Vince Voltage
Your Last
Days
I defy the dark and bloom into the light. I let the light molest me for longer than it should. I submit to desire, and it wraps around my eyes. When I look into the world, all I see is the black plume of want. I am want. I am desire. I am in front of you and behind you and around you like the air in a well where you are trapped. No matter how much you call out to someone, no one is coming to save you. I am your doom. And all you want to do is melt into the earth for me. What wouldn't you do for me? How would you spend your last days for me? I am your last days. I am every word you've ever heard and all the words you've yet to hear. I can fit my fist into your mouth and you would be my puppet. I am not only naked, I am the naked air.
The Years
Left to You
She is the majesty of the golden moon. The moon that hangs so dominantly in the sky. You can't turn away. Her glow makes shadows. Or she blinds you when you look up. And you think that maybe you could find a way to fly through the sky and land like they did so long ago, but it's impossible. You don't have what it takes to explore this glowing satellite. This brilliant celestial being. No matter where you go or what you do, the memory of her face orbits around your imagination. You want to pray to her. You would let her affect the tides inside of you. You would let her influence your love or your luck or your last day on earth. Because it's not enough just to want her. She shines through you. She fills the windows and floods the rooms. Like any woman who shimmers before you with curves and color and all the secrets that are hidden or not hidden behind her modest and confident eclipse, she gives you no other words to say but “I want.” Your words fly back at you and fall around you like the dead hair from your head or the years left to you on earth.
Everything You
Could Ever Want
Wouldn't you want this to be the way you eat your dinner each night? Wouldn't you want this to be what crops up from the floor of your kitchen? Wouldn't you want this to be the quiet and effortless way that you would treat me in the morning or the evening or the middle of the night? So many hours and so many dollars were spent costuming me under the needle of the permanent seamstress, and yet now I'm decorated with everything you could ever want. Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have a name? Wouldn't it be lovely If everything you see with your dreamy black eyes was all there was to see of me? If my head was empty. If my heart stood still. If my closet was cleared with nothing to wear, and everyday I wear nothing at all. What if I was nothing at all?
Fuck It
There's nothing modest or dishonest about me. My body isn't just a canvas, it's also a slate. Like in the old days when the children wrote the answers to the questions with chalk, I write the answers to the questions with my ink. With my sweat. The glow of my curves. The wonderful ornaments that cover so many parts of me. I can speak. But it's better when you speak for me. Because then that way I'm saying everything while saying nothing. Everything I am says everything, but I am mute. I am dumb. I am quiet like the center of a hurricane. And you are the cow or the rocking chair or the barn that flings about me in absolute chaos and disorder. And the whipping winds that swirl are your desires. They tear through you, plowing your streets and splitting your home. You want me. Of course you do. What have I done to stop you from wanting me? And, oh, fuck you. Fuck your eyes. Fuck your nervous hands. Fuck your fantasies that flit and fling and float around us like gnats over a sewer drain or the fevered dreams of a drunkard.
A Buttered
Mess
I would have screamed before you got here, but you got here before I could scream. Now my mouth is full. There are no words inside my mouth. Only my contempt. And even though I can't breathe, my lungs are full. You fool. You think that you can find the right food to fill me and stop me and finally shut me up? I wish you good luck with that. Because I am painted and tatted, and my head's on fire. And I dare you to stand too close. And even though you find me now unable to say the names that belong to you, you can see the words glowing from my naked skin. I am a dictionary. I am a lexicon of words and names and claims and backwards writing. I am a rainbow pen that writes itself across me. And you dare to cross me. I spit my charming buttered mess at you until you're soaked and foolish.
Dickhead
I have no way to defend the seeds that rattle loose in my brain. My skull sounds like mariachis, and I am trying so hard to grow through the soil of my bones. But it's hard like a nut. And I am the rare corona. I am the moon's shadow. I fill the air with objectionable flowers. They are the signposts. They point you towards smut and rape and whispers and privilege. My skull is made of privilege. Call me what you will. The epithets are easy. Even though I torment you daily in your DMs, I have been tormenting the centuries and the millenniums and the million year highway that we have walked on this dusty planet of ours, erect with shoulders up and chin trembling. In fact I took us from our beautiful home where nothing was naked because everything was the same, and I dragged you all over the earth. We changed colors and we changed features and we became one race after another. Still I pulled you with babies and pouches packed with berries and the complicated lines that scratched across the surface of your warm wet walls. I am the charcoal. I am the chalk. I am the extension of my own frailty and fertility. I am a crown like the one that every king would love to wear. And yet look at me. Do you see me? I am the new king. Do you see me? I have stolen the monarchy. I have stolen the privileges. I have planted it on top of a beautiful flower and replaced every petal with a veiny rubber dick.
The Reliquary
How you choose to worship me will tell you a lot about who you are. The words that spill from your mouth when you sit in front of me. The way your eyes melt when you see my divinity. Could you let yourself be crippled so that I could heal you? You think that because I'm almost naked that I am an object? Or an idol? Am I a Buddha whose belly should be rubbed for good luck? No. I'm not almost naked. I am completely covered in the beauty and the mantle of your desire for me. You covet me. And yet I won't let you undress me. I did that myself. And all this is so simple and humble and boring. You are boring. You try to bore into my skin only to find that what's underneath is dangerous to you. Because what's underneath is my divine right. My God-like blood vessels and the tendons of my totem and the reliquary of my body that holds my magical bones. To touch me is to know God. But you could never touch me. Even if your crippled fingers could somehow find their way to my skin, all you would feel is the tightening in your chest and the pressure in your heart. You're too simple to be a saint. And I need apostles. That's why I'm here. I need those who will follow me into the black and white death of desire.
The Story
of Wet
I have been kept in a tower, locked up by myself, with my hair and my boredom growing madly. I am caged in a tale of infinite sorrow. I am the victim of jealousy. I am the victim of desire. I am a whimsical creature in a fantasy. And every part of me that you want the most has been crated and contained and imprisoned. I am wet inside this keyhole, but my hands can't seem to find how to unlock it. My hands are like Rapunzel, each one bound and captured. You would lead me to the oven to bake me and eat me. And I'm not saying that I wouldn't enjoy it. Because my own end should be mine and mine alone, and I want to be successful at finding it. Don't fool yourself, children who are half asleep. I am a story that leaks inside of you and floods your dreams with the twisted and demented ideas of men. It is men who would box me and trap me. It is men who would unravel me with ink. It is men who mismanage my lifetime and men whom I would slaughter if I were free.
Sharp
Corners
The filth and mire of the night can consume you like an open grave, but she defies the grave. The grave is a starving child with its mouth wide open. She will never feed it. She is not food. You can see that the darkest corners of the night have tried to have their way with her, but she is the warden of the night. She watches the locks and the cages and keeps the night from harming itself. She harms the night. And even though she holds the heavy equation that nullifies both sides, she is also the winding road, the Autobahn, the dangerous twist left and right that could leave you at the bottom of hell. She could twist your corpse to hell. And where would you be then? Would you still look at her the same way? Because I would argue there is no other way to look at her. She is every word in the dictionary. Every sentence that's ever been spoken. She is all the music at once, and yet you still try to sing along. You cannot sing along with her music. Her music is earth and soil and silt. Every corner of the planet will find her under your feet. You cannot stand up without her. She is every bridge and every road and every highway and every gust of air and every undertow. She is the quiet power that never goes away no matter how far down you sink into the molten center of the earth.
The Holy
Holy
There are very few for whom the bees will gladly let their lifelong work be stolen, but she is one of them. Her tongue and the honey meet like old lovers. The bliss that falls across her like a painted veil or a queen-sized sheet is arresting. It's as if a paint brush can make love to her, and she can make love to the pollinators. The rest of us can only watch. We can only serve her. We can bring to her the things she desires, but we can never be that thing itself. Even though her humanity drips from her lips and her chin, she is immortal. He has made her immortal. He is the God. He lifts the bees from their comb, and he presses patterns to her chest. And he pulls her hair back into the infinite abyss of what we cannot see and cannot know. She belongs to him and only him because he is her creator. In the name of the Father and the son and the holy holy.
Thief
Where is your soul? You who read this now, where is it? Check it. Make sure it's there. Because this one will steal it. Those eyes are double thieves, and they will sneak into you and rattle your bones and untangle your arteries and leave your heart upside down. Those eyes will nick your spirit and replace it with desire. You might live your whole life unaware of this horrible swap until the very end when you face the devil in the cowboy hat. When he shuffles up to you in his chaps and his boots and his beauty capturing machine. He will point himself at you and blind you and take your picture. Just like he took hers. She looks to steal your soul because her soul was stolen long ago. You can see it in this picture. The last time she had it. The last time she was human. The last time she had a chance to go to heaven. He took it from her with nothing but the click of a shiny button. But that made all the difference. Now she can't turn away. She can't be anything but the thief she is. Once she was broken but she was alive. Now she is forever exposed.
This is How We
Would Have Her
This is how he would have her. This is his vision of her. She is sunshine and egg yolk and a comic book bird. She is blinded by his craftsmanship. And she waits not for freedom but for the pointless power of flight.
The Devil
of God
It's the menagerie of kink. It's the carnival of illusion. It's a children's book. It's a hiding place. It's the deepest depths of hell. It's divinity caught in color. And the devil himself or God on earth has found a way to turn the dust into a prison of freedom. Every one of them is trapped here, and yet every one of them is loose and aloof. They skitter this way and that in the imagination of every poor lucky fool who sees them. They are like a virus that fills the mind and kills the boredom. And we lay back and take it. We are happy to be the victims of this scintillating sideshow of genius. As it grows in beauty and lust and power, it steals from us the ages that we have spent working equations and fiddling with numbers and pretending to remember the things that the philosopher said. It unzips us. It removes us. It finds its fingers into the wet hiding places. It makes love. It makes art. It makes our inevitable destruction enjoyable and oh so brand new.
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Vince Voltage
Artist Bio
Vince fell in love with photography while touring Europe with his band, Pussy Sisster. Being completely self-taught - Vince never studied photography - he did not even care to read his camera's manual.
On numerous trips to countries like Asia and North America he discovered travel photography, in which he still invests loads of time and energy. In recent years, to add to his portfolio, he concentrated on people photography and gained recognition in this field. Vince has worked for fashion labels and with international models of all walks of life. Today, his works can be seen at various exhibitions.