Richard Hamilton, The Citizen, The State & The Subject, 1980s-1990s

I readily desire this film poster for Jodorowsky's El Topo done by Martin Ansin. Also worth checking out his other work.

Currently reading J. G. Ballard's first novel The Wind From Nowhere. He disowned the novel and it's currently out of print but it seems a heavy handed decision as, from what I have read so far, there was nothing to be embarrassed about. The book's cover design was done by legendary Penguin Art Director David Pelham. Some of his other famous covers are below.

Design by Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

"The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed." ~ William Gibson

"I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you… stranger." ~ Heather Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight

"I'll die for your sins if you live for mine." ~ Jim Carroll

Wingless by Jim Carroll

Wildlife falls extinct inside tubes
burning to the touch

moaning wings slide down my windows
like lucite tears . . . look here:

spiders somersault from attic ceiling
like pubic hairs

rat genitals scream across sky cathedrals

the pure logic of massacre strokes
the corporate heart

shark blood breaks aqua tides
in rushes like flowers offered up from young hands

horns of mountain sheep hang from subway fans

Airconditioned blood drips like rosaries from}
skyscraper to the cosmopolitan eye

do bison stomp snowmobile?

aborted calves drip fetus flesh
across barbecues uptown

man paints marsh skies with lead,
wingless . . . his head between his legs

finely clipped poodles dreaming in penthouse
amphitheatres across mother's molding furs.

"The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling." ~ David Foster Wallace

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky. 

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms. 

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

The Man with Night Sweats by Thom Gunn

I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat 
Wake to their residue, 
Sweat, and a clinging sheet. 

My flesh was its own shield: 
Where it was gashed, it healed.

I grew as I explored 
The body I could trust 
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,

A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.

I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry, 
My flesh reduced and wrecked.

I have to change the bed, 
But catch myself instead

Stopped upright where I am 
Hugging my body to me 
As if to shield it from 
The pains that will go through me,
      
As if hands were enough 
To hold an avalanche off.