by Tomorrow's Man
James Brown is laying down his funky soul-jive over the bass-heavy speaker system in this bar, and with my thumb at the crux of my jaw and neck I can feel that my pulse is keeping time with the Godfather's groove.
I can find absolutely nothing wrong with this.
Dance us to April, Daddy-O....
(To Hell with love
if it does not accept art;
To Hell with art if it is
loveless.)
"To Heaven with all you
know to be true
in your heart!" And to Earth (to Hell with Heaven and Hell) if you have got such power.
I have got such power.
Let art in this age --
let love in this age --
be reborn.
Singing out loud, I realize, I am hoarse. Or is it a whore? The reason I am hoarse – I have unbelievable skill. I do not believe it. Neither can they. Why is this? Maybe it is the purity of the air on a good morning. Before the world wakes up. Whatever it is, I am confident as I wander into the 2 AM air; as if Buddha was giving birth to cuddly puppies at that very moment. The pain was not as bad as many might think; it did feel like passing a scale model of the Eiffel Tower through my already sore rectum, but it seemed like an exceedingly bad idea. “What’s wrong with the other parts?” I asked. Why don’t you ever ask me to tie you with embroidery floss? It marks. It bleeds. I do as well. Use cord. Use dental floss. Use the wire on that great cork cat toy you bought that randy tabby. He pounced on it, leapt on it, and rolled it between his teeth and paws. Then, suddenly, it was abandoned in a corner where the cork dried and Tabby was left humping the scratching pole’s rug. Warsaw, in winter, felt like chewing on ice cubes made of houndstooth, but in the summer, Warsaw often proved itself to b devoid of anything resembling service. We leapt to our feet and ordered bourbon with cream. The waitress laughed and said I prefer my men “unsweetened.” But you will do; though you look like a bear and smell like his lunch three years ago when he was very desperate and unable to mate… and then he said…Cut off my balls now. It will be a favor...please. They’ve done nothing but cause me pain. Don’t be so fucking melodramatic, was the reply. And with that, she licked his eyeball – gently. And his eyeball licked her gently. And they tumbled; and they were torn. But, with tongues and gazes entwined, we looked toward the woods and built a fortress in the fallen leaves. After we disentangled ourselves, I turned to you and said, Turn around, open your mouth, gaping widely; expecting and demanding the delivery which it was about to receive. Forcibly; desired; sickeningly weakened and taunted she said “are you coming with me, or are you just going to stand there like an abandoned ship waiting for a dock to find it floating at sea? He followed her without answering. They went into the downdecks, they wondered where, what they were; she said, “Go!” and he died.
Exquisite Corpse VI by thea.phabet
On Friday morning, I went to the factory and poked the spinning jenny. You said I shouldn’t, but under the circumstances, it seemed the only appropriate course to follow because the war was upon them. Of course, they had begun it, but that fact was not yet weighing heavy on their minds. He just didn’t know: what made the gorgeous stinky weasel tick? What made him rise in the morning and revel in the stinkweed? He could only guess that it was a love of the odors and colors of purple – purple was the color – my favorite colors, deep and full of power. The power I wish I had, perhaps to know I have and have vaguely tapped into. I miss that color. Once, when I was left alone in a railway station, I filled a steamer trunk with whelks and faded photographs. You turned to me and said, “What is that on your arm?” I declined to tell you, leaving mystery hanging in the air. The strength of me knowing and you not… That there are 6,529 angry and armed squirrels amassing, waiting. You might worry…but you don’t: why? They are armed with cardboard. However, it is recycled? It’s corrugated. Utterly recyclable, but some people just can’t get with the program. Visions of egrets strangled in plastic loops and writhing in oil flicker through my mind. I dry my work area. “Where was I?” I think. Plastic loops, donuts constricting no moles. Writhing in oil, and flicker out. Here we saw a plethora of divers beneath the Aegean. Every one of them had a net filled with coelacanths and we wondered where they went. The love that was there and was gone the last time I looked. I woke up that morning and realized that I forgot who I went to bed with. He was a stranger, the wrong man. “The wrong man?” No way it’s the wrong man. He matched the description down to the tattoo upon his right shoulder, that is. The way you regarded me; my eyes, hair, and wrist…I wonder if he notices it…I cannot look at it. He cannot stop. I look away and I think how can it be that way….of course it can. I have bacon. And I have love.
Exquisite Corpse VI by thea.phabet
Yesterday, I loved him as never before. I wondered why it was that I had never taken it upon myself to walk down the street in the sordid, misting fog that crawled in like sentient tampons, vampires looking for a place to leave their drained remains. I wanted to pack a picnic basket for the journey. You asked for bread and you got loaves; you asked for wine and you got callow vineyards, serving you the basest of alcoholic pleasures in a broad-based glass topped with purple paper umbrellas. "Where is this going?" I asked. "Where exactly do the hollows go?" But who minds. Not me; well, perhaps, I do mind; perhaps I don't think this is worth my time. But who am I to say where this is likely to lead in the fullness of time? This is a sort of construction, destruction, symbolism, religion; we may have lost the plot; where were we, before the storm?
Exquisite Corpse V by abc.f
Yesterday, I walked down the boulevard, looking for the stall where the paper cranes were sold. A woman stopped me and asked where I had come by my perfume. "A part originated in a bordello in Nice," I said, "A part came from the glory between my thighs, also." I left her hanging, waiting to say that the third ingredient was compounded of ginger and jasmine heated by a crucible swinging over a campfire. I wanted to reach out my hand and grasp -- what? Truth? Loathing? Freedom? Actually, as I pulled it back, I realized all I held was a handful of rusty bottle caps and cat's-eye marbles. She recoiled, so I said, "Look, you musn't worry. This is something that most living persons would never put a tongue to, but with this particular predilection I can not help but consider the presence of some sort of many-armed deity. After all, you came here looking for something, didn't you?" Contemplation works both ways; instead of deciding to answer or question, I threw a temper tantrum in German.
Exquisite Corpse IV by abc.f
The umbrellas were broad and boldy striped. We crouched beneath them in the downpour, clutching our drinks with palsied fingers. "Tell me," I asked, "Is this your fundamental belief, or just something you like to dig up at night?" Then I quaffed the remainder of my luminous green drink. "He, ha!" He, she, said, "You wish they were made of sand, but of course this is really the age of lead." I wrung out my sodden hankerchief and remarked that I felt as if we had spent twenty to thirty years on discussing this very treatise. Instead, we retired to the parlor, gilt and velour coated, lamps ablaze. "What is it, then," I asked, "that you had planned to accomplish in the dining hall?" The waters deep, the attitudes high on thujone and pheromone, I had no choice but to say, "Any intention should be considered but possibly abandoned once the moment has passed." Here there was an absence of light, yet still the drooping flowers turned to follow the best of the choir down to the river, where they engaged in the ritual called the "Sugaring of the Flesh." After that, they returned to a topical discussion of the decor, and never once mentioned the pervasive odor of roses and the abandoned book that stood, pages uncut, on the mahogany end table.
Exquisite Corpse III by abc.f
Fourteen times. Fourteen times?! "Yes." she cried. She was quite serious. I said it was indeed fourteen times that I had run round the clock tower in search of that miraculous thirteenth ingredient. Anything that is at all worth doing, I have done. Sometimes alone. The crows might fly, the oceans could secede into salty dust, but this condition is justified by a return to the precepts of our mothers. At the end of the day, we find ourselves always searching for Courtney Love, or Courtney Cox; or hopefully someone that does not make you clench and wonder why everyone has left already. I found my place in the orchestra and raised my bow, ready to launch! Parry! Thrust! Thrust!! And, finally, with a smile, thrust again.
Exquisite Corpse II by abc.f
A Week of Exquisite Corpses
This is an exquisite corpse; I say so because we envisioned it in March, but carried it on to describe its lineaments in the months to follow. Here in the bar, there were a minimum three, maybe four creatures of questionable genetics. Were they human? I did not trouble you at the time, but later you considered what had been said and arrived at a different series of consequences. She lit her cigarette; would this cause more dissention? Would this make babies cry? Would this add to the melee? Well, there we had nothing but the best efforts of all who had gone before. We stood fast, clung to our principles, and produced a work of clarity unseen in the modern age, a work that redefined "hubris," a work that redefined the nature of truth and spat in the eye of convention. It was good, so we hoisted it up the flagpole at dawn.
Exquisite Corpse I by abc.f
2:52 A.M.
Who is who is who is this? This is the garmet bag of the man, stored for a few more weeks. Musty.
This is the open eye of the man awake for three days, four days, mealless.
No food is okay. Fasting. Purity. Clarity.
I have not yet been featured on Animal Planet. But anything is possible.
Anything is possible, even clarity.
I see a chapel and a koi pond, and plants that love sunlight, and an oldish man carrying thirteen baby ducks by the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window.
Makes you wonder: Why are there koi in a chapel?
War Day
I needed this today, to just go sit outside in the sun despite the tenacious cold. Course, wish I'd peed first. I can feel it in there, a squishy bowling ball bladder wearing a tie, pounding on its cell phone, a pressing, pressing engagement causing a vein to pulse in its round temple.
I will not think about it. I will enjoy the sun, despite the tenacious cold. I will think about...sand. Sand; yes. There's no moisture there, in desert sand. Yep. My bladder sure does feel full of sand.
Or!...or, fire! Yes, fire! The distraction of a nice big bonfire! On the beach. On the sand. Near the waves and that big wet ocean.
Hm.
Or -- or Superman, I'll think of Superman! I wonder if Superman has a fly in that outfit? Would that make it a Superfly? So Superfly would then have a Superfly fly....
Flys and moustaches used to be group singular; i.e., 'flies' and 'moustaches' to describe the combined unit of each (both sides). I don't have moustaches, not right now.
But I sure do have a full bladder.
Screw it. It's cold as cold out here. ABCD
EFGHIJKL
MNO
P!
Granny on sabbatical wrote back to me again about cats, but not the ones in her dreams this time. This time, she wrote back to me about those filigree ones in the den closet above her old dead husband's shoebox where Schröedinger kept his handgun, those cats. "They preach to me," she wrote, knowing I'd wonder what about so she wrote, "About mice," she wrote they preach to her about mice.
Now I have to write her back, of course -- got to find out, What about the mice??
St. Patty Cake
Today is the only day of the year when there is truly not enough Guinness in my world; I know, because I looked out the window this morning and the ocean was still blue.
Someday. Someday, Arthur, someday. By the looks of it, we've already got the East River.
Happy Arthur Guinness Day, everyone!
Rapture. I've got it here, welling like glue from my fingertips. I've got it in moonlight laser beams, ready to launch from my eyes. I've got it between my thighs, a naive wand that wishes to make magic. I am a body of Rapture. I am a seed, soon to finally land in fertile soil.
Ticking ticking. Torture. Time lives in a frozen melon and the ground won't defrost. I spend my days waiting for my nights so I can spend my nights waiting for my days and twenty more times doing this doesn't seem like a lot but it sure is, it sure is.
I've become a half-way house for slacking nicotene. A vodka processing plant. A watching, twitching waiter of days, then nights, then days, then nights.... Twenty more times.
A pack of cigarettes.
A tank of gas.
A bleacher seat.
A pack of cigarettes.
And me waiting.
April, how dare you take your time - my time! Don't you see March is stealing away your warm days? Don't you see me ready to roll on into your sunshine and spring glory?
April, you've got 30 days to batter at March's 31; I understand you're the underdog. But right now, March is winning 14-0. Come on now, April; I know you've got it in you.
Get here now.
I'm driving through this madness headlong, and feeling like a newborn constricted in the birth canal, backwards, my cries echoes of thunder through my mother's clenching womb, my soft body learning to breathe.
I can't pray for strength, as I've not yet witnessed God.
I can't cry out for love without knowing it is arms I need to hold me.
But I can live, and will live again, because I have faith. Though it is dark, I can open my eyes. Though I can not quite breathe, I can feel my heart beating and a draft on my bald head.
I don't need to be king, I just need to crown.
I'm being born again, as painfully as is possible with all I do and do not know.
But I am being born again, a babe in the world that I have faith is full of love, and my cool, bald head knows that soon it will be kissed.
Soon, I will love completely; soon, I will be loved completely.
This "Human Condition"
is pain in the spine and a beautiful fall of dark hair, newspapers shouting airplanes and a tear-stained choir, her funky feet and three roses that refuse to die, a blank stare through a monolithic old man and the Big Bird stamp on that baby's chubby right cheek, a carnival or chaos and a single thin red string, a chunking, pounding bassline and a soft belly glistening, it is yellow paperback romances and learning thirty-four ways to say "I Love You," the first cigarette out of the fresh pack opened early on Monday morning and a squealing bike chain, it is three dots, a trinity, it is God's orgasm and the devil's blues on Capitol Hill, it is an extra cup of coffee, a kiss on the cheek; it is hopefully a good night's sleep and it is, hopefully, a beautiful morning inside and outside the bedroom window.
Kitty Cat's got fur on me sees my lashes bat and sniffs for free in belly he buzzes like happy bees making that kitten honey I see diamond eyes in green and gold dilate for me and slash aside the sunlight into a warm memory of kitten cat and me buzzed and buzzing here on the floor where we wait and need for our bellies to be petted, please.
for Pixel & Shango
Can you feel me out there, where I'm shooting my voice into the dark, smiling large, talking hard? Can you smell the cinnamon on my breath, feel its spicy heat on your neck?
Every sound I desire to make is a whisper of female gushes, of pink-nerve sensitized sighs, of secrets. Can you feel me?
Every move of my body is designed to heat blood and make you peer deeper into these greenish eyes.
"I used to fear you looking deeply."
"Now I need you to look deeply."
I'm a rainbow is cat's eyes atop a hungry licking of a lip, and another lip. I'm hungry. Can you feel me? Can you feel the rumble in my belly? I'm hungry.
You can feel me.
Open your eyes, let me close them.
Close your lips, let me open them.
I'm coming on a hot cinnamon breath.
I am coming
for you
on a hot cinnamon
breath.
Aloft Again
I learnt myself some serious lessons, back there, down, on that ground. I found that I'd learnt myself some fear and loathing over the past two years.
It was all of myself.
Up here, in this packed 737, I'm wishing to fall from the sky. I'm not thinking to die...but maybe brushing the teeth of death will open my eyes wide enough to see hope.
I'm living for love, boldly; but, I am living for love in a romantic age, an age that's made dying for love all the rage.
Tell people you're living for love, they'll fear you, shun you, think you crazy.
Tell them you're not sure why you breathe and they'll breathe easy.
Live for love and some pull away; some stick around to watch your landslide, your collapse to a hard ground.
The plane is shaking like we're rolling over great stones in the sky. Maybe this is the end? My stomach is in my throat. Turbulence. Maybe this is the end.
At least I'd die having resurfaced my heart; at least I'd die having seen my fear and loathing and left them under a stone in the cold ground to die.
At least I'd die living for love.
(Written in Monona, Wisconsin, 3PM):
This is not my livingroom. This is not my floor. This is, however, my naked body on the inside of these windows looking out. She's not home, but her aura breathes from these walls, the bookshelf secrets, the clutching lovers locked in emerald.
I hold my arms outward, one endless clap waiting to sound for the completion of this volume at my feet. At my center, I begin heating, gaining long weight.
I am thinking of the aura. I am growing. I am keeping a secret. Or am I?
My heart is on the floor, waiting to enter eyes.
I should get dressed...she'll be home soon, and even the crazed must maintain some social propriety.
As I run a quick hand down toward my legs, I smile at the windows, outside, looking in.
Peter packed a pock of packled poppers?
Paulo popped a poop of possible ploppers?
Pawners peer poorly at poolside pekenise?
That's what I heard.
Mountains
Climb, friends, climb!
These mountains will rise from the seas, the plains, the valleys of your hearts and minds to thin your breath and challenge your drive to love, to live -- climb!
Stretch your arms to the warm sun as you stretch after lovemaking with the apple of your heart, stretch your arms, feel the heat in your skin, your body the vessel that carried you from Hello to I Love You, the vessel that can run right at, up, and over these monoliths of despair, fear, and unforgiveness. Challenges that dare to remove your desires, shuck them as if they are moths on your shoulders, run past the treeline, climb, climb!
Note the horizon of your life -- what began as an endless plain with nothing but opportunity in every diamond had bumped up and become riddled with these mountains; but the endless plain is there, my friends, your feet were made for walking across great expanses of time to collect these diamonds, these experiences of LOVE, JOY, TREASURE, JOY, JOY!
Strap on your walking shoes -- we've all got mountains to climb. And we've all got hands to hold. And we've all got the mouths of lovers to kiss, and the laughter of friends to salve us like oxygen when the air gets too thin, when the journey tries to roll us like a rockslide.
We've all got each other, and there is no mountain that can not be crossed, overflown, blown apart, or climbed, climb little feet and happy people, climb, friends, climb!
And meet me
over the mountain.
"When my baby...when my baby smiles at me I go to Rio...de Janeiro...my-oh-me-oh..."
Now why on Earth or in Heck would I get that song stuck in my head all morning?
Maybe the embolism is taking it's time...or maybe I'm mad mad, I tell you!
Maybe i just really like saying, "my-oh-me-oh" out loud while sitting in traffic.
Maybe I just really miss Peter Allen...sigh....
Or, maybe, it's because my baby, when my baby smiles at me oh my-oh-me-oh, she's got a smile like a glitter-surfaced ornament, and if just her smile can send me to a Brazilian paradise, then just imagine where she sends me with the rest of her stunning self.
My-oh-Me-oh!
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen -
We would like to apologize for the last couple days of Texticity. Apparently, Mr. A. had been bound and gagged by a stomach bug that had approximately the size and smell of a three-day old moose carcass.
We are happy to announce that the bug has been excised through somewhat violent and nasty means that we will not go into here for the sake of our younger readers (i.e., bad things that explode from many ends of the body at once), but know that Mr. A. will return tomorrow, bruised, but not beaten.
Sincerely,
Chuck Riley
(SOB Management Typist)
03/03/03
oh three
oh three
oh three, and hey, at least today isn't a rubber fire
yet.
course, the cold lightning's just beginning to fall, and I have a knack for calling infernoes to me.
oh, three three three, we feel like a trick birthday candle that really just wishes to go out, don't we?
Sometimes the day won't let you up. Your back is broken before the hammer falls. You're two strikes down, even in a rainout. Age leaves you either too young or too old. You try to talk, to tell, to speak into someone's ear, only to find out their ear is in a different language. You wish for candle wax and comfort, and you get a house aflame. Mondays do this.
Tuesdays do this.
Wednesdays. Thursdays.
Fridays.
Wake up tomorrow, it doesn't matter the day. The hammer's probably on the way down, even now.
"Give Me forty words," He said; "Give Me forty words, and I will give you the vase for the flower of your heart."
"I dreamt of a halo around the moon," I told Him, "it expanded to include the sun. A veil of velvet formed over the Earth, bathing my face in a shroud of life. I spoke the names of seven angels. The angels then spoke my name. Now I am the halo."
He smiled. "That was 48." He said.
"I know. But haloes and flowers are worth far more."
He paused. "Then a vase you shall have." He said, dissipating; "A vase for the flower of your heart."