeing hints of incredible cerulean blue and crimson emerging under flaking paint on abandoned walls. What's the difference, when all this will inevitably disappear? The whole history of art and literature inscribed in book buried in a dead king’s tomb; eyes black, crown stolen. A bottle, a brush, a pile of drawings, a pillow, a painting. A pipe that is not a pipe. A mask removed reveals another mask - underneath it all, we are sacred animals...
We are all aristocrats embarrassed by our solemn sovereignty. It no longer surprises me, the history of the world. It seems inevitable that so many people, eating only potatoes and cabbage, would lash out in fury against the system that gave them such stinking indigestion. All we’re left with is a stomach ache and stained hands...
8.
I liberate my pockets - all the pennies are in the gutter with the wine and garbage. Even the last piece of paper cast aside - is there any greater yearning than an empty pocket?
9.
Another day, sitting outside a cafe, watching the buses rumble by. The sound of a waterfall distorted by concrete. A black coffee. My stomach full of bitterness, my heart full of love. A plastic bag floats awkwardly upward, caught in hidden currents of wind, inscribing an erratic ascension into a flat grey sky.
1.
Here I am, a book as my pillow, staring at nothing. The shuffling of high heels, motors running. A floor full of empty bottles - every one a lover. Empty vessels, broken guitars, failed songs; it’s morning and my voice is missing.
Maybe today I'll stand up and make something of myself, create myself in my own image, own my image, imagine myself.
2.
The streets are alive with voices.
The sidewalks are littered with words.
Lost under a deluge - an impossible number of words and images, I succumb to memory. Histories real and imagined, secrets told and untold, omissions, half-truths and bold-faced lies, fragments, whispers, mumbled messages, phrases masticated by broken teeth and spit out glisten on empty sidewalks.
Every word stillborn from my lips; unformed, imprecise, uncertain. At the boundary of meaning, a Siamese twin struggling to pull apart, the center escapes and all is lost.
I'm left somewhere under a circle of light. A cigarette in my fingers, I watch it disappear in a curl of smoke.
3.
Parties are desperate with their dead balloons. The voices are always confused - like the sound constellations would make if not muffled by the endless difficulty of space.
Outside a dilapidated hotel, a halfway house for artists on their way to anonymous death, a crowd of fresh faced youth stand smiling, smoking cigarettes. Eyes shielded by myriad veils appear as funerary flowers - glowering in shadows like white roses ring a new grave. These people are lost to their images; they are dead stars. Thin leather suspenders, asymmetrical haircuts, stripes; everyone black and tight, trying to mask their exuberance in drunken irony. I'm sobbing; gasping for air. As if I've taken my last breath, I turn away towards the cold night.
4.
The riot inside my chest is two plastic shoes being slapped together, while in another room a man sleeps in front of a television. Outside, a sonnet of trains endlessly mouth airless syllables. The earth vibrates...
It's a perfect crystalline form, this heart of mine. I keep coming back to it, examining it in the light - the refractions of a rose quartz, nothing so hard as a diamond. I keep diamonds in my eyes, falling out of my pockets. At this point every penny is a diamond and I'm so poor I'd rather have a grain of rice.
A diamond is a dollar is a dream. In my dream I'm walking on a field of broken bottles without my shoes. I'm stepping carefully...
My heart is filled up with rice; brimming with seeds and broken glass.
5.
I've cultivated this black heart; waited for it to fill up with despair. Now, I feel the dam breaking, I see it crumbling at the edges, the water trickling out of cracks and fissures. I'm waiting for the levee to bust, flooding cities and washing out the rats and lice, the beggars and bugs and garbage and gold. This despair washes me like a river: even then I won't be clean - I’ve got shit for brains and dirty teeth!
Get me some whiskey to wash out my mouth...
6.
Talking to D____, I realize things are hard. We've all got our own misery; our furniture filled up with empty glasses, love letters, forgotten flattened pennies, useless scissors, dice and boxes within boxes. Occasionally I open a drawer; the smell of lavender and musk. For one moment, so sweet!
7.
Somewhere in these alleys and ashcans is hidden an image of sublime beauty - I sense it, catching glimpses in the periphery, seeing hints of incredible cerulean blue and crimson emerging under flaking paint on abandoned walls. What's the difference, when all this will inevitably disappear? The whole history of art and literature inscribed in book buried in a dead king’s tomb; eyes black, crown stolen. A bottle, a brush, a pile of drawings, a pillow, a painting. A pipe that is not a pipe. A mask removed reveals another mask - underneath it all, we are sacred animals...
We are all aristocrats embarrassed by our solemn sovereignty. It no longer surprises me, the history of the world. It seems inevitable that so many people, eating only potatoes and cabbage, would lash out in fury against the system that gave them such stinking indigestion. All we’re left with is a stomach ache and stained hands...
8.
I liberate my pockets - all the pennies are in the gutter with the wine and garbage. Even the last piece of paper cast aside - is there any greater yearning than an empty pocket?
9.
Another day, sitting outside a cafe, watching the buses rumble by. The sound of a waterfall distorted by concrete. A black coffee. My stomach full of bitterness, my heart full of love. A plastic bag floats awkwardly upward, caught in hidden currents of wind, inscribing an erratic ascension into a flat grey sky.
