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James Juron https://www.jamesjuron.com/

#james juron #neo-expressionism #painting

James Juron - self portrait

James Juron - Those who have passed - 2009

#James Juron #painting #seated #alien #table

The town embodied his endless depression. Having not been there in years; sinking legacy, ebbing doom. Its shadowy ghost-light lingers, retching pride. Traces of those he once loved in the bowels of his memory. Lately he’s been shitting blood & believes it to be a sign. His doctor told him to stop drinking which might explain some of the nightmares too.

Stop drinking!? Was he serious? Leaving all his problems in the doctor’s office & promptly finding a bar. Several shots later, stumbling toward his apartment wondering why he ever let the past get to him. Thoughts that now seem like silly gothic romances. The self-abuse of a weak father married to the eternal fright of a cloistered mother. All living in a house above a small town at the top of a hill. Now, as city bustles all around him & sky is limited to the tops of skyscrapers, he moves with the ease of another domesticated fool. Whatever dark spirits edged against his consciousness were, for the time being, gone. Suddenly, he saw his fellow goofers – flowing into streets, brightly colored, luminescent – as being a part of a living thing. While so many parts of the world are dead & do not circulate with life. Drawn to the pulse no matter how artificial it is, but only when he’s drunk. Contrary to lulling woods of a purple delirium where the house sat & weight of sagging truth is all around him. Carrying a knife everywhere he goes prepared to slit the throat of any who got in his way. Hanging around bars looking for a refuge, all procured with a fake ID . . .

The following day he sleeps till four in the afternoon. Wallowing in pitch blackness of an alienated state shameful of any tender feelings he might of have had towards his fellow men the previous night. Eventually making a pot of coffee & grabbing a book. He spends the bulk of the day getting stoned & reading Clark Ashton Smith. Getting lost in worlds before night comes – bubbling out of the planetary froth to find nothing is changed. When only a moment ago he is wandering among the colonnades toward an ancient pool. Eidolic mysteries revealed, beyond the heady brine. No town or misted ruins – cemeteries filled with familiar names. All coming back like a blast to the head, he tosses the book aside.

Time to get drunk. Wasted years. Still, there is no way to go back. Blackest example of romantic tendencies ever witnessed. To run through dead fields toward cemeteries at dusk; where leering ghouls are the same as those family members, who peer through wrought iron bars with slits for eyes. Desperate to know them – & destroy. Violent tendencies held back by a more rational psychosis. He can not murder a ghost no matter how hard he tries. He may only erode the sanctuary forged by its misery & suffocate the ashes under stone. Only now there is true distinction in the voice drawing his attention. Even as the town has never changed, abandoned in the calculating world, these are his first nightmares & visions.

It is getting harder to look away from the circumference of his obsolete journeys. Several shots in he lifts his hands into the dim light. No longer shaking. Nor is there anything over his shoulder when he looks. There is no such thing as ghosts – nor the town he grew up in. Finally, something there. He drinks straight from the bottle. Another voice at the bottom of it all filling his night’s with cold ruminations. Buoyed in a frozen ocean beyond the house where he killed his parents – after which, sinking like a leaden cloud beyond the horizon. Tears streaming from his eyes as he smashes the bottle against the wall. If only he could learn to love them again instead of seeing them in such cadaverous ways. When the fleshy heap steals the soul & the will is cancelled. Ghosts before they are anything. Standing in his room; dripping oily silt – mouths agape with tiny crabs, tumbling out. Shrunken skin, purple veined, broken open revealing the blackened musculature underneath. Right there in his room, where he sleeps . . .

Slipping outside before the store closes. Even now streets are thronged with artificial life. City temple beaming false gold to keep their minds off anything. Small towns buried in sand, under a desert moon. Phantasms writhing in variegated subsets of doom. There is no escaping the high drama of the winds or colonialism of soiled hearts. They will take him to his own graveside in the end, to fill up on clay of the earth. Reminded constantly to never forget where he comes from. Oh, how they murdered each other in the dark! Walking down the stone steps of his apartment building where he is neither seen or heard. That is what it feels like to be a ghost, never alive to begin with. Legacy & lore of his crest. Worn in that dilapidated house, overlooking grey zones of irreal light. Cracking open the seal of a fresh bottle he barely remembers purchasing – rushing it down his gullet in a spasm of desperation. Throat & stomach doused in fire he topples to his knees. Still, they do not see. Only those who were never here, filtered through with buzzing street lights, vanished into predominantly lost worlds . . .

Artwork By James Juron

#CCParker #prose #horror #James Juron #dark art