A collection of writings about place space writing and art …
By Marcus D. Niski
In Cocteau’s apartment
There exists
An antique clock
A pile of notebooks
A picture of Picasso
A leopard skin drape
A clutch of pencils and ink wells
A pile of books letters and mementos
A faded blackboard
A bust of an unknown composer
Memorials to Colette
A strange engraving.
Above all, there is hope.
[MN] 29 December 1999
By Marcus D. Niski
As a child
I would roam
around
Roaming around consisted of freedom
An essence of pleasure
I roamed around the streets
the creeks and gullies
the back blocks
through unfinished houses
through suburbia
through time and space
through mind and body
through disinhibition
through freedom of expression
through permission
to be free
[MN] 8 January 2019
By Marcus D. Niski
A slice of dying America
Immortalized in poems
by Bishop
paintings by Hopper
And the memories of
Millions of Americans
The allure of gas stations
Grease pits
Oil stands
Bowsers
Grease monkeys
Driveways
Tools and tool draws
Parts and carburetors
The dreams of youth
And the machinery of movement
Gone the Golden Fleece
Of my childhood
ESSO CALTEX MOBIL
BP SHELL LIBERTY
Dead and dying
Like the generations
Basking in the dreams of
nevermore
[MN] 9 January 2019
The Bard of Hollywood
By Marcus D. Niski
He was a tough motherfucker
at least he’d like to have
us think that he was.
Everyday he’d get up
And start drinking and writing
Writing and drinking.
Yet under that
beer barrel chest
lay the heart of a lion,
a heart of gold
He gave us his best stuff
Fresh from the suburbs, the factories
the pool halls, the wastelands, the racetracks, the detritus
of urban life.
He never gave up
and never
gave in until
he gave his last
which as good as his best
He never understood
the human condition
because he was always striving.
‘He didn’t think much of them’
The Humans that is.
One of the most acute observers,
He laid his soul bare
And he told of the blood, the puss
the stink, the shit, the beauty, the horror
and the mundanity of life.
He lived life
To its fullest
despite his own queer
deviations.
Bukowski
was a one-shot deal
An original even if it’s a clique
To suggest it.
His writing lives on
In eternity
To grace us with its realness,
Its sorrows
And its beauty.
[MN] 15 January 2020
Dedicated to Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) – one of my great literary heroes.
If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
― Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury — The Vale of Soul-Making
Originally posted on Progressive Geographies: Acid Horizon podcast: ‘Foucault (With Hair)’ – discussion of The Early Foucault On this episode, Adam and Will are joined by Stuart Elden to discuss his latest book, The Early Foucault. We discuss the academic experiences and personal relationships that were formative in the Foucault’s development as an intellectual.
Acid Horizon podcast: ‘Foucault (With Hair)’ – discussion of The Early Foucault — Foucault News
O my poor words, bear with me.
— Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, ed. David Wagoner (Copper Canyon Press November 1, 2006)
Theodore Roethke — The Vale of Soul-Making
I write by the light of what is not revealed in what I express.
— Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions, II. The Book of Yukel, III. Return to the Book] trans.by Rosmarie Waldrop (Wesleyan University Press, 1983)
I don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.
— Allen Ginsberg, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems: 1937-1952. (Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press Ed edition November 1, 2006)
Allen Ginsberg — The Vale of Soul-Making
There will be a book that includes these pages,
and she who takes it in her hands
will sit staring at it a long time,
until she feels that she is being held
and you are writing.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Du dunkeInder Grund, gelduldig erträgst du die Mauern,” Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996)
Naked Cities Journal 
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