by Tomorrow's Man
My that kid is crazy, makin' for the exit in all those layers of stolen clothes. Don't he know about those security tags on all them clothes? Must have nine, maybe eleven layers on, all of em clipped tight with then security tags that are going to explode ink all over everywhere but mostly him as soon as he steps past my station and over the magentic security barrier, that dark grey rubber strip before the frost doors tat so many people walk over so nonchalantly during my day. Sure, I'm supposed to stop him, being the head security gurard and all. I know. And that's gonna be a whole lotta ruined clothes, prolly a thousand dollars' worth easy, when tried to run on by, but BOOM! there's gonna go them cartidges with all their weird shades of spattery permanent ink. But I'm an old man...and this kinda entertainment don't happen to me just every day. If the missus were still alive I'd sure have quite the tale for her when I got home to her burnt meatloaf, quite the tale, and she'd laugh a lung up right around her True 100 as she tried to finish her afternoon shot of Dewar's. Maybe I'll tell Peter Falk when Columbo comes on at six, or maybe Mannix I can tell him later, cos here comes the kid and this is gonna sure be curious, and no one really minds anymore that I talk to the television at night, or even in the day anymore.
That kid sure is gonna turn into one exploding rainbow. He sure is.
"Listen," I told the alligator, "You need to work on your elocution. None of that plastic-Gina-Davis-mask flapping."
"Guaaarrr...." It grumbled. God, the swamp was hot. Too hot for me but it's okay I suppose for alligators.
"No," I told the beast, "Pronounce! Rll the vowels out from around your tongue and hyperextended jaw." My tee-shirt was wrapped around his scaly foreleg like a band, you know, like a group. Banded together. It was, though. Because I was teaching the alligators. No more destruction of their habitat, no Siree. There are plenty enough golf courses and farting old people and condos with farting old people and golf courses in Florida.
"Gerrr...gerrtt...." The alligator skacked. He was trying, I had to give him credit.
"Better, much better!" I told him, sipping at the lasy soupy backwash of my 20 oz. bottle of diet Mountain Dew. "Now try the whole sentence!" I jumped up, my bare ass thowk!ing out of the Everglade mud as my feet sunk in. He was close!
The alligator snapped off a curious roseate spoonbill that had strangely landed on the lizard's head, right between his eyes, then cleared his throat, a sound that fell somewhere between a chainsaw and an engine-parched Studebaker trying to start. As the spoonbill flew grakking to more socially amiable climes, the alligator tried again: "Gggrrgget aaaawwwt rrrrve m...mmm...mmmwwrrr, mryyy sssthsshwommppp!"
"Yes! That's it, that's it!" I exclaimed like a head cheerleader. I had no idea how the developers would take to an alligator that spoke workable English with a lisp, but that wa sa worry for them not me. "Let's refine, refine, yes, but let's go now and teach the others!"
The 32-foot monster let me mount his back then swam us into the depths of the Everglades, toward the Okeechobee, where in a few hours we would be teaching ESL to about a thousand of his kin. I wished I had more Mountain Dew with me, but that would have to be a worry for later.
Kitchen lights are almost too harsh for something like this, there's no subtlety, no nuance, but I don't have time to get romantic.
I push it in. It's a tight fit, maybe too tight, though. I pull it out again and just hold it in my hands for a second, re-positioning it for another thrust. I think about rubbing butter or something all over it; some lubrication could get it in there more easily, for me at least, though I wasn't sure if it should touch all the way in the back like that.
When I push it in again, the sound of rubber-soled feet bouncing across the countertop is almost exciting -- it's so big that I'm pushing all three of us across the table!
After two or three more thrusts I finally get almost the whole thing in...but it's uncomfortably jutting into the back, and there's still too much pale flesh that simply won't fit in there.
Forget it. I'm running late. I guess I won't be able to microwave the turkey. I'll just bring a cherry pie instead.
Slappy Thanksgiving!
Just when you thought life was beautiful and existence could barely stand to get any more spectacularly cool without causing your brain to aneurism in apoplectic joy, you read about how munitions dumps used to be placed near hospitals back in the 'old days' of war. So it was considered subhuman we guess, animal if you will, to kill those you'd already maimed, and doctors, and female nurses. There was the Geneva Convention for a while too, which tried to keep sanctioned human slaughter at an eye-bleedingly ironic level of decency.
We've no longer got such worries these days. With nowhere to hide, there is nothing to fear. God's original fury -- No One Is Innocent -- has finally come to bear. The New War decrees there are no civillians, the New War decrees there are no more innocent, the New War decrees there are no ignorant, there are no feeble, there are no precious or peaceful, there are no perfect, there are no regretful or honest or ashamed or contrite, women and children - no longer first, but just die by roulette like the men. [We, the Race, used to not kill women and children, you know, survival of the species and all -- that precept, too, has fallen by the wayside as we take our advice from Lemmings and drive toward oblivion, headlong.]
The only ones left holding megaphones on each facet of our spinning jewel called Earth are the ructious prophets and preachers, proselytizers and paranoids, and as their religious war brings ever more irony to bear, their great vampire armies around the world flex their muscles, hungry to spill blood, secure in their faiths that we are all sinners.
And I now find myself one of the weak. I am one of the helpless. I am a victim of God. For by giving them this power to render innocence obsolete, by doing nothing of influence but weep and dream and wake each morning to wonder why I'm happy that the sky has not gone a smoky, deadly titian, I have proven the existence of their God.
We have wiped out innocence, as God wanted it to be. We are all of one religion now -- Despair. We have made the Earth a slate altar of evil, all six billion of us, together, and now we all pray in the name of God together, in the One Religion, Slaughter. We have traded hope and peace for jealousy and fear, and we can praise Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, Mohammed, and the whole great murder of annihilating gods together, all of us hand in hand as the fires fall, together as one voice, one race, one creed, finally, one worship of the one true God, Death.
This week, give thanks for dead turkeys, say goodbye to Hollywood, and belly up to the bar for a double. It's last call for alcohol, and we're about to hear the click of the final pin of the airlock as it opens wide, delivering us all with a quick sweep into the deepest vacuum of space, universal flotsam, barely noticed, flesh garbage, reflected briefly in the sun; galactic human trash, all of us, as He wanted it to be.
Praise God.
Intricacies of this scene are backlit by the one flickering candle. Sandalwood. The windows are closed, and it is an oven in the house. But we're outside. Me and her. And the candle. Just a tawny, yellowish taper. Dinner party length, almost gone. Almost. When than damned strong flame finally snuffs out, I can release my attention from the dark shadows and sounds of the nearby stand of snow thick forest. The snow, so cold. Then, at the death of the flame, I can stop focusing on the bright full moon, and the norther cold, and the control, control. I can let go. I can focus on her glowing eyes, her full-moon luminous skin, pale green in the snow illuminated beneath the Aurora Borealis, though I could be hallucinating.
When that candle takes its last gasp, I can let go.
It's been hours, hours of waiting for immolation, suffocation, extinction of a single flickering flame. Soon though, I'l let go.
I smile down at her wide open eyes. She hasn't blinked or moved in such a long time. But soon, soon, I will let go, I will begin to let go.
HAPPY AS A FOUR-BIT OKLAHOMA WHORE IN HORSESHIT HOLY HELL ARE YOU KIDDING ME, SURE I AM ALL THE WAY UP FOR IT!!! SKANK ME UP, DADDY-O, GET ME SOME LOOSELY PINK THEN DO NOT ENTER 'COS OVER HERE WHEN MY BUCKLE HITS THE PEW I'M GONNA BE MAKIN' ME SOME GOOD OL' TEXAS PURPLEHAIR, WOOOO HOO!
Garbage gone, the Methane Man, pickup truck gives her sugar gum, here in my pockets is all this on the table, curveball, and Q-tip, steak!, a broken stile, big pockets I've reconciled with the Big Pocket Guy in the Sky, little table, he got though, so here instead's so Cisco, a berry toast, me to you, to good garbage made allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
gone.
Fables from a madman. What's wrong with these, with these? No, nothing, no. This is close in here, this head this skull white red-full dome of WHICH I AM the Guardian. This is close in here, close to the truth I am telling you, filtered only by what your mind filters my tongue from wagging. Insanity is not a CONDIMENT you people, making your judgement SANDWICHES, insanity is a COP-out. So, so, just go call off your bears and your teflon penetrators because I got teeth too, and no ONE or BEAST will get to the dome of TRUTH, not through my death they won't! NO ONE. NO BEAST. Do I make my unself clear? Kill your own bears, pull up your chairs, don't let's fight about what you don't know. Let's have us a storytime instead. Let's have us a fable. Let's have me tell you a story. Let's, let's, us, have a bit of the truth now, shall we? Why don't we.
Edgar went to the store. Edgar sniffed a wildflower or two on the way there. Edgar entered the grocery, and picked up a loaf of Wonder bread. Edgar walked to the counter. Edgar removed a Lahti L-35 9mm semiautomatic from his jacket and Edgar then pulled its trigger, killing the seven people in the grocery. Edgar put the hot gun back in his jacket, and then Edgar removed his wallet. Edgar threw one of his many hundred-dollar bills on the counter. The wallet hurt him, when he had to sit down, as he carried it in his back pocket, and he still had over one hundred hundred-dollar bills to get out of his life. 151 left, to be precise. It was harder for him when all four pockets had had over 250 100-dollar bills in each one, but it was slowly and surely getting easier. Soon, Edgar would have none of them left. But before then, he was going to go home and make himself a pastrami sandwich. He had to hurry; he had already begun boiling the pastrami, and lord knows he did not want to start a fire.
damn.
so be it.
i was entertaining a stream of something but I do
not
remember
if it was loveorpiss or lustorpoetry
cos
i'm already inhere
writingabout it
damnedwriters
always
REMEMBERING
the way wereally prefer not todo sowell, eh?
ihaveanidealetsgowatchSurvivioror
Somethingaboutsomeguynamed
Raymondorsomethingimeansinceeverythinggetsmovedandentropy
Happens
Eveninprimetimeyesitdoesthesignofyourdemisemiss
Americahereitisprimetimesdoesinevitablydissolveout
Fromunderneath
Yourgoldplatedfingersbutheylookatthe
Bright
Side
At
Leastyouwon'thavetodothascrubscrubscrubyou'renamedon'tbe
FrailtydoittYEAH?
no one will ever read methismethismethismewhatimeanmethiswhatever.
so be it.
Captions I like to make up images for in my head when bored in a black-out:
~ He had no idea the pink would hurt the way it does.
~ Thirteen Dogs. Thirteen Dogs. Paté.
~ Only once has this ever happened before, and that was to you tomorrow.
~ STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!!! Okay, go.
~ Get that out of there and put it back in your mouth.
~ Boy caught by fish.
~ Indy, why does the floor move?
~ Any moment now, when the sugar explodes.
~ How many pianos can you fit in there, anyway?
~ That half is not my monkey.
~ Deeper. Deeper. Deeper...oops.
~ Yes. Now just add the 'n' and it will happen C...r...o...a...t...o...a...
~ Twice, with this burger.
~ Eyes of bacon.
~ Seep. Seep. Wet. Wetter. Mr. Miagi.
Beyond what you know, what you consider knowledge and faith, beyond what you fear as evil, deadly, or corrupting, beyond what you desire, be it love, money, sex or something in the shifting endlessness these things posses as butterfly-wing'd areas of gray, beyond the missing link of consciousness late at night that separates breathing, waking life from the tangibility of dreams, beyond all that makes life more than just the sport of flesh trapping electricity, I survive knowing that by the time I get there -- by the time I make it to Beyond -- there will probably be a McDonalds there or at least two Starbucks', and I'll be able to shake my head there, with a slow futile smile as well.
As if the Grail itself lay buried in that sand, he row his small body toward the small rolling dunes and dove in, digging. I felt yeah thirsty enough to die, and it was far too hot for me to move; so I just watch his panting body drive headlong into the sand. I closed my eyes, hoping, finally, to drift off to a deep black sleep where it would be cool, so cool, in the darkness.
My peace was not to be. I had only just closed my eyes when I heard his lips begin smacking around his treasure. He ran out quickly, and the barking began again. He turned to look at me, his small, shaky terrier snout covered in kitty litter. So disgusting. Why did I ever agree to dog sit for people? Disgusting animals, made doubly so in the brutal heat of August.
"That's disgusting, Pippy." I spat at the cur. I pulled myself lugubriously from the couch, sweat cooling across my bare back and ass, but only for a moment. Sweating hotly, again. I finally headed for the fridge for another beer.
At least I wouldn't have to clean my litterbox, for another week.
Princess, come here, I have a toad for you. Only a bit like the last one. Sure, kiss him. You have nothing to lose, since you have nothing to believe. Kiss his moist self. Just like your friends you hate. Just like the scavengers, so many countries away. Hate them, kiss them, get yourself a destiny. Look at his drying grey self there, thirsty and waiting for some moisture. Kiss him, before he dies. Save him, save him, save him your ugly, ugly prince. Here comes true love, Princess; It can live on land. It can live in water. But here, trapped by you and your brutal grin, it can't live without your kiss.
I might have to do it. It's the nausea. The sleeplessness, worrying even in my dreams. I need to need to ask him ask my doctor says he says alleviate the stress by whatever I can do to alleviate it if I don't want to start on drugs I think he means exercise or prayer or I think he means daily drugs, like daily drugs to take every day. So, so I need to do whatever I can do else, you know, cos drugs are bad and just say no and all right. So I need to do what you know what the President said I have to do because drug addiction is bad and I believe the guy in charge and his wife after all just like they're the best of us of course they're the cream of our crop so I love them even though they are not President and his wife anymore but she said say NO so I love her now cos she loved me so I have to do whatever I have to do to avoid drugs really really good really good drugs.
Turn me on. Go ahead. Email me. Phone me. Send me a perfumed letter. Write me a sonnet. Sing into the desert in my honor. Shed your blood into censers and burn off your life in worship of me. Die whispering my name. Go on. Go ahead. Turn me on. I dare you.
A Ship, A Woman, A Man, Me, and God
A ship that defines death treads water where no sharks would survive for food, she sits on a vinyl seat above steel tracks molded a million miles from where her mother made her a whore to pay for potatoes, he steals fifty-seven cents out of the pockets and eyes of a dead man to satisfy a hunch that leaves from the space behind his teeth in a whine of hunger greater than the desire to crawl back to the womb, and my midnight ride takes me places that God constantly threatens to wash away, but luckily, for me, God has always been a bit lazy.
I've bee drinking quite alot. Getting my brain matter a bit stir crazy. Trying to translate thought into empathy. Poetry. Yeah, poets, yeah, we know, this ability is much like loving the sensitivity of the military.
Drink a bit more. Translate brutality. Into empathy. Take my words. Make them to you, and then to feel what I want you to feel through my filters.
This is my language. This is what I share with dedicated murderers. This is what I hope I can use to grasp a thump of your heart, without the voidy echo of the moments of the passed bullet.
Effervescence doesn't make a difference when your only chance turns out to be your last. You'll never sense it, never be able to acutely foretell when that bubbly certainty hallmarks your decay; you can stay blank, think blind about everything but it, it, that building gas, but thinking does not make certainty go away.
Brilliant trash, brilliant trash, like Jackie's, and Jennifer's, and Julie's. Brilliant, like golden dappled. This sun climbing higher, brilliant trash in the morning. It is a candle flame, too low for heat, but plenty enough to make a burn. Like plastic and aluminum, like textile and melting snow, not too high, but it burns.
Brilliant. It burns. Be matchless, unmatched, unaflame.
Brilliant.
11:11.
Make a wish.
Get one up, one down, one here to me. Get one sticky, sticky. Get one closer, then push it away, the get one more to come. Get one tight, and get one babied, get one never gotten before. Get one red and get one less red, less red than the sky's summer dawn. Get one now. Get one when one needs you, get one now. Get one the One. Get one going, never to return, and get one always coming. Get one never thought to be gotten. Get one in the news, on the internet. Get one you found late that night. Get one that had given only six digits before, and give that one seven. Get one in a steam train, if you can find the steam. Get one quickly! Get one, and make it slow, slow. Get one one last time -- and then get that one again.
One step. Take one step.
Take one step, and never come back across the line again.
Take it. Take it, before you are pushed. Someone will push you.
Take the step. Be proactive.
Take it.
I had a dream last night that my penis was about two feet long, but looked like one of those half-inflated balloons that you use to make balloon animals. Also, as I rubbed it apparently in an effort to masturbate, it kept getting shorter.
I wonder if this dream weas caused by all the talk of foreskin the other night, or if it was just a result of having a peanut butter cookie, so soon before bed.
I am the vocal cords of Nina Simone. I am the Easy-Bake Oven of Sybil. I am the once-engorged clitoris of Eva Braun. I am Marilyn Monroe's last discarded brown-glass bottle of peroxide. I am just the left sneaker of a pair of torn and bloody Keds. I am the only Tylenol in the bottle not coated in cyanide. I am the waking earthquake beneath the Adirondack fault line. I am Saddam's bad dream from last night, the one about the bombs and Allah's penis. I am the tissue still twisted around Grace Zabriskie's finger. I am your memory of the blood splashing. I am the microscopic creature in the large intestine of the Rhesus monkey that thought that the smooth, warm, pink flesh poking in and out at me might be a nice place to live; I swam through its defence of sticky white just to inhabit mankind, and mankind, I love you.
Three cups of coffee. Two diet Mountain Dews. Three more coffees, two iced, one cappucino. Chocolate. Ephedra tea. Chocolate. More coffee.
I'll be a cricket in a skillet by six tonight.
fryjumpfryjumpfryjump
I feel a bit jittertertrerjitterjirjitteryyyyyjertyrttteryjittyyyy.
Phone rings. She says in my ear:
"I am sitting here. I should have gone out. I went jogging instead, it felt good. But, now I am home. ALONE. I hate being alone. But, when I am with people...then, I want to be alone. I hate sitting in this ugly quietness. It is so spooky. Those sick, twisted humans...sleeping...not worrying about thier creations....and what they've done to thier precious innocent minds. That one upstairs--talking on the phone, calming down her fears of being ENOLA.
"ENOLA! I like that.
"It is scary for us, y'know. Being alone isn't right.. One is supposed to be touched, teased, provoked, assaulted, nagged all the time! We need constant stimulation. One way. Or another. way. It's tough.
"That touch. Augh. Yelling, crazy, panicked. Crazy man, weak woman. WHyy. Those fucking human beings. Hue man. The colors of rage in a man...I hate it. I've seen it. I love art, y'know? Maybe I was forced into it? Loving hues. Hue man hee hee hee. They snore and it's all good, right? It is fine. For them it is all okay. One hue man talks to himself, I hate it. He is crazy. Real crazy. Like, tonight I could hear a hue man in the bathroom standing there whispering "everyone thinks it's normal, it's not normal," and on and on. Who is he talking to?!
"Ped is so crazy. I never could say no. I did not wanted to. I know i did. I was too afraid. "It's normal. It's ok. Don't be afraid." Its ok its ok its ok its ok its ok its ok Its ok Its OK its ok ITS OK IT IS OK. How many was that? How many can I handle? My blood red puffy lips, all sore and swollen...now becoming a new size. Whats a raging color to do? Do. Do do do. That's all it does. They just do, y'know. They just do. One-tracked mind. or something? right? No more, please. GOD! He wasn't there. It hurt! No protection.
"Freud talks about orally stimulated individuals...oral fixation, is that correct? Oh psychology. I love our minds...pha-q! I hate them. Hue mans, I just do. They are so fixated on one thing. It is so messed up. Female. Small girl, too little, but good enough, for people to...to....
"ARRRRFF! It is 2316 or 11:16 p.m. I should have gone out. I have been going out quite a bit lately. It's good for the numbness that I desire so much frequently, recently, always in my life on earth. Sad blue twisted eyes. Sad, so sad. I'm sorry, so sorry. I could forget, if I could, just for an hour or two, it's better than being here all ALONE. So scared. Scarred. Scars beneath my skin. They can not be seen. Just let me escape for 2 hours....i need an exit...do you want to go out? No, don't go out. Don't come out. Stay stay stay. Tee hee. I'll handle me.
"Child, with big blue eyes, small red pouty mouth, white skin with rosy cheeks, small body, round buttocks, cute, pure, innocent, with precious gold in her hair? She does not exist. ALL FILES HAVE BEEN ERASED.
"Turn it around you cant.
"Otay. This is enough out of my head. You go to bed. I need bed. I think I need bed. Before I cry.
"Cry baby hee hee. Bye."
She hangs up. I go back to bed.
I am not ready to be old.
I am not ready to worry about my colon and my bald spot. I am not ready to accept my next sex as weeks away instead of hours. I am not ready to think about taxes and faxes over video and board games. I am not ready to never spend seven more minutes in the closet, or spin the bottle again. I am not ready to watch football without the prospect of playing it, live. I am not ready to listen to a bass line -- without the prospect of playing it, live. I am not ready to think of graying hair and sore muscles from waking in the morning, instead of what color to dye my hair today and oh-what-a-night-before.
I am not ready to not fear death.
I am not ready to think of any children other than me. I am not ready to go to bed and it means to sleep. I am not ready to need tv. I am not ready to not 'get' music. I am not ready to understand that politics make no difference, or that government goes far beyond the Government. I am not ready to rant at being left out or left behind, instead of being left of center, or left in the lerch. I am not ready for money to be a curse. I am not ready to be cynical about war, or love. I am not ready to think about teeth decaying and chronic bad breath, unless it is what I taste inside another.
I am not ready to push so hard, just to stay the same.
I am not ready to be old.
So instead, I'll just be young.
Twenty-Three Thousand, Five Hundred Feet Over Indiana...
“Don't look so grim, son. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
Why did this old man just say that to me? Is he trying to scare me? Is this some nasty ploy the elderly are using to interfere with the joys of the youthful?
Of course I have my whole life ahead of me. If I die three seconds after typing the last word of this sentence, I had my whole life ahead of me until that moment.
“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” This is a phrase that should only ever be said to people over 80. Why damn the young to thinking about their whole lives ahead of them? It’s hard enough just keeping the engines attached to the wings of this plane through my sheer mental energy!
Madison, WI., Day 8
never get confident that you are sure about what is going to happen, never assume you've got control of anything, never believe that as bad as it is it can't get worse, because something, at some point, will prove you wrong.
nothing you know is true, and everything you assume can be suddenly forbidden.
life exists to shake confidence. hatred. we do it to ourselves. self-entropy. we are decaying ourselves away.
simple: everything you want has power over you.
complicated: knowing what you want before you give it that power.
understanding this, well, that there is where we get our gentle insanity. that, that is simple.
fighting it, that, that is complicated.
confidence, superiority, self-esteem, intelligence, society, masculinity, chivalry, liberation, emancipation, opinion, tolerance, patience, desire.
we're still decaying away.
Madison Notes, Day 7
Somewhere between Madison and Appleton, WI.
Tracks trundle across the highways and on the radio every boy needs a lover, they're younger and younger, and for the first time in my life I can't remember the last time I cried, just like I'm not doing now, not for my friend beside my shaking self, not for the cows and horses spackling the car's windy riptide, not for the miles of dead grass sighing dryly toward the miles of dessicated trees, not for this big blue sky.
I can't remember the last time I cried...and I can't even cry for that, though something in me says that, just maybe, I should.