by Tomorrow's Man
Stop blowing down my mansion. It's made of Aces of Spades; they are made from the obituaries of Trust, so many obituaries of those I've lost, torn to ragged shreds and reformed with my spittle and blood. It is shaky, it is forlorn, but it lets in light and it promises to keep me warm.
Keep your sorry, scared breath from the fragile walls that shimmer and amplify the desperate echoes of my prayers.
Some build.
Some laugh as they destroy.
Some build again.
Some will do both, always.
Breaking abstract a mirror'd death was behind in back in front of him but not behind the mirror in front of his behind if you look'd at the reflection, she's just a whore, forget her past, forget the poison you're mercury-free, he can't be blamed for his decision in front of behind the back of this side of the mirror.
Open eyes on humming, it's me leaving the ground, writing the word G-E-N-T-L-Y with one fingertip for 20 points, Scrabble on her vaginal walls, float skyward, smell honey, land gently.
Green around the gills means sick as in I Feel Sick but what if I don't feel sick or have gills or you don't have that digestive problem anymore but still your innards rush out of you with each prime-numbered minute that passes does that mean I'm sick for thinking you are well on your way to being thin and well on your way to thinning down what you've tried to keep me from thinking of you all along?
You imagine that from a microcosmic event horizon that runs along the part of your your hair, a scream that once shook a universe down to a plane of even leveled sand emanates slowly but steadily, shaking down ours.
Each day, for one minute, without effort, I see the planet upon which we live from 6.1 miles above the surface. It doesn't last long enough, this view, to accomplish much other than wow me, but for one minute a day I remember that all things -- whether they think they're doing it or not -- are curving.
One of those days I've ignored, needing to spend 47 hours out of time, mourning the death of a large part of my heart.
I felt the world turn a bit grayer early yesterday; and I taste ash in my mouth today.
I can smell the cordite.
We live in a deteriorating world.
HST, RIP.
No one ever told me, really, that napalm could not be used in jambalaya. Have you ever tasted the stuff? I assumed napalm was the main ingredient, after angry, angry shrimp.
I had 14 ideas this morning about how I was going to turn marshmallow fluff into a delicious and enticing line of prophylactic smoking jackets, but by the time I had a moment after work to write them down I had retained only one idea, and it was just a few cryptic words:
SMEAR DON'T STARE
there is a point while you are sliding slowly to the side of what you thought was your easy way out -- that moment when you realize all those things that you had planned ahead was a house of delicate sugar-crystal barrack card frames -- when you laugh and watch Inevitable As an Ex-Inlaw take the hope from your tires and send you into a realm where, if you are lucky, all you can do is laugh.
I devour smoke and let living vultures pick at what was and is the truth of me;
I now devour vultures, and l feel my muscles grow stronger with their deaths.
I'm going to be
to myself
the father
who left me
to be aborted;
I'm going to be
to myself
the father
I never had.
I don't give a good goddamned gallon of goat testicle soup, every time I walk into that room of flying, gnashing scissors I think it looks like they're laughing.
I can use eleven words to say I feel this happy.
And then in ten words, I am suddenly much worse.
In nine words I can forget all about peace.
Eight words, and I've left it all behind.
To feel the fear again, seven words.
A prayer, that takes six words.
It is denied in five.
I close my eyes.
Just give up.
Release hope.
Bye.
Valentine's Day
I feel like I've lost something today. This day feels like a 24-hour long equivalent of having to go through a box of love letters collected over a century, only to know I'll have to throw all of them on the fire, one by one. This day, to me, is hard on the soul.
This day brings tears for all I've done wrong, and pain where my heart's once been. This day is a reminder not of lonliness, but of lost opportunity. Of the truth -- that, most often, there is no second chance. This is the day of countless, broken in the torn sunlight.
This is the day of the blood red heart, separated from the chest, unbeating. Today is the symbol of this heart upon each person's sleeve -- torn from our warmth, and -- as strong as is the heart -- left in the air to die.
This is the one day that the heart is a fist-sized bundle of muscle meat, raw, there on the plate.
This is our day of sacrifice, self-inflicted. Today says "I'd die for you"; or, maybe I'll just pull out my heart, remember all I've done wrong, understand that truly at the heart of humanity there is no forgiveness, and die.
This is Valentine's Day.
There was a moment I imagined that the 747 slowing to 200MPH above my head to come in for a landing over the ocean was crafted entirely of butter.
Can you just imagine.
Today is a good Saturday.
Waking up is good, waking up.
Today I woke up feeling like a wedding ring coated in the viscous result of a couple's orgasm.
Waking up like this, this is good.
Today will be a great Saturday.
The more you expect to believe nothing, the quicker everything becomes more possible, and less a product of your fear.
What you know means nothing -- but what they think you believe...
...that is power.
A friend of mine just told me he is surrounded by big wigs in work today.
At one point, a six-foot high silver-sparkle Cher number -- like the kind she wore during her last Vegas show, except six feet tall -- was shuffling by behind a cubicle when it ran into a much stouter Sy Sperling toupeé. The Cher wig didn't see the small, brown toupeé turning the corner, and boom, down they went in a tangle of long silver extensions and short brown plugs. They were cursing each other out, when an Elvis-style Pompadour ran over on its sideburns to shut them both up before they upset the President of the company, a Burt Reynolds weave that was in a sour mood after finding out that the stock had dropped three points.
I'd hate to work there, too stressful. My job is nice and quiet, and I really enjoy working hair.
I sense the new moon rising and my blood beats a little harder against my skin. I imagine it is trying to break free of me, trying to absorb itself into women, the closest inhabitants of the moon.
I've so much moonblood that I pull with the tides, yet no one I know sees this; maybe I am just made of cheese.
It takes a moment to smile, and then a while to know you're good.
I feared so much when I heard the lies being told. I feared loss and being judged a coward. I feared the space in my apartment, the fridge, the empty bottle, my head.
Then a fine young woman with the softest kiss whispered, "Stop seeing yourself through your enemy's eyes; they are envious; all they are is a pack of curs -- critics, all wishing they could be like you. Don't worry about lies, if you know they're not true."
The fear is gone, the empty space has become a drink of confidence that comes off of me like sexsweat, and my voice now laughs in stadium-shivering chords.
I am now Crescendo!
I had a cauliflower tell me a secret around 5:30 this morning, but I'll be damned if I can remember it; which is a shame, because I'd been up all night throttling the thing into giving it up.
I feel like stupid soup.
2:12AM
It was 1:59AM, 13 minutes ago. It took me 13 minutes to get home. I was passing the Annex, a bar in Madison. The music I had playing in the car was serene; then, I passed the Annex.
Outside, a man and a woman were fighting. It was obvious, they were shouting and gesticulating at each other. But, as I passed, she slapped him across the face after a particularly violent fit of his.
I could not believe I watched him raise his right hand – as if he were throwing it into the air at a concert – and form a fist. With the fist in the air, he jockeyed his feet, positioning his body for leverage.
She weighed maybe 100 pounds.
Maybe she said to him, “I dare you.”
Maybe she said, “You wouldn’t hit a woman.”
Either way, he did.
His left hand grabs into her long blonde hair at the scalp, yanking her head to the left and down; his right hand – all along a fist – swings into her face.
I’m past the scene, and the blood is draining quickly from my forehead down. What do I do? I slam on the brakes, screech into a bank, U-turn.
What would I be to just drive by? Who would I be? What kind of animal?
For better of for worse, there are two police cars, lights aflare, already approaching, quickly. I’m only a block up, so I watch as they pull over, and the officers jump out to cease the man beating upon the woman’s face. She is on the wet sidewalk. I can hear her crying and screaming; his right fist is still in her hair.
I do not get out of my car and run over, because I will be arrested for murder. I will kill him. I will remove his hand from her hair, and I will remove the life from his body. I know this. I leave the scene.
I call 911, and give them my number. Testify.
It took me 13 minutes to drive home from the scene; it is now 2:19 – six minutes since my life changed.
All together, it's been twenty minutes for me to think: How many women I know, love, cherish; how many suspect that they could be that woman? But really, what I think is: How many men I know, love, cherish...suspect that he could be that man?
I think – could I do that? Am I capable?
And now, at 2:22, I think, Of course I am; I am human.
Fuck you if I can't cry over this. Fuck you if I can't hate this.
Fuck you if you read this and feel nothing.
I've got a lake of dark orange surrounding my head where the universe piled in through the deaf ear, clarion sounds far distant a light year times seven, we've come a long way with nowhere else to go but down down into the breast of this red beast, Eris is a whore and lives in at least one woman you know, don't be fooled by a smile or the smell of a deadly rose, it will kill you just as sure as the universe drowned in the ocean of orange that waits hot at the end of everything.
Philosophical Questions to Ponder This Weekend
Q: What is a worthwhile life?
Q: Is there sense to the universe?
Q: What can be known?
Q: What moral obligations do people have to one another?
Q: What makes a society just?
Q: Why does McDonald's food smell the same on the way out?
Bound up like the beach towel beneath her naked she's golden warm honeychild with am M shaved into her pubic hair to represent MINE I feel like bathing today, jumping into salt water neck-high and diving for pearls in my eyes spying on that letter M, Mmmmmmmmmmmm, MINE.
Pineapple Pea Pod, makes a springy-like early-word spinalworm style noise and a twist of belly jelly hopping from puddles one to six six six.three, and there layin' now over puddle crazy infinite 8 is Sam the Mack, hungry for something msg Chinese and Pineapple Pea Pod certainly wins that favor, oh baby that flavor.
flung from the apple pupil of Chris T.
Swack into Battle aveck TM
This is not a lyric or a love song.
This is not an empty robin's egg.
This is a thick bloodstream.
This is not a scream.
This is not a prayer.
This is a rumble from below.
This is not a torn work of art.
This is not a place, nor a time.
This is a resurrection.
This is a resurrection.
This is the Shadow of Chris T,
a burning voice
reborn and roaring out
from the new world of fire.