by Tomorrow's Man
Madison Notes, Day 6
Stream-of Consciousness Samhain Wishes from the Java Es Café, 11:11 A.M.
Your spices bubble in my middle, double my belly's times of trouble, demons dance through my membranes and treat my violet eyes as veil exits, here they come come come to the party, here they come! your dancing fiends with sawn-off skin and laughter-red to snake right up your pretty pale hide and regret your spine, they'll do more than simply puppet-possess, they'll teach you the bitter cough of quicklime your living lungs make!
Ah, when the veil's dropped and the evils arise, then, then! we will know finally the greatest folly we've ever followed -- we've always assumed that the demons are on the other side...but it is ours that is the perpetual day of dark! We are the evil awaiting release to the other side of the veil! We are the demons prancing like we have to pee, and over there they're over their heads when we sharpen our teeth to nerve-white with cold silver saws and come in dancing, eyes afire and wide!
Never the same place twice, never. Different walls rise and die and wonder wanes as it waxes like lake-tides across the pale complexion of another, and another; Different smells of chemicals and sweet decay, intoxicating and toxic breath eating the body; Different costumes in colors disguising the living from the dead, the born-bruised from the born again; Changing sweetnesses launch like pit bulls into bitter, heat leeching into the long throated lampreys of the cold; Flares once fire-orange crumple into a giant's quivering hand as dessicated brown; Time speeds seeds to explode futilely at a harsh winter hardpan, sawn-white teeth rattle rainy on the floors of mouths opened by stiffly invasive fingers of phobia, scarabs chew flesh into feces and feed the demons swelling in scores from the other side...
...they drop their dead to the ground to bring you fruit and flowers and running fowl so you may always feed again -- if you survive the crossing of the veil.
As your spices bubble, kiss at the veil this night, run your lips to its satin surface, let your mirror demon touch you, split, share, and find yourself never in the same place twice.
Jezebel! Salomé! Dietch en wah! Eachen gawaera Samhain!
Let your veil fall.
Madison Notes, Day 5
...partially live from the Inferno, the Angelic, the Paradise, the Maduro, the Come Back Inn...
After I shot a game of pool I shot my mouth off to the big shot who then came after me like a shot, so I shot out of there after landing a pot shot to his gut, and hid in a bar where I shot the shit with a self-centered hot shot on the hunting scene, a real master of buckshot, at whom I shot a shabby glance before finishing off my second shot of Bookers.
All in all, a pretty shoddy day.
Madison Notes, Day 4
So many roads, and I want to put my feet to the dirt and cracks of every one of them. I want to radiate like they do; I want to be the paths to adventure, suspence, glory. I want to be the reason for heavy breath across the mountain, dusky blue shades to the sky, smiles and kisses all around like motes of joy in a baby girl's laughter.
My feet want to be roads, roads upon roads. I want to roll as the land itself rolls, over the hill, under the river, and right round the sun...
If I had a pogo stick, I would be always jumping for joy.
Madison Notes, Day 3
Found my neck. Found most of my back, the part that wasn't carried off by the albatross. Found one working eye, one that still refuses to see. Found my sense of smell, good thing. Found most of all four limbs, no need to walk much anyway. Found a glass of water. Found a bottle of pills. Found my way to the lawn where I cried, happy.
What a weekend.
Madison Notes, Day 2
I look great in this skirt. The wig on me makes all women, trees, and mongrel dogs in a wide radius around me epitomes of beutiful, but I looked damned nice in this skirt.
10.26.02, 4:14 AM
It figures.
I have a rough enough ride from Boston to Cincinatti, then I have to get on a plane barely larger than one of my prime-rib bowel movements to make the jump from Cincinnati to Madison.
Fine...until I approach my seat, 4C, and find a behemoth of a woman ensconced in the plastic and metal and rayon that barely contains her bloated form within the plane. Yeah, I had a fattie next to me, enough so that the co-pilot had to correct the yaw and pitch and people sympathized. Don't blame me -- remember, I didn't make her that heavy, I'm just reporting it. Fine.
She didn't actually spill over into my seat. Much. I could live with it. (Note: It wasn't genetic -- she was eating a twinkie.)
Fine, sure, as I said. Then, to lighten my evening, a model-quality blonde traipses down the airplane aisle like a strip of fatless bacon on a meat lover's runway. Wow, hot. She gets to Row 4, looks at me and my bovine neighbor, then says to the moo-woman, "I'm sorry...I think you're in my seat."
The cow lows, "MmmmmI'm sorry, I'mmmmm supposed to be in 3D, not 4D" and makes to get up. The blonde-of-all-bendover-dreams says, "Oh, don't worry about it -- I'll just take your seat."
And she did; and the fat girl said to this woman, my non-neighbor who made Rebecca Romjin-Stamos look like Alouette, quote, "rock on."
Later, I spilled my drink on the fat girl. Not due to turbulence, and not because she was fat, nor was it because she kept me from sitting next to the porn-dream blonde who subsequently had her hands all over the dork in front of me in 3C for the entire flight. It was because she said, 'rock on.' That was stupid.
Very, very stupid.
She was lucky I was not in a bad, bad mood. I might have gotten honest.
A desert where you want desert, an oasis where you stop to drink, a humble kiss on your loneliness, a beer to quench a neural fire, a book to take you away or just a paragraph, or maybe just a sentence, or maybe, if you're very, very lucky, just a single word.
I found out this afternoon I have a case of strep throat. So I head home early, get to the train. Bastard pushes from behind me as the train pulls in, nearly knocking me to the tracks in his haste to squeeze on first. I followed him to where he sat, and breathed directly at him for the next twenty-three minutes. I nearly hyperventilated, but for almost a half-hour he got more of my bug-riddled co2 in his lungs than nitrogen.
Survival of the fittest my ass. Single-handed and sickly, I'll take your ass out.
The weak shall inherit the Earth.
Count off the stations and stops, always closer but never quite there, eight million ways to die hanging around and each one the size of a whale, take chances, enter the fray, say yes and do it to the mapped out insanity and hope to find something worth the effort at home, home, so hard to just be there.
Heads that come off and are filed with grey not red no not red red red. Save the children from blood, teach them money. Keep them safe and consuming. After all, it's only grey inside.
Another drink, he'll have another drink. And he'll loosen his tie. And, and then he'll talk to the blonde about his wife, his cold-fish wife. And then he'll have another drink. And then a button on his sweaty oxford comes undone, and he's coming undone. Then he turns to the blonde again, not seeing the change on her face. He tells her, he tells the blonde about his cold-fish wife and his penis, his too-large penis for his cold-fish tight wife. The blonde, she leaves, He's a tragedy. The blonde, she's soft and supple, soft and smells good, like his wife. He's on probation from soft. Hard's his only friend. And then, then pavement's his friend. And for all his teeth and intestines and extra-large penis, only the pavement is his friend.
Pig dug a hole. He put in snoot, snuff up something good. Maybe it was meat. I dunno, but pig, he wanted it real bad, he wanted it so bad he dug a big big hole.
It started with the mention of the rabbit, then the little brown boy in the desert. Even as she lay bleeding out red, she stared at something not in our burning room; whether the rabbit or the boy's tears, I do not know. I tried grabbing her feet again, oh yes, they were gone. I almost cried myself then, for what we'd done to the rabbit, and to the boy. Then she asked the only question she knew I could answer, Will you kill me now is what she asked. I lifted the sooty ball-peen hammer from the floor and almost dropped it. Blisters formed on my palm and fingers. The rubber grip had melted away in the heat. As I raised it over my head she smiled all big-and-blue-eyed, and in the distance I thought I heard the first echoes of building laughter.
I have a severed limb of lime that lies under every dream I've ever had come true.
Taste.
Gimmie little sugar.
Gimme squinchy face.
Gimmie cane and lime, sugar.
I walk with your wishes. In my pocket, next to the lurid green tennis ball of death, they are kept fuzzy-tickled and warm.
Gimmie a smile, gimmie a kiss.
Gimmie squinchy face.
The worm is dead and whispers nothing. It is time to drink him up now and dance together under the moon; this makes wishes come true.
Gimmie your hand. Touch my tennis ball. Squeeze that bulge.
But stay clear of my lime.
I've emptied my stomach of everything but a tough acrid-coffee tempered lining and decided to take on tomorrow full-storm. The only demon I had had left to fight was my morality, and last night I left it behind like a paper plate of raw beef in the Arizona desert.
My time has come. The roller-coaster is tipping down, a bowing caterpillar of suicidal metal. This is my frown, racing toward the rail-trough to be turned into a fleeting but brutal velocity smile.
Rain rain, go away,
Come again some other day
It seems Hell is falling from the sky,
I think a house just floated by,
Thought it may have been the pot,
But now I'm pretty sure it's not,
This storm is ripping up the town,
A streetlight just came crashing down,
We haven't lost our power yet,
But I wish my knees weren't wet,
High tide just knocked in the door,
There are starfish on our kitchen floor,
I think I'll go and check outside
See if there is anywhere to hide,
But as the street begins to fill,
I sure do wish I had some gills,
A teen is shouting, 'help me man!'
But there's some duckies who could use a hand
I saved the ducks, he drowned in the storm,
Because his shirt said 'I (heart) Korn,'
Now a boat is floating past my steps,
The man inside smoking a cigarette,
I shout, hey do you have a light?'
He rows on over, says good night,
So we sit inside taking drags,
Our feet wrapped in plastic bags,
The waters continue to rise,
But at least we're really goddamned high.
Such a perfect blue. You've caught the ocean and stolen it into a diamond world. You've taken the sky, and like a pied piper convinced it to swirl entirely about your nimble fingers. You've sung every sapphire into a waltz with every robin's egg (loving embraces to the "Blue Danube").
You've created such a perfect blue.
This is the color I want people to see
when they gaze for truth in my eyes;
this is the color of ecstasy.
I'm in a room that's eating up the oxygen
I'm waiting patiently for a requiem
I've gotten my foot caught in a gangrene trap
I looked at the sun once and never looked back
I climbed her mound and drowned in peace
I scratched at metal tasted release
I murdered the lamb, cried on its fleece
I drank its blood and prayed for peace
I left home with a thumb in mouth
I sucked a knuckle until love came out
I spilled my stuff on a hot highway
I walked away
I left so many including myself
I found a deadly friend on the upper shelf
I told jokes to a sword and giggled with glee
Then I promised the history of why why why
to everyone but me.
Why is my belief in what's right treated so similarly to Bruno's honor of Copernicus? Why is it so devastating to see our past in a monkey? How is it that the gun makes peace for so many? Why is money life's tool and God such a proud cudgel of truth? Is art so wrong? Is peace so shallow? Why is love only acceptable with conditons and lust an outlaw? Why do we bother with fear at all, why do we? Why has death lost its sweet realm of a safe end and become a politic of power? Why do we practice so much for war in the name of spirits and so little for love in the name of life? Why is plastic wrong, why is weather trivial, why is now so vital? Now is only now. Before I finish this, now will be gone forever, and hope will remain drowning in the shallows.
If I walked forty feet to my left, I would be a dead man.
The ocean is high, TS Kyle battering the coast at high tide. I can see hungry swirls of salt water churning the surface, ready to consume. All too human.
Forty feet and a fortuitous ennui. That is all that separates me from drowning to death.
Instead of walking into the ocean, I will have a shot of bourbon, a black cigarette, and wait quietly with plaintive strings for the ocean to come to me.
I'm an addict I am an addict I get nervous without it edgy edgy I tear the skin off my fingers I grind my teeth to grey sand on my chewed tongue I smoke treating cancer like a cold and drink with stronger and stronger spirits replacing my bloodstream I weep in corners on trains in my sleep (when I sleep) I lose more sleep the less of it I get I begin to see phantoms then I begin to talk to them then they begin to talk back then I try to tap them for release but they're not real silly not yet they're just phantoms mirages and I just chew and grind and cry leaking and drinking what I can get from my own skin
it is a poor substitute
6:51 A.M.
I camped in a tampon for sport it was warm I breathed heavy at first but got used to the fibers and white and I wrote a short novel about a dog I never had that my crazy neighbors ate anyway then I crawled from the cotton at dawn and had some strong coffee standing naked in this cool October sunrise.
I need cream. I need some cream.
I always seem to need some cream.
The line, follow it. To the gun. There, still, on the floor.Hurry - the line is drying. I put it together for you myself, out of my own dots and dashes. I didn't make you lick at it, consume it, like I did the ones before you. I just want you to crawl along, follow the line.
There. Was that so hard? Now pick it up. Yes, they're always heavier than they look. Do you know what? They're always quieter, too. It's never like on TV or in the movies, like that one you were in, not like that. In reality, life disappears with the sound of one hand clapping. Yes, that is the sound! Now you know, at long last. You can die zen. The sound of one hand clapping is a pistol shot. Trust me. You won't actually get to know, but trust me.
You are going to die zen.
I go out. I walk to the corner where the woman is already waiting. She is my height and we both have blue eyes, eyes the color of happy wounds. Her hair is black, long in front, short in back, exposing the second-best place on her body to kiss, if anyone could ever get that close. Her hair tapers forward into two tear-soaked points.
I put out my hand and what is left of him is placed into my hand. She drops what is left of him lightly from two inches by the unclenching of her bitten black fingernails.
I look at what is left of him, what his god left behind, inanimate in my open palm. She lets out a wail and turns. Her left heel is broken and she sounds like a hobbled skeleton as she runs into the hour of 2 A.M.
Poor Snuggles. He was a nice goldfish. Too bad his owner was a bit nuts, even if she did have lovely hair and a kissable neck. I would have to get her another goldfish.
I sighed and turned toward home. I opened my mouth and I ate what was left of Snuggles. The Chinese say goldfish are good for the immune system. I walked home quickly since it was very late. It was about 2:12 A.M.
I can smell every body. Not the people, not their laughter or perfume or political leanings or preference of pet. I can smell the sugars being turned to energy then secreted from their skins in thin layers of salt and ancient chemical signals, and here I am, a sailor in this too-small life-jacket, peyote-addled in shark-patrolled waters, and I'm surrounded by lighthouses that light light light up my flipping tongue like it was God's birthday cake, and as I feel another sharp tug from below, my knees too numb to know serrated teeth from undertow, I blow and blow, I gasp at candles, always a sucker for one of God's little pranks.
Black jacket, brown jacket, black jacket, yellow jacket, cardigan, sneakers, sneakers, nurse's shoes, sheakers, flats, brown hair, blonde hair, brown hair, black hair, brown hair, blue eyes, blue eyes, hazel eyes...
...hmm. These folks on the train put up a struggle when I tied them up and took the other things, but that was notihng like the writhing resistance I'm getting going for their eyes.
I'll have to write a poem about this some day.
There was a man. He stood at the edge of a space in the ground, a space that had been dug for him.
He stared down into a sheen of pretty brown without thinking to check for a mahogany reflection. He thought then that he sighed, he thought then that his left boot caused the tumble of a stone.
His hair, what remained, ignored the brisk breezes throwing leaves about the vale. He thought perhaps the breezes should be chilly by this time of year.
He glanced up at the red glow on every horizon. The red glow had been there for three weeks now. He glanced back down into the cool empty place in the earth. He wondered if he was the last human to have been so eloquently treated.
He thought then that he kicked at a small gray stone.
Did I burn my toast?
Why did my beer freeze again?
I miss Atari.
Will you dance with my Komodo?
Take my wife, said the funny man.
Twice it fried, the second time steamy.
You like mumps.
Did I toast my moon?
Why did my freeze bear rain not ice?
I miss ping pong.
Will you be my lizard, just for a minute?
Take this man, said the minister with a gun.
Twice he boiled, the second time with gravy.
You've got some lumps.
I've got some lumps.
Sugar, he wants, give him sugar.
Dream on, my dear; what are you wishing right now? Yes, yes, I know, it is what you had once, no longer have, gone not forgotten, a space decaying your heart.
Don't you worry - what you desired once always remains. It stays with you, the energy, even while your dreams move on to imagine flight from senses, from ground, from now to posess.
What you desired once, always remains. This is something you really should know since, likely, you desire often...and all of them, every desire, still resides within your present mind.
The hole always grows, so fill it.
HE'S GOT A BIGGER CAR AND THEREFORE A BIGGER THING THAN ME, WHICH MEANS HE IS MOST DEFINITEYL ALLOWED TO NEARLY END MY LIFE WITH HIS BIG CAR BECAUSE THAT IS THE SHOW OF SOCIAL GRACE NOWADAYS IN THIS TIME OF AMERICA SPIRALLING INTO THE TOILET OF 2003, THIS IS HOW WE LOVE, BY SPEEDING OUR NICE BIG EXPENSIVE UNAPIDFOR CARS BY AND EVEN THROUGH EACH OTHER IF NECESSARY BECAUSE KNOWING YOU'VE GOT A BIG CAR [I.E. VIBRATOR I.E. SUV I.E. MEN AND WOMEN BOTH] IS OF COURSE MUCH MORE STRATEGIC TO SURVIVAL THAN SAY SHARING AN EVERYDAY SMILE.
I remember you. Come near me again. I dare you.