U Will Work Your Tits Off

What the fuck is it that you DO take seriously.

Work. Cocksucking work.

I told you. I told you, photography would be work.

That you would never learn it all.

You did not believe me.

You would see the world through the viewfinder of your second selves.

And then, you traveled it.

I told you. When you leave me, you’ll go to places you were never aware of, you’ll take the photos, you’ll send them to some grumpy old editor, or you’ll use film, and biting your lower lip, you’ll sweat over all the rolls of it, exposed not unlike you, exposed, vulnerable, feel it, boy, and understand from the carrying of your camera, that life itself, the midnight waterdrops delayed through dangerous ends, that will out the sorrows from the madness whose smiling cheeryface lights the lights fantastic for the blessed malcontent.

That would be you.

I want a studio.

Well, good for you. So do I.

They would hang us. A studio will pin you down to the kingdom of the Little Voices.

I used to have to change my film in dark toilets on the train to Vladivostok.

A luscious wound of snakes. An elderly lady with a vroombroom I think she made by hand with straw, came by every ten minutes to spy on you, and sweep the train again and again, who is this gnarled creature from an aggravated Gnarledville.

Voka and the window.

You in the bunk with books.

Russia is tedious until it becomes imperial as soon all the old women with their brooms and dust and potatoes and vodka and vodka salute worth two of those. The strength of men. Tigers of the trains.

I tried photographing her in secret.

The woman is a plague of grief.

And you would be there with your camera as her point of death sucked it all out of her mouth in a plague of gravity if only you could capture it on film because anything less than that was fucking treason.

Her train. Her way.

It occurred to me that this is why I was in Russia.

With you and your magazines.

I told you it would not be easy. I told you that photography was sweat. I don’t care what kind of a fucking camera you might have, I want a Go Pro so I can post them to a clearer wall of disrepute.

Use tape, Tapeworm.

There are magazines that still owe me fucking money. Fucking Jesus Christ.

Tigers on the train to Vladivostok whose bars and breath sink downward as if to die.

I would not pose for you naked because I hate my body. If that old gnarlylocks Russian Zombie Great-Grandma from the even greater grave, a creature with authority finds anyone naked, she smashes a bottle of vodka, there is always one within easy reach in Russia, on the floor as if by default her next move would be her broom to your head. Plain tale. Bottom of the deep.

Myself and death’s pale sky. The strength of Caesar and his horses.

My tongue in your mouth and the photographs. Taped inside my throat of thrush and vodka and Russian cigarettes and cock and asshole and a truant disposition. The photos of your dreams and graces to your grave.

I told you.

I told you about the failures and the darkness of a tirade and I told you would wish you had never taken that train to where the restless bars of Vladivvostok whose haggard witchcrafts were just a pair of reddened hands whose work was never done.