by Tomorrow's Man
I skipped to the Lou, my darling, traipsing like a mincer through fields of marigolds, flowers touched out to my thighs and kissed sweet cream toward my spine, crowning me in gold glory and felling me to the Earth in a twirly, swirly ecstasy, I can smell you, Springtime, I can smell you coming like a princess with emeralds in her eyes, I can smell you coming for me in my field of marigolds, and I'm waiting!
Guilty Pleasures
I like baloney because when I roll up three pieces it is like a groovy swirled hot dog.
I like rose petals because when I put one against the roof of my mouth my tongue can rub silk all day.
I like Schlitz because my grandfather let me sip his under the old Oak tree in the broiling July heat of 1976, us sitting there quietly on the bench he'd made.
I like wearing platform heels because it's cool to be taller.
I like sleeping naked just in case she wants to awaken me with an oral smile.
I like writing poetry because sometimes it's more satisfying to just knock singles into left field than to constantly try to swing for the bleachers.
I like Alan Dean Foster because it would be super to have a pet flying dragon.
and
I like Kid Rock, because no other multi-millionaire platinum-selling musician has ever before or since written a hit featuing props to Dab beer.
Rock, Bob; rock.
I crawled from the sea, squatted on the beach, licked at a private part or three, walked a bit in the warm sand, stopped, licked a little more, scratched a different kind of itch, waddled up to the taco stand, and ordered two to go, extra spicy; extra spicy.
If DeSoto hadn't found the Mississippi, I would have you know.
I would've. Really.
DeSoto. Big show off.
"I'm today's suicide. Stuck in a state of being unable to fall asleep and not wanting to wake up. Every passing minute makes me feel more like a shattered knee-cap sandwich. I might as well throw all of my trust, dignity, faith, and hope in the fireplace. This house is cold. This state is cold. That state is cold. The world is turning to shit, and everything I believe in along with it.
"Time for some new beliefs. I believe I'll dust off the old razor blade. Maybe, just maybe, I'll wait for Monday. Or maybe I'll just wait for one more full sixty-second minute of bad news.
"I've spent so much time complaining about the worthlessness of other that I never stopped to think that complaining about it does not make me valuable. To wit: I have never, in 33 years, left someone's life better than when I entered it. I leave a swath of cynicism, anger, despair, distrust, and loathing. I don't even engender fear; I'm not that powerful.
"I'm just one more second on a worthless clock that mindlessly ticks out the moments toward nothing."
The boy stopped speaking and lit a cigarette. He touched his tender, bloody knees. Again, he began to cry.
Stay tuned for a banana from Batman, and his radish, Robin. Salad days are here. or there.
I don't know so don't ask me, I'm in with the avocadoes.
Trickle down the runway ladies and gentlemen, strip the clothes and let me see you, so beautiful just the way you are, the way you really are, let me take you in, not to judge, but simply to cry great tears and applaud you, so beautiful, just the way you are.
It took me eight and a half minutes to get my automatic gossip under control, just a matter of grabbing the exploding sides of my cabbage head for long enough to lash out my tongue and wrap it round enough times to hold all that scattery thought in, a quick staple down the middle and I'm silenced, finally, tongueless and as boring at the mouth as any tedious canadian.
Legs and legs
everywhere
legs and teeth
biting at bullets
waiting to breach
alongside the babies waiting
between legs legs
legs of our mothers
and sisters and lovers
spreading wide
to show liquid love to the world
but all we see
with our solitary
blind
eyes
are breeching
bullets.
Tears fell from the missionary, as his pockets were bared and the foibles of his sinning soul fell sticky to the rain-soaked red cobble. "Alive in God and with his passion!" he cried, "Alive in God and with his passion! With my hands I contrived to do fate's bidding!" And with that he was smote dead by the Roaming Ave, a job I'd envied since the first time I'd witnessed that sanctioned, rogue executioner wandering by the children's park in Cambridge.
Perhaps it is odd to wish to be a State's Executioner at such a callow age as seven, but I was, alas, an odd boy.
It is now a quarter-century later that I realize that the prohibition of the positions held by the wandering Executioners means nothing to me, and my true happiness -- now twenty and more years in denial -- lies on the other side of the courage to don a black mask and helf a sharpened dual-blade, then head out onto the streets as confidently as God's very bidding; a job application awaits my signature.
I feel shot to hell on the tip of a rusted bullet. Everything feels, even a grain of sand, even your shoe. Everything feels, even a blue sky and a stone.
Even these forty trillion snowflakes conspiring to break my back.
I feel too, snowflake. Mostly though, I feel shot to Earth, on the tip of a rusted bullet, floating through hell like a snowflake.
More waking dreams.
This time I was walking down Harvard Street at 3, with the bright sunshine itself shivering in the single digits.
As my steps fell in front of each other, I grew increasingly sluggish, as if a hypothermic sleep were stealing upon me. My shows got heavier and my arms sagged, though my spine stayed survival-straight.
The cold sunshine got brighter, almost white.
Then I saw my best death. As I passed a skeletal maple jutting from the brick sidewalk to my left, I imagined, in the course of one step, my body transforming -- from my leading toe to my trailing heel -- into a loose pillar of sand, sand that quickly disintegrated and swirled up into the frigid wind without pain, without worry, with just a quiet whispering end that might make some eyes cry.
I recently realized that there is no one on this Earth like me.
Six million people. Characteristics shared like cold viruses and baseball cards. But me? I'm a solo.
I'm a solo.
I am not a good person because I smile when I stop to smell a flower.
I am not a good person because I help an old woman carry her groceries onto then off of the trolley.
I am not a good person for letting a pregnant woman have my seat on the bus, nor for collecting and retreiving her spilled purse from the muddy floor.
I am not a good person for saying 'sir,' 'ma'am,' 'thank you,' and 'please.'
I am not a good person because I have never raped, robbed, beaten, or killed.
I am not a good person for praying for the world to hold together another day as I try to fall into another fitful sleep.
(This damned page, this damned site, and this damned world wide web are none long enough for me to list all of the reasons I am not a good person.)
Signs of a Stroke
If you experience:
Sudden numbness, or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body;
Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding;
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes;
Suddent trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance, or coordination;
Or sudden severe headache with no known cause,
you may be experiencing the symptoms of a stroke; or, it's just Valentine's Day.
Wishes and congratulations today to to Mr. and Mrs. Brainbook for issuing their second wee pamphlet (extra special hugs to Mrs. Brainbook, as we know she's the one doing all the distribution while Mr. Brainbook sits there reading trade magazines and smoking cigars).
We pray for all its pagenumbers and paragraphs to be in their right places.
Just remembered a bit of a waking dream, a true surreal moment I had this past Saturday morning. I was walking down State Street in Madison, WI., around 10:00 AM, having just come from the State exams on campus. I trekked up, then down Bascom Hill, panting out crystals in the single-digit frigid air.
I was listening to Radiohead, "Everything in Its Right Place." The last line began repeating: "Dinosaurs roaming the Earth...." I don't know why, but I heard Thom Yorke say "Butterflies" instead of "Dinosaurs." All four times.
Butterflies roaming the Earth...
I turned my head up (chin had been in hollow of throat, protecting Adam's Apple from icy air) and stared into the display in the main window of the UW Bookstore: An equatorial theme, featuring calendars of butterflies, day-keepers of butterflies, throw pillows and pens and bookbags featuring butterflies. I stopped, stunned, of course. A quick head shake then I moved on, headed toward the Capitol and inevitably the Come Back Inn for a toasty Bloody Mary.
My head was down again when she said, "Excuse me." as I passed the Wisconsin House of Cheese. I looked up, startled, as a young woman, obviously a college student, jogged on toward me. She was dressed as a big blue butterfly. Normally someone dressed to do a promotion for MSN 8 would not greatly arouse my interest, but this was just number two of what I knew would be three events. I was destined to make a wish.
I made it on MLK Boulevard. I made it just after seeing a butterfly flitter, flitter by. I actually followed the damned thing back and forth across the street because I couldn't believe it. It was 10 AM on January 8; it was 4 degrees outside.
I had no idea how it was alive; but I made a wish.
Loss via bombs from the sky. Loss via chicanery and lies. Loss via a warm, hungry candle. Loss via cowardice. Loss via divorce. Loss via death. Loss via lack of trust, lack of patience, lack of trust.
The seconds jusp by like frogs off a hotplate, and mostly we just watch them flicker and fly. But there are those which will burn your lap, or melt your clock, or distract you from the next moment, the one that will bring our loss.
There are a thousand and forty easy ways to hate what you've done, what you've become, and your well of self-pity. Instead, you should hate yourself for not turning off the hotplate.
Then, you should turn it off.
Flight Notes, Madison-Boston layover: Cincinnati, Ohio
It's not so bad. The connecting flight loading, on time, that's good. Being out of the tiny fuselage that made me feel like a sliver of tobacco in a Virginia Slim, that's good. Being away from the 280-pound fellow next to me who smelled like the air freshener one would use way too much of to cover the stench of a dead buffalo draped across the coffee table, that's pretty good. Being able to stand and stretch and have a cigarette, these are all good.
But really, being away from the dead-buffalo perfume guy, that's the best.
Really.
Texticity1001
Text, text, text, words, words, words.
How do I know what I am writing is what you are reading?
How do I know what I'm meaning is what you're feeling? How can I ever know what you're feeling unless I've felt it too?
The letters are for the hand and eye; the worlds are for the brain and tongue; the sentences are for the heart; and the paragraph, the Gestalt, is for the soul, the magic, the invocation.
Every time I write a word, you awaken.
Every time I write a sentence, you feel.
Every time I write a paragraph, I feel an angel opening her eyes.
Everytime I write I feel a new angel opening her eyes.
Texticity #1000
Begin on a whim.
Continue on a whim.
Walk to the wall, and throw this thousandth hunk of meat over to be devoured, and I do hope savored.
Smirk at any idea of The End, and make them drag you away, laughing.
Breton was correct, far outside of his time: the imagination is indeed on the verge of recovering its rights, and this makes me quiver.
War is coming, death is coming, Sundays of despair and half-masted flags are coming, prohibition, censorship, paranoia, and fear are coming, foaming steeds bleeding over the hills.
We have to start imagining, people. We do not have to let them do this to us. We have the ability to think, dream, create, and ACT; this generation does have the ability to avoid being defined by a [sic] 'great' war. This generation, we at home by our radios listening to the approaching rumble of the bleeding steeds, we have choices.
Road Notes: The Thin Air Over Cleveland
I've got an arm that's much colder than the other arm and that could be due to razors along skin or sunfires bellowed by Satan right into the creaky, leaky window of this old jet airplane or it could be the rum playing the gin in a rugby scrum in my bloodstream, or it could be my thoughts of my friends having a baby next week while I'm seven miles high over a soon to be war-torn world causing me this mental affliction, or it could just be something,
something,
spooky.
At this altitude -- cold arm, leaking window, bloodstream scrum and shivering drink aside, everything is spooky.
Sometimes you need me like a rusty needle; sometimes you need me like a hole in your head; sometimes you need me like a fish needs a bicycle; sometimes you need me like a fish wants legs.
I love
always
feeling needed.
George Bush promising Hydrogen Cars. Y'all might as well listen to me promising celibacy. I like the idea though (of George's cars, not Chris's celibacy); who wouldn't (besides the oil-money warmongerers who unfortunately make up the fist that is squeezing the spirit out of this country).
Sitting in traffic this morning I thought, why not develop a car that runs on olive oil? Much cheaper, jobs would be created by olive farms, California and the Southwest could be transformed into an amazingly clean expanse of energy fields.... Cars would pull up to pumps and choose between 'Regular,' 'Virgin,' and 'Extra Virgin'.... Italy would become a significant player in the next energy revolution, replacing, say, Oman.... The pollution covering cities around the world would dissipate as those dark yellowish-grey clouds were replaced by zephyrs of pane caldo e basilico fresco and Sinatra's breath.... The state flower of Texas could become Oregano....
A man can dream; a man can dream.
I think instead of waiting for five o'clock I'll just make a five o'clock out of two o'clock and three o'clock and get out of here around 2:30.
I am taking these lugubrious Monday drags into my own hands from now on.
I went out into this storm and kissed every raindrop. Puckering, I touched their smooth cheeks, of course raindrops only have one long cheek each, they're really all cheek....
Does rain dream of becoming snow? Each snowflake is different, each raindrop the same. Each rainstorm is a shade of grey, each snowfall a dazzling chaos of white. Are raindrops pupae, snowflakes in chrysalis form, waiting to be frozen into individuality?
I asked the raindrops themselves, but they just whispered what they always whisper, "Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh...."
Apparently a raindrops' desire is a secret, and may always be, above freezing.
Skippity skip, short month you, welcome back to the fold it's your birthday, you missed Elvis's sure but hey, you can celebrate your own for 28 days, let's have a prayer, from me to you, let's ask for mild temps and less snow too, let's hope you can be nice, this one year, for a change, and bring us rains of fishes instead of your typical 28-day shout of cold gray pain.