..............

She never could see clear enough   

Willing to risk her tendencies after a few martinis

Listening to the Velvet Underground

Fantasizing that she was a muse

But knowing she was pale and unripe

In all the important pages

Narrow in focus and quick to run far

Away in her muse-faced legs

And flower desire to bloom in her gin  

Pulling him in

Into her dark clouds of making plans

And being with washing sin and birthdays that come too soon. 

Tobias Deehan/guerillalit.
....

........................

*We have posted new videos on youtube as well as our myspace
page (for youtube, search under guerillalit or go to the guerillalit channel,
for the myspace go to www.myspace.com/guerillalit).  Brian and Tobias both have individual performances,
as well as Jason from Killpoet.  The
readings are all from the Nuclear Winter Formal, which took place a few months
ago at Beyond Baroque.  So please look
those up, and rate ‘em well!  As for the
Molly Malone’s video, we’re hoping to have that up in the coming weeks, again
on youtube, myspace, and if we ever get around to it, our website.

.. ..

*Tobias Deehan will be interviewed on the Jane Crown
Show, http://www.janecrown.com,
this Saturday and reading from his new book, The Independent,
which will be released through guerillalit in May. You can catch it live, ..April 11, 2009.. @..11am.. or in the archives.

.. ..

*News and notes about Hearsay, the inaugural issue of
the guerillalit literary journal will be coming very soon.  Expect submission guidelines very shortly,
with the issue in hand by fall, winter at the latest.

.. ..

*Also, new books by guerillalit writers Brian
Townsley (summer?) and Tobias Deehan (May) will be hitting bookstores and the
net shortly.  More details soon.

.. ..

*Last, we’d like to give a sincere thank you to everybody
who helped make the Molly Malone’s event such a success.  Thanks in particular to Cat and Jason at
Killpoet, as well as all of the other artists who performed, and thank you for
the warm salutation from all those in attendance.  They asked us back for later in the year, so
we’ll keep everybody informed when that comes around.

cheers,

gl.

.. ..

.. ..

The dreams are real.
A bygone necessity
dictates their arrival, the song
you cannot rid yourself of.
None of the time I sit
drinking coffee
in the café breathing
the dawn forward
changes the facts,
however I rearrange them.

So I make the ink blood
& paint the walls with it,
slung about like Pollock
on ecstasy, like heartbreak
without recovery. It’s
the best thing going, dancing
the 26 to their death,
night and night again,
like dreams unwanted,
catharsis,
retelling the truth
with lies.

There is no past, there is only
story. And though I have
kissed the immortal lips
of Aphrodite, the fates
would have it otherwise.
The same bygone necessity
grown rhythmic & tired, this
memory, this atlas
of bones.

I await the night.



bt./guerilla.

Tim's art book, Jazz Portraits, has been featured in the "spotlight" section on the LA KJAZZ 88.1 website.  Check it out and thanks for the support! The link is below.

http://www.jazzandblues.org


all things guerilla,
gl.

come! 21 & over only.

A review of “Blue Skies,” the Bob Dob opening at the Billy Shire Fine Arts Gallery, Saturday, February 14th.

By Brian Townsley


Bob Dob opened “Blue Skies,” last Saturday in Culver City at the Billy Shire Fine Arts Gallery, which looks like an old airplane hangar antiqued in the necessary places. I was assured by the staff there that it was not an old hangar, that it was built just the way it stands & was never meant to house planes. But it looks like a hangar to me. So I’mma call it one. Being that it was an old airplane hangar, the lighting was spot on & the aesthetic space certainly appropriate.

Dob’s show provided another opportunity to witness his big-headed lads in profile or just after misbehaving, Hopperesque and steeped in pastiche. Dob borrows heavily from a Southern California iconography of surfers and greasers, the water and oil therein, quite literally set to canvas. His own history of Hermosa Beach reimagined as what wasn’t and will not be again. “Hodads”, much like his “Where Crows Die” piece in the solo show of that same name last year, contains the finality of multiple stories told throughout the collection, thus “Hodads” is clearly the star of the show, in ambition, price, and scope. The piece everyone returns to, and, in accordance, the night was set to a seemingly endless playlist of surf guitar on the speakers.

Bob Dob’s following seemed not to notice though, awash in pleasantries & the moment. Those viewing the works ran the gamut of labels, from grandma’s in pink cardigans to p.u.n.x. tattooed on his knuckles & every variation between. Psuedo-anime characters with stuffed animals hanging from her belt & guys in printed sportcoats and sketchers. Those guys. Throughout, the attitude seemed more positive than the people.

The artist was clad in chucks & a snapcap, looking every bit the part of mature, and now paternal, ex-punk. Handshakes and smiles all around. As the bullfighter greeting the crowd before learning the result of his match, aware that fear merely bites the nails of ambition. He also had a book for sale, The Bob Dob Painting Collection, Volume 1— 44 pages of sketches, process, and recent works.

Along those lines, the BSFA Gallery has an excellent assortment of art and culture books to choose from, covering much of the Pop Surrealist movement (Mark Ryden, Camille Rose Garcia, Glen Barr, Elizabeth McGrath, and the regulars), but also including Without Sanctuary, a b&w photography book of lynchings from turn of the century America, with images as disturbing as they are significant and riveting. A compendium of loss, always irretrievably ours. The unwanted necessity.


Overheard:
-“No, he’s not trying to do that. If he were trying to do that, well, what about the blood on the baseball bat then?” two men standing in front of “Hodads”
-“I love how the surfer has the j in his mouth and the greaser has a smoke. Did you catch that? wife to husband, comparing Dob’s paintings “Predator” and “Prey.”
-“Dude, he totally ripped that off Dali! I mean, you’ve seen it, c’mon, the breasts, here, I mean, I can’t remember what it was called, but you know what I’m talking about?” one blasted gent to another comparing the work in Todd Schorr’s book to Salvador Dali.

“Blue Skies” runs until March 7th.


This is a guerillalit production.

Brian Townsley wrote a poem (which will be in his forthcoming book from guerillalit) based on the painting "Where Crows Die" by artist Bob Dob.  It's printed on his website, so check it out for that, but also to see some great work as well.

http://www.bobdob.com

thanks.
guerilla.

How the world has smalled
while the sharks and the jets
pull switchblades and pomade
their nappy curls, dustridden
and smelling of cordite, of pipebombs left
on busses and the children
orphaning their parents. They march
in the streets in their leather jackets and
hold pictures up of those not yet forgotten.
Polaroids of the lost, the white
noise amid the music and the dancing
around the young men kneeling on the carpets
in the light
the elders sitting in darkness
washing machines for everyone
except them, the roses on fire escapes and promises and promises.
Our dreams are the metaphor
Your dreams My dreams are more like it.
And the prayers
bless us the sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen
but dreams are for the innocent
and the foolish. And musicals.
Whether Gareth from Belfast or Shamir in Gaza
the length of our faith rivals the gun barrels
used to question the answers until
all of it
is just another way to die.

Oh Gaza, your Gaza!
My strip is the soft, translucent hair
Maria leaves unshaven down along her lower back.
I would fight to keep her, go to war for
and it has nothing to do with faith
but with her myth

and myths died with your dreams and civil wars and holocausts and genocide
and the great fear in the sky
the day you became a man and Maria gave us a child
and the meat we need to keep alive
and the sin to deliver us from bondage.

My death will come, borne
of too much and not enough
where desire begets necessary begets only story
more forget
until the curtain used to close the musical farce
pointless and empty like the inside pocket of the suit jacket you wore all your life.



Eugene Ellsworth/ guerillalit./ 09

Some guerillanotes:

Brian Townsley read at the Cornelia St Cafe in Manhattan on November 7th. We got some film on it so hopefully we'll get a bit of that up shortly. Thanks so much to Kathi Georges of Three Rooms Press for hosting the event and getting one of us out there.

Tobias Deehan and Brian Townsley both read at the Nuclear Winter Formal at Beyond Baroque on November 15th. The event was a lot of fun and a pleasure to read at the venerable LA icon. Thanks to all of the other presses involved, in particular Killpoet.

We will also be represented for the 3rd year in a row at the Holiday Alternative Book Bazaar, to be held Saturday, December 13th, from 5-9 pm in Burbank. We'll get more details up as we get them, and we hope to see you there.

sunny days & starry nites,
guerilla.

6:00PM SON OF PONY
Kathi Georges, host
Brian Townsley

The Friday night legendary open mic poetry series.

Arrive before 6 pm to sign up.

Featured Poet: GuerillaLit featuring Brian Townsley

A one-of-a-kind bi-coastal poetry group, guerillalit is a band of writers & poets & artists deconstructing the ivory tower stone by stone. We feature Brian Townsley, direct from Los Angeles, along with special guest performers. In 2001, he won the AWP Intro Award for the poem Unidentified in Oxford, Georgia, 1908, and has since published numerous pieces in various journals, including Quarterly West, Eclipse, Connecticut Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Killpoet, Diner, Spectum, Hawaii Pacific Review, The Smoking Poet, and Southern California Anthology, among others. He is the author of the books everybody pays, let the devil ride, and Badinfinity.
Cover $7 (includes one house drink)
www.myspace.com/guerillalit