by Tomorrow's Man
The sun was winter low, and I walked a circle in the snow, 41 feet in diameter.
The penguin walked the same circle, in my footsteps; it did take him three times longer. He has much shorter legs.
We did make a perfect circle, though.
11 Below Zero
On the radio this morning:
"It's so cold out there the police aren't even handing out speeding tickets; they're just giving people the finger as they go by."
I would say "amen to that brother" if I could defrost my lips enough to move.
brr
Apparently, when vending machine companies run out of mayonnaise to put in their tuna fish salad sandwiches, they deftly switch to marshmallow fluff without missing a beat.
Sprained Ankle Soliloquy
Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Vicodin Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Pain Vicodin Pain Pain Pain Pain Vicodin Pain Pain Vicodin Pain Vicodin Vicodin Pain Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Vicodin Sky Blue Hi Sky Hi Butterfly Whee Hi Sky
Boo
Boo
Whee
Bzz
Bzz
Hmmmm
Yum
Talvin Singh is trapped in my dishwasher.
He brought many tablas, but I was out of Cascade.
I hope he don't end up with spots.
Dear Emily,
Thank you for making ever word I craft into the form of sentence -- then line, then stanza, then paragraph, then story, then novel, then life -- yet more tiny ecstasies set in motion, motion each time like my body clenching new life
from a tiny firehose hole to create a pearly sun.
Dearest Emily let them all know, I'm one who is here for you, for us.
Love,
Chris
When I think about the fact that I am going to
grow older and die,
I can light my cigarette,
pop my beer,
and wear a smile,
happy now;
but when I think about
growing old and dying
alone
the smile leaps from my face
and runs into the woods
where it hides beneath the cold soil,
crying.
So Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Allah, Krishna, Jehovah, John, Paul, George, Ringo, Nomar, Pedro, Manny, Tom and Nicole, Marilyn, Trent, Breshnev, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Amin, Reagan, Gali, Churchill, Gates, Jobs, Dana, Fox, Tom, Nicole, Lawrence, Keanu, Carrie, Bruce, Demi, Ashton, Freddy, Jason, Salvador, Jackson, Vincent, Amy, Kat, Steve, Brett, Rahel, J, Josh, Josh, Kate, Al, Melissa, Emily, Eric, Jenni, Hank, Denise, Marianne, Louis, Mike, Mike, Janine, and Tina walk into a bar and....
Dammit. I forgot the joke.
She said something beautiful. What she said to me was this:
"Only when it snows can you see the shape of the wind."
Her in Minneapolis, me in Madison, I agreed. She was right. Absolutely right.
In the wind -- over the past few days of weather -- I have seen the shapes of a middle finger, a heating bill the size of a phone number, John Kerry's snow-white ass mooning me from the warm confines of a New Hampshire ski lodge, and, finally, a hamburger eating me.
This summer, the wind can damn well shape itself around my sweaty body and be damned well happy about it.
I will be.
Thankx to Molly Grrl.
My pride is a spider
wrapped loosely in tin foil
my legs can still move
then the tin ball with me inside
is placed in a coffee can
and sent rolling
down a rugged suburban hill
by a 10-year old
who did not know that the colors
that decorated my back
meant I was
harmless and rare
and with five legs broken
and this can still rolling
I can sing some blues
here in the can
as a spider
that I know no one will hear
but maybe
I will land soon
and be still
with a leg left
to stand on.
One night when I was driving the Limo of Jesus (part time job hacking around a full-time Savior, but hey, J-Man bought the drinks) We ended up on this sordid back road that was more suited to Hiroshima circa BOOMtime, but We went on and on over the potholes, heading toward Our appointment in Vegas.
One of those potholes? It took out BOTH left-side tires. Mother-effer, you know?
But We got them changed. Well, Jesus did. I kinda just helped Him scrub the grease off His hands.
It was while We were tightening the lugs on the rear left that the wolves came, three of them, obviously not just wolf but more something other-than-wolf,-which-was-super-nasty. I mean, I shit myself. No really. I did. (Jesus helped me clean it later, one of those quick hand-wave things.)
They moved in, moved in, on me and Jesus there greasy and sweaty by the back driver's side tire. Oh, did I mention it was July in New Jersey? Yeah, it was -- we're talking 'not comfy' okay?
The wolves, they all pounced as one, an incredible Unity of Killing Mantra, real UKM, and had Us dead to rights, indeed. Except that, Jesus, after mumbling to them during the entire confrontation -- and going IGNORED by them of course (dude, don't ignore Jesus if He's like actually right there talking to you) -- well, He got a bit pissed that the philosophy of peace and love wasn't doing anything so, BAM, I'm like nailed in the side of the head by a pineapple.
Yeah, Jesus turned them into pineapples. Well, two of them. One He turned into a Granny Smith Apple. Big Humor that there Him Jesus, oh yeah.
So, the tires are all better, We're driving along, and I ask Jesus, there in the backseat but with the smoked glass divider down and handing me a glass of Brut, so why did You turn them into pineapples and an apple? And He says, 'An apple a day keeps God away.' like He's all clever or something.
Jesus. He thinks He's so damned funny.
Course, He's telling me this while He's eating the Granny Smith.
That Jesus. Such a Card.
Dammit, I did it again. Just when I thought I'd become perfect, just when I felt I had achieved the epiphanous joy of becoming an integral and efficient part of this massive machine, I once again let down my brethren by passing the dutchie on the right-hand side.
I stand abashed.
I've got the greyness in my eyes on my side and a rope ladder curvy like an adder on smack that reaches a mile high, so I shoot a look at the sky and begin to climb, and oh, Mr. God, how I climb.
I am not the monkey.
I don't care what he says, or how many albums he has.
I am not the monkey, so please, stop shocking me.
Everywhere I go, you people, all wanting to shock the monkey.
That is fine.
BUT I AM NOT THE MONKEY.
Please, stop.
I am not the monkey.
Poem: "At Dawn"
See the cock
Love the cock
Hear him doodle-doo;
See the cock
Love the cock
In the evenings, too;
See the cock
Love the cock
Love him all day long;
See the cock
Love the cock
You have a filthy mind.
What Did You Have for Dinner Last Night??
I just overheard a man having quite a heated conference call via his cell phone. Big trouble with some big clients, it seems.
I wonder if any of the people he was arguing with and/or yelling at pondered the straining echo his voice must have been making. I wonder if any of them guessed correctly that he was on the crapper; and by the smell of things in the men's room, actively using it.
Very actively.
This is the kind of thing that should be said when one has so little to say that every word out of their mouth attaches like venom to the insides of eyelids all around them:
Nothing.
Maybe it's the pennies on the kitchen floor, or the socks like snakeskins beneath the futon in the livingroom. Maybe. But right now, feeding my cats, and drinking Pernod with ice and water, and listening to Tom Waits, and sleeping alone night after night feels more pathetic than precious, and I know I just wanted to be warmed by another's skin to try to make sense of all this before I finally throw my luggage off this train and walk down the roof of the caboose.
There are pennies on the floor, but they can't even buy me a free phone call to the person I need to beg to be by my side right now.
She's out of range.
The socks like snakeskins, they just remind me how something so simple, so animal, can change.
She's out of range.
1000 dreams last night.
300 good.
300 nightmarish.
300 something bizarre.
300 with diamonds.
30 with sex.
30 with a gun, the same gun.
30 I was flying.
10 with superpowers.
10 with fish.
10 had no time.
3 with chocolate.
3 with a confession.
3 ended in death.
1 had me.
1 had you.
1 had a telling of love.
1 had octopi.
Can you guess which one you were in?
She said:
"You have a craving and a need for the absurd that is not being satisfied -- and that is a tragedy."
And oh my god, I just kept laughing and laughing, oh your god, I laughed right through the happy tears raining like children dancing through spouting July fire hydrants torn open to cool the tensions of a melting sun trying to craze a city of millions, I just kept laughing and laughing and a hug of mine leaped through the cellular line, up to the satellite and around her shoulders for the perfect truth she's sold me for free.
Thanks, Shoe.
Okay, it's okay, I did just try to slash my wrists.
But, I failed. I failed.
I used extra sharp cheddar cheese.
The name is misleading. It really just crumbled apart into the bathtub. I mean, I didn't even have a red spot or anything. My wrist was kinda greasy is all.
So, I got out of the tub and put on the Simpsons. Oh, and I ate the cheese. But, come on, I did dry it on a paper towel first. I mean, I'm not gross or anything.
The phone says I love you.
The plants say I love you.
The cat says I love you, and that other cat too.
The pizza says I love you.
The beer definitely loves you.
The night is so cold but still loves you.
The people on the TV screen love you.
The paint on this wall loves you.
The litterbox loves you.
The last grape in the fridge loves you.
The space aliens hovering over the apartment love you.
That spider loves you, really it does.
These slippers love you.
The coffee in the pot now cold from sitting all day loves you.
The rug loves you.
The pillows love you.
The front door loves you, except for when you go;
and I love you too.
No drugs work. Alcohol only makes it worse. My music is a colony of ticks dying in my brain. My poetry is a clog of toilet paper in an infant's throat.
I'm seeing the reflection of the light I used to ignite in others die in my own eyes.
I know the bottom is a trampoline. But it doesn't make the length of the fall any shorter, or the darkness of the night any warmer as my arms curl around the lost gunshot of the sky.
I'm thin and green as the Aurora Borealis and a shame I'm not as pretty. I like the image though, the symbolism, of being immense and cold and dying before being born from fire. I could live the rest of this terminal life like that, knowing I'd burn out cold and beautiful.
Smile up at the sky my friends; a dead cold beauty is pulsing by.
This is a windshield that looks out dirty on a road slick with ice just begging me to twist twist twist the wheel like I never did last summer.
I'm no Chubby Checker.
But one of these nights, I'm sure gonna twist on down this highway.
Roll up my highway, bang bang.
Here comes a shot gun, bang bang.
I put all I had into that movie, bang bang.
I hid a ring in her heart, bang bang.
I think my car will break down tonight,
I think tonight is time for a breakdown.
There's Boston and there's Baton Rouge, and then there's here where I am. Where I am isn't home, and it isn't where jasmine juice squeezes out of the black men's pores to make jambalaya perfume in the velvet air.
No, I'm up here. North. Where the temperature acts like there's a gold rush in the middle of the Earth, and it plans to dig and dig on down.
I'm this close to dreaming about licking the sweat of a Baton Rouge black man; although, I'd much prefer to lick the women. Either way, the cold has got me kissing this shattered air for a hint of a waft of jambalaya.
My hands slippery now, eels, ooh, eels, lookit my them fingers all like that, eight of em eels, wriggle wriggle, smile guys, smile into the thumbs!
Thumbs is eel cameras. I take'em pics of my eel fingers with my camera thumbs. Gonna have a portfolio. Got me 903 pitchers of my eel fingers so far.
When I get to a thousand...look out eBay, here them eels come.
Confusius say:
"I know it been a while or something, but trust my word: You still real ugly while fucking. Real ugly. Man. Next time bring bag, please."
Thank you, 2004, for reducing several parts of me to sizes mostly theoretical.
A mini-crowbar later, and I had pupils again.
Sure they were both in one eye, but it was a start.