by Tomorrow's Man
Road Notes: That California Trip
Amendment for 7/24:
San Francisco (Incarnate)
What to say today; what to say to bring my experience to you.
I could go on for pages about everything from the man walking next to me on the street crooning "Summerwind" or I could mention holding an original 1965 copy of Charles Bukowski's chapbook Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, a book older than me and rarer despite me being a single original.
Instead, I will say that we just passed by a happy young man in Daisy Dukes and a silk muscle shirt walking his dog; his poodle; his fluffy white poodle, which had been dyed bright pink all over except for its paws and tail which were dyed a bright teal.
The teal tail wagged and wagged as the pink poodle passed us by, and ladies und gentlemen, I must tell you, when a pink poodle passes you wagging its teal tail, you are in San Francisco.
_________________________________
Road Notes, July 25, 2004: Alleging My Way Over Rapid City, South Dakota
I feel on the verge of a Coleridgian moment, but that paranoia might be caused by the 231 people around me; absence makes the heart grow fonder, flying in coach makes the heart cry out for a slippery grip on a baseball bat.
RN: Moaning Over Wyoming at 7 Miles
Why would anyone wear swimming trunks on an airline flight? Especially one that isn't crossing any significant body of water? The shame is, if I ask, I'm sure to be arrested -- I know how I ask questions.
RN: Somewhere Above the Joys of Nebraska
I have realized through rum and revelation that at its fundament, I do have a perfect life. Since the inverse is naturally true as well, this means that my life has a perfect ass. Remember that the next time you see me.
RN: Hopefully Over Minnesota by Now
Am I on time, positive and particular, if I can manage as many letters as miles travelled? What about words themselves, do I have that stamina? Hell, why stop there, why not challenge myself with sentences or paragraphs, chapters or pages?
Somewhere around 3600 miles have ribboned into my travelogue while flying from Madison to gorgeous San Francisco and back again -- do I have that much in me, words and sentences, paragraphs and phrases, chapters and pages to match an endlessly ejaculated voyage alighted to a pounding breast? Do I have so much in me??
Fuck yes, I do.
Road Notes: Finale: To Write As the World Spools By
I have at last connected the coasts, smelt the salt air from this nation's thigh to thigh, wrapt both in sticky fog. Now, rum in hand, I hang in the air over a fleeing desert and realize that this moment is an ultimatum; the plane will keep moving, my body will land in the place I call home, but I will still be suspended, hanging breathless between fleeing desert and glittering darkness, one question now capitalized in my mind:
Chris -- What about yourself do you have faith in?
I have been hiding under the security of my book "Cursed" for nearly ten years, and just like nights when it is too frightful to shut the television before trying to sleep I have been afraid to peek out from under my book's covers.
Connecting the coasts lifted a corner; and there is a rush in knowing one has become self-crafted as fearless.
So here I hang now, in the glittering darkness, peeking out with a corner of the Earth raised, my life a clean Phoenix risen and clothed in the caparison of a dragon, my breath held until I answer this one devastating question:
Am I ready to be me?
My breath is held behind a grin that could worry dynamite:
"Yum," I say. "Yum."
Road Notes: That California Trip
San Francisco, 1:00AM
This is my world, my life, my lightning magic in letter in word, this is my divinity, striking sparks off the moon, this is my trinity, east and west coast wet and apart like thighs around the pink locus of my midwestern home, this is my sale in my pinstripe suit pantless, this is my matter more velvet than gray electrifying nerve to nerve to pen to heart to voice to tongue tip pointing out at you, right at you, this is my magic in a lightning line around the moon and into your vein, your mind, your matter like mine more velvet than pink, this is my magic, making magic for you.
San Francisco, 2:24AM
Club closed to my request of "Into the Void," the perfect song for my current context. Me, I danced like I'd never danced before, the glowing glorious power of this stranger in the strange land...for exactly three steps, until the thought finally occurred to me: "Rugs."
The dancefloor, it was with rug, rugged if you will, Me, I danced like sweet glory on the 1-2-3, then turned into a pitcher of spilt chum for the rest.
It was okay...I blamed the beer and wine I'd been lovingly fed all evening. Still, I wish I'd remembered my teflon shoes.
San Francisco, Crouched on Bush Street, 6:06AM
There's my hotel ain't it pretty. Love the pink neon sign. Matches my pink closet in the room. My room glows like cotton candy. Last words here before naptime: Bukowski said, "Being sober is easy; being a drunk takes endurance." On that note, I present my
Fourth Annual Travel Binge
Cast of Characters, in order of appearance
9:00AM --Shot of rum from flask, MSN men's room
11:00AM --Double Bombay Sapphire 'n Tonic, MPS airport
12:00PM --Bacardi 'n soda, 7 mi. over Casper, Wyoming
12:50PM --Bacardi 'n soda redux, to toast the Great Salt Flats
2:00PM --24oz. Paraat Ale microbrew, Paraat Restaurant
4-5PM --2 pints Anchor Steam or some such pilsner
8-9PM --1/2 pint Captain Morgan w/ soda. Prep time.
CLUB TIME, 9:00PM-5:00AM
--8 pints Guinness
--3 hero-sized glasses of luscious red wine
--1 something with tequila or something
--1 Jack 'n Coke the size of a small, drunk animal
--1 shot Captain Morgan
--1 Cap'n 'n Coke
--misc.
(I'd like to thank the Academy.)
Question Asked, 5:05AM: "You drank for twenty hours? How in the hell are you still operative?
Question Answered: "As Bukowski said, endurance, firstly. Couple endurance with the fact that my energies are dedicated to rearranging nightmares -- as should be the raison d'etre of any poet -- and you've got a person who seldom has time for sleep."
I can't believe I called myself a poet. How pretentious.
BELT FASTEN WHILE SEAT SEATED
MOUTH FARTS
Naptime.
Road Notes: That California Trip
7:20-8:45AM, CDT. Madison, WI to Minneapolis, MN.
How To Board A Plane.
1. Get to airport one hour before departure.
2. Wait in line in the same place for so long that the soles of your shoes imprint the Earth's core.
3. Let Northwest Airlines then pull you from that line that moved about as far as the Rockies over the same length of time and hustle you into a much shorter line because your plane is leaving in 17 minutes.
4. Imprint the Earth's core for an additional 20 minutes.
5. Be placed on a later plane, not with a "sorry for the inconvenience," but with a "don't even talk to me about your problems today."
6. Get on a later plane and find that you and someone who is the spitting image of Grace Slick have the same seating assignment.
7. Invent centering mantra: "I work in Jefferson. I am on an airplane. I work in Jefferson. I am on...."
8. Accept karma. Chew some way groovy gum, man.
Margin Note: Is it coincidence or my karma that the spitting image of Grace Slick now sitting next to me as I wait for my connecting flight to San Francisco is humming "White Rabbit"??
12:00 Noon, 37,505 feet over Boulder, Colorado
Sitting next to a lovely young twink couple. Makes me want Twinkies.
Arrival: San Francisco, California
1:35 PM, PDT
A note on California fashion: Lo-cut waisted Capri jeans, sagging knee-length white sweat socks, and Birkenstock sandals: NO.
2:00-8:00PM, PDT
Why...are...there...so...many...#$%&#!!...HILLS????? Haven't they ever heard of DYNAMITE out here? Where's Bernard Mickey Wrangle when I need him....
11:00PM
Time to re-ignite the moon.
Have you ever kissed someone who kisses like an amateur "artist" fooling around way too much with the Gaussian Blur effect in Photoshop?
Yeah, me either, and thank God on a hot dog, you know what I'm saying here?
There are some who believe that the human body, if the mind is set in the right place, could simply dissolve into the ocean as the mind becomes part of the greatest existing entity on the planet. What with blood and seawater being twins at the ph level, this sounds more viable than apocryphal.
However. This does not apply at water parks, where the level of chlorine is so high it makes the wave pool dangerously close to bursting into nitroglycerine-type flame. I know this, because I swallowed a gallon of it and could breathe fire.
Luckily, I could not tell I was being poisoned by chlorine because my feet had burned off my body, my back had been scraped away by hundred-foot high slides, and my bald spot was being nested on by a cardinal which had obviously lost its original bright red egg.
But with the exception of the glory of the ocean (and despite the bird on my head and chlorinated lungs), there just ain't nuttin' nuttier than a wave pool.
Build high, climb climb climb, try to soar, leap from the mountain into a bright shine sky, feel then you've got no wings, see then your feathers plucked into a pile and fluttering down the mountain side, your shivering quills tipped with your blood and scratching silent crimson cries for help into the stone as they fall,
as you fall
as you fall
Camping Notes III
Aftermath. Beat the body, cleanse the mind. Now I breathe smoke. Now I eat spiders. Now my pain is gain.
Today, I am carved out of wood.
Balsa wood. Carved by a 93 year old man with rheumatoid arthritis and cataracts. But --
I'm carved, baby.
Camping Notes II
Quick notes on a spider's back:
Q: Daddy, if spiders are bad, then why did God make so many of them?
A: Because, Billy, God likes to make people go EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Animal encounters: 40,000 spiders. 4,000 bats. 400 birds. 40 slugs. 4 brats at the adjoining campsite, of which one (MATT) seemed to feel that 6:30 AM was the perfect time to begin shouting MOMMY BRITTANY TRIED TO HIT ME WITH A HAMMER FOR NO REASON I WANNA GO HOME THERE'S NO XBOX HERE I WANT MORE EGGS IT IS COLD DADDY BUILD A FIRE NOW WHERE ARE THE COOKIES I HATE THIS PLACE I WANNA GO SEE SPIDERMA-- (THUNK).
[Note: The "Thunk" was fictional, my dream that Brittany could have landed a resoundingly satisfying second blow.]
Campsites with tiny restaurants that serve ice cream and deep fried cheese curds get 4 Stars in my traveller's guide.
I could have made an impressive, menacing tornado if I had run in a circle around the campfire -- the smoke was after my ass like a damned dog in heat and I was so its bitch.
SHITSHITSHITSHITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...damned spiders. I could have ridden that one home. Call it my creepymobile.
It is July in Wisconsin, so of course I had to break another toe. There is some sort of supernatural mafia here, and I feel it lives in rum. That is my only explanation for it coming out once a year to try to break some tiny bone in my body.
It may also live in Tequila.
Camping Notes I
Quick jots on white oak bark:
Bat country. Bats everywhere. Bats eat mosquitoes, mosquitoes eat man, man sees bats goes EEEEEEEEE. Cycle of life.
I will not make a metaphor for my wild jump out of the boat and into the lake an allegorical comparison to the phrase "don't rock the boat, especially when you're sitting in it" in the present political climate. I simply don't have the energy.
Skinny dipping. Nothing skinny about it. My pale reflection in the lake could have been the full moon's fat ass. I kept my phases fully covered.
To Do List: Cauterize the campsite bathrooms with extreme prejudice. I have no idea what hellish combination of foul human waste and fouler disinfectant caused the eyeball-dessicating stench that permeated the outhouses, but Yog-Sothoth itself would spray the place down with Lysol. No place where one must expose their genitals should ever smell better when one is covered head to toe in feces.
Blank disc needs music and this leads to an amazing idea. The future is as certain as smiles on babies and a crack in every ass. Stay with and tuned.
This is not the way to smoke a cigarette or promise God I'll dance with elves. This is not the way to order a salad while barking at whales. No, this is not the way to find a piece of a pretzel lost in teh folds of an obese puzzle. This is only the way to salami salami baloney as I wait for the weeds to play nice with me.
Apparently, I need to drink more water. Assuredly, I should be getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night, quit smoking, and exercise more. Also, I need to eat more peanut butter, wrestle a greater number of irate wild monkeys, start up my wormskin condom business, get this pogo stick out of my rectum, and, after 14 years, finally return the remaining non-stuck pages of Tropic of Cancer to the library.
Today...I think I'll start with the monkeys.
He's Got the Whole World...in His Fist
America? These United States? This is my favorite place in the whole world, people. Only in America can I drink Dunkin' Donuts coffee in Boston, drive to NYC, refuse to shop for 4 hours because I'm too good for the shit-shop clothing lines masturbated out by million-dollar designers, then have another coffee with Lou Reed in the Village (even though I'm only sitting next to him), BOOM, jump a plane to Little Rock and remember why I have the right to choose not to live in a place dedicated to keeping the government buried deep into a women's insides (Bible Belt or Billy Clinton, you decide), fly on up to Chicago for a hot dog and a Cubs game at rickety, gorgeous Wrigley, bolt on over to Los Angeles for some cheap flesh-fest candy-coated enjoyment and the realization that my soul is in such better shape than most (and that Bill Hicks was RIGHT) then drive up to San Francisco and read for an hour at a club that has never heard of me before, catch a quick puddle-jumper late-evening flight to Seattle for some espresso so frigging strong it kicks me right back into gear and sends me due East my boy, due East, on a wild road trip via Volkswagen, Volvo, Pathfinder or pogo stick to my sweet coast of Boston, where I'm free to then do it all over again.
The country? The country is amazing.
It's the administration that needs a baleful, fiery eye of fury cast upon them.
Time to open them eyes up, my kittens.
I used to wish that the final VHS of my life will have been recorded in SLP mode, so that not only would it be lengthy, but also grainy and rugged. Now, what with DVD cleaning everything up, it looks like I'm going to have to get moving on some real life grainy and rugged.
Remember when we were young and we found that rock right by the side of the hill, and we lifted it with all our might so we could roll it down the hill, but we got distracted because it turned out that underneath the rock the Rolling Stones were performing a sold out show, and we were really surprised because the rock couldn't have been more than two, maybe three feet across, but there they were in the middle of "Going to a Go-Go," busting the crowd into a frenzy, and Mick was all over the stage and there were pyrotechnics and everything, and we ran home to tell everyone but on the way home we saw Marcy and she was in those little, tight white shorts that always drove us crazy and we got distracted again and forgot all about the sold out Rolling Stones concert we had found?
Well, it just occurred to me...I wonder if that rock ever rolled.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.7 (end)
Well, so, what's it all mean? It's this: Love is why your eyes are open right now, yet, they are about to blink after reading this, this last word about love.
Blink. Go on. Love dares you not to.
That’s just exactly how love is.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.6
Love is in you. You are riddled with it. Accept that you’re terminal. Love is the drug, love hurts, love is the seventh wave, love has a mind of its own, love is a many splendored thing, love is a battlefield. Love, your eternal roommate. Love, your bittersweet disease. Love, your favorite mistake. Love is what you will never abandon, love and its baggage of pain, baggage that holds your favorite clothing, your fondest memories, and your notebook of dreams.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.5
Living for love is suicide; ‘cos love doesn’t live for you. Love just lives. Love just is. Love, the ultimate virus. AIDS and Language have nothing on love. AIDS infects some. Language infects many. But even the celibate and senseless can fall victim to love. Just look at yourself. Look at me.
Love's mankind's craving for honesty. Love movies exist as fantasies to remind us of what we're not doing -- admitting it. Half of us will never know we're loved, and neither will the other half.
Get out there people, and speak; at least to that mirror where others can see themselves as well.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.4
Love has no concept of time, only of presence. Love -- with whip in hand and lust collared and panting at the end of leather puppet strings -- loves where and when and whom and what it wants to love. You can’t tell it not to. Don’t try. The Pope can’t, either. Or the President. Or the Man in the Moon. Or your lover. Love's got you by leather; and even if you think you're not listening, love is telling you what to do.
Oh; and you're doing it.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.3
Love hates honesty because love is honest to itself. (To love, honesty outside of love is a charlatan, a whore, again, a cheap tool and nothing more.) Love does not feel an obligation to be honest to humans, or to society, or to religion, or to antiquated mores. Love is honest with the picture it carries in its breast pocket and that picture is a mirror. In the picture love is smiling and that is always good enough for love. If you don’t like it, you can lump it, but you will still love love or hate love; either way, to love, it’s the same emotion, the same energy. It’s the same glance in the mirror, your grimace or lip-licking smile. Love smirks at you when you look at it closely on the glass surface, doesn’t it? Yes, it does. That is why you get so frustrated. Love just leers back at you. Love says, ha, I’m honest with me…I’m forthright with me…I love me. You’re the one who must learn to deal with it.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.2
So many deaths for love, so few for honesty. So much insanity in the name of love; insanity in the name of honesty, of course, is a screaming flail at fireflies in the hopes of hitting the one that would splatter gooey glowing love. Love breeds lies. Nothing breeds honesty. Honesty is aberration, a distracting instrument of power, a misfit toy on the island of tools. Honesty and love don’t speak to each other. They eat at different tables. They fling snowballs at each other’s cars. And honesty’s snowballs have rocks in them; of course, love’s snowballs contain hunks of hard ice. So many wars for love, none for honesty.
Love in the Pink Room, pt.1
Unless you’re asphyxiating in the slipstream, there is nothing you can say to a subliminal treatise about love and lust and obsession; nothing, nothing you’re not supposed to know. You don’t know. But now I tell you, this, I tell you, this treatise I write and read and breathe and bleed for you to almost hear, hoping it will infect your dreams with imagery thick enough to make you think my smiling face camouflages corrupt money, this is my way of saying what I can never say to your face, in your mouth, to your head, in your mind, to the place where you accept that honesty is the only policy and love follows this rule: Love knows no honesty.
When I answered my door around 3AM last night with my short sword pulled and pointed at the neck of the man knocking I didn't expect him to be crying. But then, drunks at the door at 3AM really only have a few choices -- be crying, be yelling, be demanding a drink, or be falling down.
He said he would pray for me. He said he cared very much for my soul, and when Armageddon comes in December, he will cradle me in his arms and bring me to the light. He moved toward me, arms open.
I said, "If you move another step closer, I will gut you and use your spilt entrails to lasso Jesus for myself."
He said, "See? You already desire to be closer to Jesus." Then began weeping openly as he and his guts walked away.
-Damn, I made a mess. Can you hand me that?
-What, this piano?
-No no, next to it.
-The African Rhino with the attitude more like Liza Minelli than Cory Feldman?
-No, not that, I don't need that. To the left of the rhino.
-This? You want this gold 1:1 scale replica of Queen Victoria's first vibrator, the one that had to be operated by three maidservants cranking handmills?
-No, I have absolutely no interest in that. I want that, right there.
-The monkey?
-No.
-The Cyclops' left eye?
-No.
-Elmer Fudd's unpublished memoir, "Jocular Man Guzzler: My Animated Life"?
-NO. That's ridiculous.
-This copy of the secret memo George W. Bush sent to Al Gore in January 2000 that says, 'Ha Ha, I em Presedint and you ain't.'?
-Forget it. I'll get it myself.
-
-This. This is what I wanted.
-A napkin?
-Yes, a napkin.
-Oh. Well, I'm not a mind reader, you know.
To All My Friends
This is a benediction, awash in the rebirth of the lamb. The blood is hot and pure, the cells as skyrockets striking sparks off the moon.
The legs of this lamb, they are weak but growing. The eyes of this lamb, they are closed but will soon see all. This lamb, he has senses like no creature before, senses that call to mind divine prayer.
This day is the first, and the lamb is born.
His soft fur and growing muscle will carry him through cold and fire, to the coasts and to the hills, to the sky in a blazy of glory and to the endless depths of surprised expectation.
This lamb, he could some day become eucharist, but for now he is just a flesh and blood being, in need of food, in need of light, in need of love and hope.
In need of home.
This lamb, here at home, stands shakily upon his launching pad. He was once Icarus in the Challenger; now he is the hot space between fires. Just look into his eyes: that is the gaze of a wise creature with a second chance and oh yes, this little lamb knows it.
He drinks his milk, he chews a bit of food. His body, this time, will not outpace his mind.
This time, the lamb will not know his own slaughter -- this time, he has been delivered as a benediction to all who cast eyes upon him, all who kiss his soft face.
This lamb, he is the rebirth of all.
This sentence, these words, are his first nine steps.
He wishes to be touched.
He is walking toward you.