Consummation of Grief by Bukowski

I even hear the mountains 
the way they laugh 
up and down their blue sides 
and down in the water 
the fish cry 
and the water 
is their tears. 
I listen to the water 
on nights I drink away 
and the sadness becomes so great 
I hear it in my clock 
it becomes knobs upon my dresser 
it becomes paper on the floor 
it becomes a shoehorn 
a laundry ticket 
it becomes 
cigarette smoke 
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . . 
it matters little 
very little love is not so bad 
or very little life 
what counts 
is waiting on walls 
I was born for this 
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

The Jesus and Mary Chain, Sometimes Always (feat Hope Sandoval)

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Tametomo Rescued by Tengu sent by Sanuki-in, 1850

Stephen Magsig, City Lights #40

Birgitta Lund, The Garden #23, 2013

Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, National Museum of Natural History, Paris

Slint, Don, Aman

Don stepped outside
It felt good to be alone
He wished he was drunk
He thought about something he said
And how stupid it had sounded
He should forget about it
He decided to piss, but he couldn't
(A plane passes silently overhead)

The streetlights, and the buds on the trees, in the night, were still

It finally came, he took a deep breath
It made him feel strong, and determined
To go back inside

The light
Their backs
The conversations
The couples, romancing, so natural
His friends stare
With eyes like the heads of nails
The others
Glances
With amusement
With evasion
With contempt
So distant
With malice
For being a sty in their engagement
Like swimming underwater in the darkness
Like walking through an empty house
Speaking to an imaginary audience
 
And being watched from outside by
Someone without a key
He could not dance to anything
Don left
And drove
And howled
And laughed
At himself
He felt he knew what that was

Don woke up
And looked at the night before
He knew what he had to do
He was responsible
In the mirror
He saw his friend

A Man Said to the Universe by Stephen Crane

A man said to the universe: 
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe, 
“The fact has not created in me 
A sense of obligation.”

Man Ray, La Priere, 1930

Carl Theodor Reiffenstein, Frankfurt, Christmas Market at the Cathedral, 1862

Charles Blackman, Girl with Flowers, 1960

Tanja Tiziana

Jacques Loysel, La Grande Névrose, 1896

Jacques Loysel, La Grande Névrose, 1896

Herbert List, Grotesque Figure, Park of Palazzo Orsini, Bomarzo, Italy, 1952

Vivian Maier

75 Dollar Bill, I'm Not Trying to Wake Up

Brassaï, Grand Central Station, New York City, 1957

Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project, 2004

Nicholas Roerich, Drops of Life, 1924