AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD

Dear World,

This is my film No Way Home if you want to watch it, it’s $1.50… If you want to buy it it’s $3… Could i let you see it for free? Sure… But shit cost me $15K to make… and that doesn’t include the labor of my friends and family who worked for free… These co-conspirators are named in the credits of the film, i won’t bore you with names you’ve never heard of (but deserve to be known) and that have no bearing on anything since you haven’t yet seen the film… It would only make this post longer and we all know how shorter is better on the internets… But damn, they are an incredibly talented bunch… and i’m blessed to be able to call them friends and doubly blessed to count them as artistic co-conspirators…

photo by Sam Lahoz

i shot it on film… Yeah film, 100′ rolls of Kodak Vision 3 • 7213 • 500T stock … On a Bolex connected to a battery belt to power the motor… We shot some of it in Queens and Brooklyn and Washington Heights in upper Manhattan in New York City and we shot some in Valley Of Fire in Nevada and in Red Rock Canyon just outside of Vegas… Some more friends of mine who are musicians and also worked for love, not pay… created a beautiful original improvised score… They’re names are in the credits too…

 

photo by Sam Lahoz

It’s 20 minutes long… It’s about finding god in yourself and in others and fusing the fractured pieces together… It could be a narrative if you believe narratives can be a simple as this… It could also be a non-narrative… i’m too close to know… or care… i hope you like it but i don’t really give a fuck if you do… My friends and i made some beautiful unforgettable memories making the film… and if you watch the film and pay close attention you’ll feel that beauty coming through wrapped up in the images and the sound… Anyway the beautiful unforgettable memories we made are enough with or without a film… There are pieces of this in the film to prove these statements… Watch it… look closely, listen intently, leave yourself open and the reward will come…

photo by Sam Lahoz

i don’t do this film thing for the money… i don’t do it for the love either… Although maybe there’s a kind of love there but if there is, it’s a complicated love… i do this to stay safe, to sane, to stay secure in my own soul, to stay stabile in my own mind… When i’m not making films my blood goes bad, the saliva in my mouth drys up, my muscles get tight and nothing feels right… The demons squat my well being and evict my peace and my worthlessness threatens to rise above my head and drown me… Only making the films eases the pain, reduces the fever, alleviates the ache of feeling too much, makes the waters of worthlessness recede…

photo by Sam Lahoz

Not to say that making the films is not without its own pain, fever and ache… But it’s different… It’s tangible… it’s something that can be touched and held and the problems of filmmaking can all be solved… Unlike trying to find the god within yourself or within someone else and trying to fuse the fracture…

photo by Sam Lahoz

It would be nice if you saw the film… and even better if you got something more than beautiful images and honest poetry and incredible music… It would be good to even make a few dollars to recoup and reinvest into the next film that’s building in me like a storm in the distance ready to test me… again…

Sincerely,
vagabond

photo by Sam Lahoz design by vagabond

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1P2

NO REFUGE

no refuge by vagabond ©

no refuge

the lies
piled up like dead bodies
the optimism
bled and
drained from us
at every turn
even acquiescence
yields no reward
for the massive

and rebellion
is still seen
as a means of calling
the kind of attention to yourself
that everyone will tell you
is slow suicide
but is actually state homicide
when they put you
down by law

as if living were forever
and there was some safety
to be found
somewhere
everything a lie
all of it
as if the lies eventually
become truth
if repeated ad nauseum
and there’s no refuge
anywhere
not in acquiescence
or rebellion
and if there’s no refuge
then what do we have to lose
but the illusion?

-vagabond ©

Note: April being poetry month i wanted to challenge myself to have a poem with an accompanying piece of art for each day of the month posted here in this space… Share what you like… both on line and off…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1Nc

THIS IS A LOVE SONG

this is a love song by vagabond ©

this is a love song
(for the ypj)

taught to wait for a solution
while we dug graves
led to believe we couldn’t fight
standing on the edge of a crater
where our lives once stood
the smoke rising to frame our shock and awe
rising to frame our passivity
rising to contextualize our loss

continually forced to accept our fate
as the only alternative ever offered
we reject every message that comes from newspaper tv radio
and from behind government office desks
no longer finding use for such things
no longer taking orders from men in uniforms
and ones who claim to know god’s plan personally
this rejection of your ideology defines our liberation

we find defiance stops the bleeding faster
resistance has more to teach us
than your insistence of our acquiescence ever could
the lessons based in fear have been inverted
to be a terrorism for your terror
we have come to the understanding
that we must be the thesis to your anti-thesis
our anarchy must order your manufactured chaos

this is a love song
not a prayer but a love song
not a prayer because you turned god against us
and in time god will have to answer for his sins as well
this is an uptempo blues song for your oppression
a second line funeral dirge a requiem a folk song
we sing it as we bury your evil alongside our loved ones
so they can rest easy knowing you died with them

– vagabond ©

Note: April being poetry month i wanted to challenge myself to have a poem with an accompanying piece of art for each day of the month… Check back each day to this space for more… And share what you like… both online and off…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1Gx

REPUTATION WITH TROUBLE

looking for trouble by vagabond ©

reputation with trouble
(for the anarchists)

they say don’t go looking for trouble
but we’re cold turkey
on blue pills
vomiting lies
shaking in fear
trembling in anger
at all the opportunities wasted
the constant indignities of it all
keeping us from sleep

they say don’t go looking for trouble
but there’s no turning back now
our mind is fueled
with a full tank of their hypocrisy
racing and whirling and spinning
can’t down shift the transmission
the brake shoes are gone
we’re cutting into the rotors
and it’s all downhill from here

they say don’t go looking for trouble
but the levees broke
and the levels are rising
while the sewers are overflowing
with the opinions of pundit idiots
cashing checks written by the devil
who draws from a wealth of suffering
while the devils helpers
race to spend it all
before the rapture comes

they say don’t go looking for trouble
but whether or not
we believe what we’re told
whether or not there is some truth
in the lies
or lies in the truth
trouble will find us
they send it out
to seek us out
they make trouble homeless
and encourage it
to squat our soul
and evict our peace

they say don’t go looking for trouble
but how is this done
in a world of trouble
how is this done
when trouble comes
if we resist
when trouble will come
if we acquiesce
when trouble comes
looking for us
like a cop with a quota
like a politician on election day
like a salesman on commission

they say don’t go looking for trouble
as if one had to look
well we’re working on
having the kind of reputation with trouble
that makes trouble for trouble
we’ve been looking into
fighting fire with fire
we want to hear it whispered
to trouble and to those who send it
as we walk by
don’t go looking for them
you don’t want any part of that

– vagabond ©

Note: April being poetry month i wanted to challenge myself to have a poem with an accompanying piece of art for each day of the month… Check back each day to this space for more… And share what you like… both online and off…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1FY

FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Rev. Pedro Pietri Is On The Other Side by vagabond ©

“To take you back, I was born in 1898, during the climax of the Spanish/American War. I say 1898 because that was the year that the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico, the year when they colonized us. Now, I was born again in ‘44 to my mother in Ponce, Puerto Rico and again in ’47, at the age of three, when my folks migrated to New York City through the epic of Operation Boot Strap. We’re all part of the casualties of the Inquisition, the American Inquisition.

I also say I was born in 1949, because that’s the day I went to the first theatre with my grandfather, who felt deceived by Operation Boot Strap and committed hara-kiri, but I don’t think it was suicide. He was killed by the system that deceived him, the system that made him sell his land in Borinquen. What happened was the disillusion. The voices in his head were of the Central Intelligence, compelling him to sever his jugular vein. Think about his friends. There’s nobody to talk to, nobody to communicate with, and there’s nothing to go back to, but the industrialization of the island that had deceived so many people. So, that was the first theatre I went to, at Monje’s Funeral Parlor, in a brown suit. Actually, that was my first teaching, or my first awareness of Puerto Rican history. Puerto Ricans die and go to a Puerto Rican funeral parlor. And Monje was a ghoul; he looked like a ghoul. How you going to have the name Monje, and be a proprietor of a funeral parlor? You’ll scare the customers away, but he didn’t scare us away. ”
– Rev. Pedro Pietri
Source La Prensa San Diego 6th, Feb, 2004 

Who the hell is Rev. Pedro Pietri? Rev. Pedro Pierti was one of the original Nuyorican poets. Who were the Nuyorican Poets? The Nuyorican poets were a rag-tag bunch of Puerto Rican who became poets at the literal barrel of US colonialism’s gun. They emerged from the late 60’s, 70’s and 80’s living a schizophrenic existence in exile in the mean streets of New York because Puerto Rico is and continues to be a colony of the United States. Schizophrenic because Americans didn’t want them because they were Puerto Ricans and Puerto Ricans didn’t want them because now they were Americans. The result of that dual schizophrenic existence became the Nuyorican experience. But because Puerto Ricans are good with a blade these poets carved out a space with words and defined the unreality of what it meant to be Puerto Rican outside of Puerto Rico. In the process of doing that the Nuyorican poets grabbed poetry by the ankles turned it upside down and shook the change out its pockets.

No other poet captured the zeitgeist of the Nuyorican experience like Rev. Pedro Pietri. The proof is in the recipe of his 1974 epic poem, Puerto Rican Obituary. That poem was written in the El Barrio (East Harlem, NYC) apartment of Dylcia Pagan a former US held Puerto Rican political prisoner and prisoner of war. Puerto Rican Obituary took the schizophrenic unreality of Puerto Ricans in the ghettos of New York living in between two worlds while simultaneously living in both and wholeheartedly claimed the validity of it, in all of it’s absurdity rather than rejecting it, in all it’s impossibility. In claiming to be in – and – from two different places at once Puerto Rican Obituary led the charge to fuse the fracture of a split existence. The idea of being in – and – from two places at once is a part of the psychological fallout of colonization. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the US since 1898 and was a colony of Spain for almost 400 years before that. What Rev. Pedro Pietri and the other Nuyorican Poets did was painfully, playfully and poetically work through the fracture of being colonized and fuse together a mismatched unreality to recreate what it meant to be Puerto Rican within a fractured colonized existence. Check out this excerpt of Rev. Pedro Pietri reciting Puerto Rican Obituary…

Rev. Pedro Pietri’s poetry could be described as surreal dadaism from the streets. His poetry is filled with resolving the conflicting unreality of living here and there at the same time and in the same space. He flipped the polarizing effects of opposing ideas and made them attract. He used what seemed like nonsense to make sense of a world that’s never made sense. To understand what i’m talking about here is a poem from Rev. Pedro Pietri called Traffic Misdirector from his book Traffic Violations…

TRAFFIC MISDIRECTOR
the greatest living poet
in new york city
was born in Puerto Rico
his name is Jorge Brandon
he is 70 years old
he carries his metaphor
in brown shopping bags
inside steel shopping cart
he travels around with
on the streets of manhattan
he recites his poetry
to whoever listens
& when nobody is around
he recites to himself
he speaks the wisdom
of unforgotten palm trees
the vocabulary of coconuts
that wear overcoats
the traffic lights
of his poems function
without the boring advice
from ac or dc current
book stores & libraries
are deprived of his vibes
to become familiar
with this immortal poet
you have to hang-out
on  street corners
building stoops rooftops
fire escapes bars parks
subway train stations
bodegas botanicas
iglesias pawn shops
card games cock fights
funerals valencia bakery
hunts point palace
pool halls orchard beach
& cuchifrito stands
on the lower east side
the admission is free
his presence is poetry

In 2004 the good right Rev. Pedro Pietri died of stomach cancer which he felt was attributed to his exposure to Agent Orange when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. He may have flipped over to the flip side of life but his vibe and his influences can still be felt on this side…

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1yy

Rust In Piss NYC

Williamsburg Bridge circe 1996 by vagabond ©

the displacement creeps up slowly at first
like a pretty vine that eventually cracks the facade
this isn’t the place that nurtured me as it tried killing me
and rewarded us when we found ways to do more than survive
it’s no longer that place

it’s no longer the place we grew up in
our pride can only be placed in the past
the present is no gift and the future doesn’t want us
everywhere i go it’s the same
this alienation this feeling of un-belonging

nothing to claim as your own because what you claim
is out of style out of fashion out of vogue out of time
no place to claim as your own because it’s all changed itself
to be something for someone else

disowned disavowed displaced

this city once belonged to those strong enough
to claim squatters rights to the ruins
because there was beauty to be found in the rubble
because it was part-time art and full-time living
because we filled the abandoned with play and creation
because we could thrive among the decay
until the decay and all that lived in it
and all that it gave to imagination was given an eviction notice

what was once yours because it was no ones and everyones
now belongs to someone else
what you thought would always be yours
because it was no ones and everyones
has been sold to the highest bidder
and the open source dreams we built from living within the debris
have been bulldozed for pre-fabricated dreams
that come with closing contracts and first last and security

you only owned the blood you spilled here until you spilled it
you only owned the saliva you spit here until it hit pavement
you only owned the piss you took here until it wet the cornerstone
we only had the idea and the ideal we never had the deed
and without the deed you only own the memories
and memories don’t pay bank notes

even vagabonds need to be from somewhere
what will i say when they ask
my answers will be mythology
my stories will be artifacts in a museum
the way of being that i grew up with
shaped by a place that no longer exists
all of it will be ethnography anthropology archeology

we survived the extinction of this place
only to record what once was
we survived the extinguishing of the fire
only to feel the cold
we survived the execution of these streets
only to breathe life into ghosts as they pass through us

the broken glass glistening like fake diamonds swept
the rough texture of years smoothed
and the vibrant aerosol colors of memorials drained
these few remaining familiar faces dying
surrounded by strangeness without ever having moved
surrounded by the unfamiliar without ever having left
to be replaced with the tenants of the ahistorical
maybe it’s only an intoxicating nostalgia
or a yearning for an anarchism that left us to our own devices
but you can’t blame us for
wishing that it would all rust in piss once again

– vagabond

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-BW

WHO’S READY?

Who’s ready?

Who’s ready to rip the throats of politicians to silence the lie and clear the air of the noise pollution so the voiceless can be heard…?

Who’s ready to liberate the airwave frequencies of the toxic fascism of fear and financial profits…?

Who’s ready the bite the hand that sustains our hunger…?

Who’s ready to stop taking the medicine that’s making us sick…?

Who’s ready to feed bankers silver spoons either in liquid or solid form, we’ll let them decide…?

Who’s ready to make the cops come out with their hands up…?

Who’s ready to surround theses many Jericho prisons and blow horns for seven days until the walls come tumbling down…?

Who’s ready to level the playing field by swinging a wrecking ball into stock exchanges and driving bulldozers across banks…?

Who’s ready to light a match to the money that’s been blocking the warmth & the light of the sun…?

Who’s ready to pull back the curtain to light up and disinfect the bleak future that’s hobbling in with a bad cough…?

Anyone…?

Anyone…?

Anyone…?

Don’t worry this isn’t an indictment of you, i’m not an armchair revolutionary poet, i’m afraid too, of what they can do…

We know the future fear is greater in comparison to the present fear but i guess it’s not a sure thing until it’s too late…

But when will our future fear, surpass the present fear?

What will it take for our future fear to give us a present courage?

– vagabond ©

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1wc

THE FUTURE IS WRITTEN

[vimeo 101725749 w=600&h=338]

i’ve never been one to shoot stuff i don’t really intend to use so when i wanted to shoot another test for the Red Epic i had to come up with something that could have a life beyond being simply a camera test. For a while now i’ve wanted to shoot a time-lapse of an art project that i thought would be fun and interesting to do. It entailed some posters i had silkscreen years ago from some designs i did for my company Audio Visual Terrorism. So i combined that idea of making this art piece with the camera test and voila… the future is written…

Jeff “AK” Akers my cinematographer on MACHETERO (go see that film – it kicks ass and not just because i made but just because it does) and co-conspirator on more than a few other films. Jeff not only handled the cinematography duties but he also literally jumped into the film. My pit bull Mya makes a short cameo at the end because who doesn’t love adorable pit bulls?

vagabond on stage

vagabond doing his best Ivan from The Harder They Come

Jumping Jeff’s

vagabond & Mya

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1p8

May Day Agit-Prop

Over the years i’ve created a lot agit-prop for various struggles for freedom… i thought it would be a good idea to collect some of that work that i felt was in keeping with the spirit of May Day… Here is a collection that is free to use on a non-profit basis… i only ask that you include the credit “vagabond ©”… Consider it an ongoing gift to the struggle…

ENJOY COLONIALISM 1493 by vagabond ©

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

ENJOY COLONIALISM 1898 by vagabond ©

Capitalism Under Police Protection by vagabond ©

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

It’s Only Class War If You Fight Back by vagabond ©

Lucy Gonzales Parsons Autobiography by vagabond ©

Pacifism by vagabond ©

Looking For Me? by vagabond ©

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

It Only Takes A Spark by vagabond ©

The Biggest Fight For The Future by vagabond ©

Don’t Want Your Authority by vagabond ©

ENJOY CAPITALISM by vagabond ©

AMOR Y RABIA – photo by Sam Lahoz © design by vagabond ©

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

By The Only Means Left To Us by vagabond ©

http://www.audiovisualterrorism.spreadshirt.com

Your Ad Not Here by vagabond ©

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-1mM

Cut-Up Photo Poem #2

YIELD by vagabond ©

AN by vagbond ©

KING by vagabond ©

ON by vagabond ©

X-ING by vagabond ©

THRU by vagabond ©

DO NOT ENTER by vagabond ©

ZONE by vagabond ©

ONLY by vagabond ©

HE by vagabond ©

DO by vagabond ©

NOT by vagabond ©

ENTER by vagabond©

LOW by vagabond ©

SLOW by vagabond ©

SCHOOL by vagabond ©

BUS by vagabond ©

LOADING by vagabond ©

BUMP by vagabond ©

AHEAD by vagabond ©

ONE by vagabond ©

TOP by vagabond ©

PAR by vagabond ©

FIRE ZONE by vagabond ©

DRIVE TRHU by vagabond ©

STOP by vagabond ©

yield
an
ark
king
on
fire
x-ing
thru
do not enter
zone
only
he
do
not
enter
low
head
slow
school
bus
loading
bump
ahead
one
top
par
fire zone
drive thru
stop