Luis Zul

People tell me I'm beautiful But people don't make me feel beautiful People say it's all in my head but I feel it in every other part of my body and my soul I'm the photographer but not the model my fashion is an armor not against others but to defend me from my own gaze I'm hopeful someday I'll feel beautiful once more.

I've always found it weird that pound cakes have a white, translucent glaze on top. Livid and libido are too close to each other in the dictionary of our collective consciousness. For four years I thought I could only be one note, submissive, but it's love that taught me one is so much more than what they're told. I want to be sexy. I want to serve cunt. I want to water all the orchids in my garden to protect them from the scorching sun. Wet, moist, juicy is the sound of my footsteps. My boots click clack clatter over the faces of my volunteers, heels syncing in pleasures we experience together in our own, beautiful ways. I deflate I recuperate I make sense of the pages within my obituary: the new age.

Onwards we go. All  that we know is this is the last time we'll be under the skies of Bloomfield. We've given birth to many a song in the heat of LA. We've welcomed gray doves in the spring and fell in love with ourselves, our own kin. Moments once lived remain closed within frames of deep indigo, deep, of edges sharp and slick. It's hard to say if we'll ever meet again. But know that I'll be thinking of you when I dance, shun by the golden hour, in the comfort of my skin. I suck on a few lemons. I try to wash away this deep blue indigo that once left scars on my fiddle. The tint bleeds my elbows, knees and bones. My knuckles and spleen lean to a heavy color it seems. Look how far away we've come from the warm embrace of nights where we steeped in the entrails of a lovely house in Bloomfield.

It's nice  to basque in piano sounds that percussion me despite my tantrums and reproches. Swish, twirl, slay goes the mantle of strings that twist into keys I forget. Ain't no sizzles. Ain't no shade. You see yourselves as suns, yet have no tails. The brightest superstars, a sun won't weave and wait at wavering points across seconds, across days. A sun doesn't spin. It revolves carefree burning those stubborn enough to get too close, the poor things. Excitement is for tiny people with tiny lives and I, for one, am thrilled. A slow burn, supreme, that lasts me longer than a big bang. The pleasure of being Icarus's Dom: unreal.

Illustration by Luis Zul

Photography and Edit by Luis Zul

Teacher tells me it's not good to pick fruits too early from the orchard. It's rude to wake them up before they've finished bathing in the sun, before they've grown juicy and ripe. I'm not sure I believe it so. There's beauty in watching the fruit blooming, unwind, the flesh newly open to the bite of sharpened teeth. Yesterday I learned unripe can be a delicacy. That plátanos maduros when green taste so good after being fried in peanut oil at medium heat. So why do I hesitate to pick mulberries  from the bushes evergreen? I guess I can't bear to feel the spit of my patrons on the skin  of my face, dripping in a cocktail of red, white and blue. Anything but serene comfort. I stay on my toes to grab onto a sample still shy of the ground. I reach because I hope I'll see the world like them from the branches of the tree. What's wrong with an early release if both parties se dan placer antes de dormir. I think what really matters is the textur...

Sad boy cappuccino coming right up. A special blend of angostura bitters sprinkled over dark roasted beans, served in two cups but sipped independently. The drink has notes of long walks with silent mode on. It tastes of scalding hot tea. It feels like the rain you weren't expecting but welcome in your sunsets. It's the necessary contrast to the uplighting hues that unfold at the end of the day. Yet sometimes I find myself deranged in the confinement of my own home. A coffin I've been building to stow away my mind. It's been ten years since I've last meditated. I still have nightmares of it. A room that made me wonder if there ever was an entrance. A room I entered hoping I could get answers to the ghosts, the double texts, the excuses and the explanations within the archives of my phone. A room with huge, pacific southwest windows that read "Thank you for the hard work" yet refusing to open after looking into my eyes. They're terrified my ...

Audio We explode when we don't know how to grieve. It makes us forget the soul behind the vowels of our screeching moans. But never fear! Poetry is here! For everyone poetry is here to stay, girlboss, and slay. When we write, we turn around. We start to sleep in sounds. How could I forget the healing nature of stepping on the nests of honeysuckling honeycombed motherfucking fake honeybees?! If you look different from everyone else in the booth, write a poem. If your syllables don't land in truth, write a letter. Write an eulogy, a lyric long to be forgotten. Do it for you. Do it for me. Do it for your trees, but please, don't let your hand go stiff. Slap me if you need to. Drown me in the spit of the remnants of your barks, powerful yet serene. Shower me in the sweat of your countless rehearsals. Do it in the name of love. Do it for what's raw and real. I'm the Prima Donna, but for you, I'll be the holy Mary bent on both knees, begging for your penci...

The hot pot boiling over makes me scream at night sweet songs that I don't want in my life. Whether it's still, simmering or boiling it scorches me still. The broth, salty and sour, needs some sugar and body. The pantry is neglected and  full of foraged trinkets. An homage to minimalist tastes. I want it all sweet, sour, spicy, umami. But for now my tongue can only feel the faces within manufactured packages.

Gross like a dove turned pigeon. Song that crackles bored of rhythm. Soot diffuses through my pores and melts skin into acid. My liquid canvas  cleanses life from the floor. My hips, neither firm nor defined, are the last course of my partners' meals. I know I'm beautiful but I haven't felt as such lately. It's hard to go from one place to the next, not being appreciated, not being seen, not being. I just want to feel candid admiration filled with authentic recognition. I'm starved for applause, for the shallow nourishment, that quenches my frustrated deep infatuation. I do my best, I really do. I do my best. I do. I -- I can't! I can't do this. I can't do this anymore! I don't want to show my face. Every time I do so crickets paint the background to my despair above ground. Why? Why am I? Why am I not enough? Why am I not enough to take your breath away?

model credits: mermer https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G6D1HlpsR7cYWw8mUzFjbBbu2HAc8lDp/view?usp=drivesdk Piano, vocals and lyrics by Luis Zul

Tensions create chords that sway. They fabricate new illusions plain on stage. They strangle clouds in lieu of healthy vents. They ignore the incoming release, the explosion from their simple mistakes. I slide down the thoughts of has-beens, what could've become of these honeysuckle melodies. In a world where acts precede kindness I take comfort in showers of cooling martyrdom. The hose has however run low. I feel my skin cracking, the shards of my life sprawn on the scalding floor. I lose my mind. I overflow. I drown in oxytocin. I improvise a prayer to muster a whisper of golden oxygen. I'd rather live in stochastic pockets of time than face the reality I can't overwrite. I can create but I can't overwrite. I can forget but I can't reconcile. The tension reaches me, but I refuse to deflate, for I still wish to levitate to new heights, to whatever comes next. Sweet cotton clouds don't leave me. You're the few that keep my foot on set.

Emotion sickness peels my skin every time I ride at painstakingly low speed. I lay down hoping the candles I lit melt with me yet only my lips dry out. I try to burn the ceiling with eyes like Mars but all they know is they're drowning on Earth It's hard to believe you can feel dizzy without spinning Everything will be okay Everything will be okay Everything will be okay It's hard to believe larvae can crawl out of your stomach before they blossom. The regal embers carry their golden torch to the next goal down South. A prayer so faint. A prayer so real, so supreme. A prayer fed by the compressed air of human existence. Picture credits: sentree

Manifold is a scary word as it twists the tongue  in the shape of what is seen to reveal the entropy of the unknown. A redundant, futile waste of energy, the spell requires long walks under the moon to unravel. The duration of the journey equivalent to the surfaces of Saturn's new fools. Glitter is the common label that we use to describe the long-winded name of Jupiter's most recent star at the ball. She couldn't be any less exclusive in her spins  because of -- damn -- how she shines within the interstellar stream. Her sole gaze would burn a single planet to a faceless supernova char. Yet she shines for me. She twirls for me. She vibrates under the webs behind my pupils. She, a tornado that vogues with unprecedented failure to concede any fad as their partner. The act of confessing her love would be the end of its overwhelming matter. Picture credits: sentree

Sides, circles and angles were the building blocks of matter. Then we broke the pencils, and atoms took over. Binary programming shed no light on the spectrum. Binary code now pushes for senseless formations. Hourglass and lips were stripped from the few. They sold them, oppressors, as dull standards, dictators. I learn reality lies in the quantum dimensions of soothing, organic beauty. I learnt geometric are only the shapes within our brittle, universal foundations.