meager violence

“I’ve seen that things find their void when they search for direction.” - Federico Garcia Lorca

photos by Jay Halsey

“I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.” - Charles Bukowski

photos by Jay Halsey

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” 
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

photos by Jay Halsey

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” 
― Edgar Allan Poe

photos by Jay Halsey

mosaic skull by Matthew Alexander

“I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It’s still my symbol of rebellion — against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others’ ideas.” - Johnny Cash

photos by Jay Halsey

…with a voice such as autumn leaves scratching across blacktop. The sun dull and gray, but showing all the same. Puddles shrank, leaving black scree at their edges.

words and photos by Jay Halsey

“The people wait. Sweltering in the glare, roasting in their cars bright as beetles under the soft roar of the sun.” – Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

photos by Jay Halsey

“This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it.” - Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

photos by Jay Halsey

“On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

photos by Jay Halsey

i woke up today. the Earth was dry windblown and brittle. cars in parking lots reduced to dust-covered, monochromatic shapes.

glaciers did not melt.

evaporation was the new trend.

creeks became thirsty.

rivers no longer flowed.

the great basins and reservoirs formed enormous scabs:

land bridges for emaciated minds; congregations of narrow-eyed mosquitoes lapped at delicate coffees.

robots of convention declared absolutely, “300 days of sunshine a year!” amidst a record-breaking drought.

all vermin thrived with no place left to drown. and everything was the same as yesterday.

words and photos by Jay Halsey

“It’s not money, it’s feeling—you don’t feel anything, and we feel too violently.” - Ponyboy Curtis

photos by Jay Halsey

needle eyes in the

strange cracks of a slow

yellow morning.

i’m off to destroy

everything tasteful and sane.

last night delivered more flashes of

easy bombs that never happened

and never will.

I think of you,

the man of men and mothers,

resting still and quiet

in the seams of worms and fossils

for a month now,

knowing so much more

than I do

and even more than

you did before.

curb litter fades 

beneath a carbon sun,

and the slow drip

of the bathroom sink

keeps time.

the cottonwoods weep

the creeks weep

the stray cats weep,

as do the crows

and mountains,

and finally everything

weeps.

I don’t. 

words and photos by Jay Halsey

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? …we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”— Franz Kafka

photos by Jay Halsey

My wife just made a joke about having a hot date at work after I complimented her looks when she arrived home.

Me: Does he have enough money to pay our bills?
Her: No. He lost his savings of 100 dollars at the horse tracks.

Turns out she’s got a student whose dad is a rancher, and let him bet his 100 bucks on the track. Kid lost it all. Lessons are learned in all ways.

words and photos by Jay Halsey

off moments settle

like feathers in the pale dusk.

the quiet, forsaken ones whisper

secrets of lingering discontent.

too often taken for granted,

these shallow pauses are more immense

than the mightiest coyote’s thirst.

she stops to revel

at a shrinking rain puddle

in a deserted west Texas parking lot.

a loitering mosquito swells,

and the house wins again.

words and photos by Jay Halsey