by Tomorrow's Man
December 2000
Friday, 1 December 2000
click click lickety click snap goes the photo and there's my face egad --
I have never looked good in pictures. Pictures flatten me, squish out my third dimension and make me feel like a fly on a windscreen. Course, maybe I'm just always washed out...maybe it's the long nights of hot lights and snippety snippitee snap. Yes, must be, the tension of the photographers corrugating my features.
That's the problem with photographers...they focus on the negatives...
Saturday, 2 December 2000
I'm having one of those days when my highlight is getting home and squatting on the pot before my innards fall straight down my shaking thighs, then spending fivegrueling, expulsory minutes sounding and smelling like something that has crawled up inside me and is in its dying throes, then reaching for the toilet paper only to drop my cigarette into the trash barrel, which is, of course, filled with balled tissues.They were not mine; but, for better or for worse, they were wet.
Sunday, 3 December 2000
My prayers call forth my luscious fangsOblivion permeates my splendor
I lick up my hot arterial spray while
The Devil clings to my sweet requiem
I shred my delicate tears
My Master curses in bloody tombs
A black cat summons inner glossolalia
A wolf kisses me,
I, her bloody concubine
Prayers implore me, embittered
She lies weeping for my beauty
Terror summons memories
of labyrinthine graves
My Master ascends my whirling clutches
I shroud you, my beloved divide
My Master curses my effervescence
Death spins in my dark divide
Death engulfs me in vile rapture
Monday, 4 December 2000
Dream upon dream for two straight nights. No sleep. Feeling like a member of Fight Club. Dreams of my teeth falling out and being the size of a theropod's; dreams of spiders; dreams of bears and, yes, a crocodile with large glowing eyes...lots of crocodiles...and spiders. Thousands of black spiders crawling from behind my bed, hungry, and me glued to the sheets, mouth open in a scream, unable to be closed. Dreams of people living in stones. Dreams of my cat dead beside me - but when I awoke screaming and shook him, he was just dreaming.
Tuesday, 5 December 2000
The shadows were standing still. This is all that got me on the train Monday. Blue Line, Green Line, Red. A blur of sickly color, me a chunk in its middle. Stepping off of the trolley, I took three steps right. The face of a woman approaching me collapsed. Her skin melted as her lips dove, tears flew from her eyes, coating where her smile and bright morning sunshine had been. I could not help but turn around to see her fate, as much as I could not have helped walking right by her unaffected. They were all disintegrating into their tears, every woman in the station, collapsing into pools of sorrow. One woman, fighting the push, looked as if her eyes would leave her head from the pressure.
I turned back toward the tunnel to the Red Line, continuing on toward work, my name unknown.
Monday morning faces.
Wednesday, 6 December 2000
Finally slept. Three hours. Awoke covered in flies. The buzzing I thought was my alarm was their busy wings. Next to me, my ex-girlfriend lay dead. She had become a fly by-blow; a large maggot. I sat up, flies' claws clinging to me, climbing in, falling at least from me eyes. I could see what was coming out of the immense maggot's skin. It was rising. The skin split.I woke up.
It has been this way for three days.
Thursday, 7 December 2000
The muse demands. A new book has begun. I have gotten to the point in my life where I see the trail of volumes behind me, paper stones above a chasm of fire, and realize that each is a tiny chapter, a few blinking sordid memories, single notes in this symphony that is writing me.Stanza begins; here I am again, sleepless, drunken, smoking the fires of death, daring speed to stop me at the street. The words come and so do I, in joy, laughter, sound + vision, psychotic and fearing the sound of my death. But I have not yet caught the wave of that frequency screeching its vibrato through my brain, and the words keep coming, and until it arrives, so will I.
Friday, 8 December 2000
Finally snowfall, such gorgeous light dancing off the crystals, its almost enough to forgive the cold, for it does bring with it beauty; a shame the beauty makes my heart and lungs feel one pulse from death, a shame the beauty causes the Rest around me to ricochet through my fields like cancer cells, a shame the beauty only lasts as long as you can hold your head to the sky and suffer for it, as it requires you to do.
Saturday, 9 December 2000
I remember when I was much younger I saw a television commercial for a horror movie coming out called "Happy Birthday to Me" and though I was maybe eight years old, my mother was quite hip and brought me to anything hair-raising (she had taken me to see "The Deep" and "The Nightmare on Elm Street" at the drive-induringthose passionate, precious years of mine), especially if she thought it would scare the hell out of me (it was all for the distraction from our sordid lives back in those sordid seventies and early eighties).I ran into thekitchen where she was watching television with her friend Joanne and shouted, "Mum, mum, PLEEEZE can we go see Happy Birthday Tome????"
"Happy Birthday Tome? Tome!" She and her Joanne (Joanne was my babysitter more sordid stories about that, later) began cackling, an uproarious laughter that did not offend me, since I have always enjoyed making people laugh. They explained my mis-read of the screen.
"So whats tome, then?" I asked.
The most important words my mother ever said to me came from her mouth: "Go look it up." And I did, beneath a blanket of their warm, decaying laughter.
Sharing a room with my sister, I read beneath blankets alot, then; andwith very little competition, the Dictionary is my favorite book.
Sunday, 10 December 2000
I am sore all over.What troubles me in the sweetest way is - why do you frown?
The same way as if a Butterfly had been named a Fart and vice versa, the word 'sore' tells you I am in distress.
Is this truly so?
Why I am sore. Not a question -- a hypothesis; a rhetoric.
I am sore because I am in love; unrequited, and unable to forseeably be so, for mine own sake and for hers. But - it is love, nonetheless, and glorious in its kinetic existence (you should witness us hug).
I am sore because I have been athletic at work, running from campus end-post to campus third-rail, busy as a bee but, when have you heard a bee complain?
I am sore because my decrepit homeless-man boots have been replaced by fine new waterproofed ones, and my ankles and the leather have not yet come to truce.
I am sore because a friend (a dear friend) will not acknowledge the strength of her ways, the power of her spirit, her misplaced agony, her Christian ways, her truest desire, her heart's CONtent.
I am sore because I have been awake for 95 of the last 114 hours, and reveling in every moment, from the soaring, monstrous jumbo jets racing like fireflies mating above my head, to the dances of those I love in lust, longing for each other.
I am sore because my heart can not hold all the joy I feel for the world, and I am sore because so many dare slide that joy beneath their wheels, too much of humanity deciding that the rush onward to the next experience is more important than braking in the snow.
Monday, 11 December 2000
Q: If you, as a writer, could have any tool you could imagine to help you write, what would it do?A: It would be a waterproof, oblong device (black, of course), that is maybe 6 inches long and one inch wide, 1/4-1/2 inch deep. It would have an LCD screen at one end, and the other end would taper to a metal tip -- think of electronic thermometers, just like that! It would contain a few-megabyte hard drive; it would not have to be large at all. It would run on one rechargeable Ni-Cad battery, size AAA.
The tapered metal end would have a spring in it which would turn on the device when you pressed it into a socket, a socket that would be installed in my head: temple, back of neck, wherever. When I had a thought, a line, a phrase, etc. pop into my head, I could take this doo-hickey out of my pocket, flick the safety switch to 'on,' plug the tapered metal end into the socket in my head, and it would record the text of what I was thinking. It would store, say, up to 200 pages of simple text. A docking bay attached to the computer would recharge the battery and download the information as a .txt file.
It would have to be waterproof because it would need to be able to be used in the shower - when those thoughts most love to hit.
[[Thanks to M.H. for the Question.]]
Tuesday, 12 December 2000
This morning, Ms. Nature was up early, painting an incredible portrait.I live right on the ocean, around the corner from where Sylvia Plath was raised, in a tiny fingernail of a town best known for the big red, white, and blue-painted standpipe that every plane appears to treat as a maypole as it zips on in to Logan Airport. My apartment is right under the main runway's landing lane - everything from Cessnas to 747s drop their landing gear about 150 feet over my roof. Makes for interesting acoustics; and much spontaneous prayer.
Around seven this morning, I rolled up the shade that covers my big front picture window (a good 12-15 square feet of glass, looking out over the harbor), and the world was threatening The End. The sea was roiling black and silver over the rocks, the waves high enough for their spume to spittle my glass. The clouds were varying shades of angry gray, very low and being torn by the 50-mph wind, and thumbs of thick mist would suddenly poke down toward the water only to be ripped away by hurricane gusts. In the midst of all this, a half-dozen clamdiggers were hurrying along the tiny bit of decaying low-tide line, scooping mussels into their buckets as fast as they could while the ocean violently closed in around them.
Quite a sight to awaken.
Wednesday, 13 December 2000
oh the snake was a freight-train this morning, a rocket coming down from high-on noon, blasted scales and fire up the funnel of my spine, lit me up brighter than the lights of Rockefeller Center, dazzle from my eyes I was a dual spotlight, look here, here, follow the shine, look-see what I can do and I'm a lefty too, I've got a glow-on grin and static e. in my brain, amazing this feeling only lasts eight seconds but it carries me on its copper tail for the rest of the day....
Thursday, 14 December 2000
Oh, like I could sleep tonight...have to be awake in five hours to be a responsible member of my community, and all I can think of is fire and red. (It tastes just the way you think it would, folks - like a glorious glut of honey and lust.) It happens because you want it to; it happens because it's in your veins; it happens because it takes you down a different road, a path you hack yourself from the lively green that grows there, the NEW, the burgeoning plush that entices you with scent and humidity. It takes you down a new road - honey and lust and everything in between - and leads you to where you know you have always wanted to be; there are no bad roads - only the bad decisions to ignore their enticing embrace.
Friday, 15 December 2000
Missive. I have an announcement.The end of what we have known; the end of things.
Call the press core. Get them out from under their bran muffins, their fresh haircuts. Tell them to hurry - this moment will not last for long; ah, but a moment.
Im feeling backed up. I need a catharsis. I need a winnowing serpent to chew through my clots and blockage. Come up through the end of me, then eat my voice. Then become my voice.
Speak for me, serpent. What do you hiss?
He has an announcement.
He is sticking around.
And so am I. I have an announcement: Im all yours.
Saturday, 16 December 2000
The night comes for change, as the day is to see what youve done; twilight and dawn are the eyes winking, moments of unknown when you are pure.
Sunday, 17 December 2000
Had one of those rare, perfect moments this morning. Commuting to work on the Red Line, the train emptieds most of its human cargo by Kendall Square, and finally there is some optical breathing room. Across the train I see a woman pull a book from her bag, fresh and new and spine uncracked. She is a young, pretty mulatto, innocence obvious on her smooth coffee-tone face. (Her innocence was to become quickly ironic.)The book she opens is "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" by A. N. Roquelaure, the pen name Anne Rice used for her Sleeping Beauty trilogy, three raunchy, pornographic novels about what happened to Sleeping Beauty after the Prince awoke her (with his throbbing, uncircumcised member - on page three of the first book).
I watched her read page one...and I watched her read page two. I watched her. She turned to page three, and I realized I had never before seen a mulatto blush, and her smooth skin turned the most beautiful mahogany. She read on to page five, on which page I know is when the Prince leads Beauty back to his Kingdom - by a horse-hair butt-plug.
She looked around the train, eyes moist and not from tears. She closed the book (which, for three pages, had barely been open enough for her to read it - but she wasn't risking someone looking over her shoulder). She took a "Vogue" out of her bag and tried to read that instead. She sighed deeply, apparently relaxing.
But she stayed mahogany for the rest of the ride.
Monday, 18 December 2000
Nothing you see is real.Nothing you know is real.
Nothing you sense is real - it is all fear.
Nothing you wish will come true without a price.
Nothing you want will last.
Nothing you desire is what you desire; a facade.
Nothing you do is illusion - but it still means nothing.
Nothing I know matters.
I know nothing.
Tuesday, 19 December 2000
To the river I threw a poison kiss, a dog trotted by carrying a stick, he had fetched it once and was not letting go of what he had; I stand through the cold baring my smile, the wind freezes my teeth, one more mile, my steps get shorter, the rain falls from the side, I might be cold, I might be freezing, I might be dying, but I'll die with a smile, and never let go of what I've fetched, never let go of what I have.
Wednesday, 20 December 2000
Say, do you know the year the Pope discarded four days to sort of "clean up" the calendar? This has been bothering me for a few days now...
Thursday, 21 December 2000
What I need:Cigarettes (clove), coffee, water, guinness and other good beers, rum on the rocks, flannel sheets and comfy flannel pants, a fuzzy sweater and many loose tee-shirts, cheesy pizza, a kiss from a redhead, a bit less sleep, warmer weather, understanding, patience - more of yours and more of mine, a raise, a bonus, afaster computer and a better synthesizer, a bigger brain and quicker comprehension, a rare steak, cold cold milk, rememberance of dreams, visions, tickets for anywhere at anytime, boots that feel like pillows, a long hot bath or two or three, cats purring, summer winds off the water, lightning and close thunder, lovemaking by the fireplace, a new movie from David Lynch, a top-ten single, another kiss from a redhead, aerobics (but not alot), sports skills (hockey; baseball), the desire to gamble, more of a fear of death, fellatio for an hour and cunnilingus for two, a home by the sea, the release of a hidden novel by Sylvia Plath, a piano for my mother, another kiss from a redhead, and my daughter, Casseiopeia, to enter this world and light up the skies.
Friday, 22 December 2000
The sun warms my face, echoes become reverb as the sound gets closer, the heat covers my scalp and I feel the tingle of sweat, my drink vibrates in its glass, my cheek begins to feel the slightest burn, the noise eclipses as the jet enters my only working ear, the sun disappears behind a speeding tube of metal suspended by 350 dreams and my face longs for the heat again, coming soon but never soon enough;tip the drink, enter the gin, cheers, another day has left me alive at the sunset.
Saturday, 23 December 2000
The wind keeps blowing, keeps blowing, has chilled the walls of this place to cracks, here it comes, seeping in, the great above, below, between, within, my very breath swirling, colder than death safe beneath the sod, I can feel every calorie throttled away and it still comes, it still comes, the wind still comes, when once it taught me how to breathe, today it just steals my life and gives me ice to cool my blood to the speed of deadwood.
Sunday, 24 December 2000
"So, do you wear a tutrtleneck because you're a poet?" He smirked and sneered, an impressive motion of mouth and cheek."I hate the things, to be honest." I said. "They irrirate my beard. But, when the temperature outside is lower than my age, the turtlenecks come out of my closet; it is a trend I unfortunately believe I will continue with each passing year." I sipped my beer.
My detractor smiled, lowered his hackles. "My grandfather is seventy-one, and is never out of a turtleneck and a windbreaker; he lives in Boca Raton."
"So happy we understand each other." I said to the young man.
We shook hands.
Monday, 25 December 2000
Dear Mr. Strunk,I have a question for you, which you may not answer if you are indeed who you could be. To be honest, I forget who sent me this address, but as my number of fans and friends grows, I get all kinds of interesting things in the mail and via e-mail. So, someone sent me this address.
Simply enough: are you my father, and do you want to say/do anything about it? Im not the kind of person to seek revenge or recompense, but I dont appreciate being simply non-acknowledged. And since Ive hit 30, my wonderful, intelligent friends have helped me realize that I should not be treated this way; one of them has been my best friend for about 20 of my 30 years on the planet.
Oh, yeah, about that - me being on the planet? Thanks.
I have some questions, of course; but mainly I am concerned about other half-siblings of mine - Id like to know if there are any out there. Again, I dont feel I should be ignored or dis-existed by an entire half of my family. The fact that Im not allowed to meet my sisters and/or brothers because you couldnt pull your wad fast enough and are still - 30 years later - trying to deny your responsibility (i.e., me), makes me more frustrated than anything else in my life - to the point where I can not simply let it go ... and now I am looking for you.
There is little else to say, I guess. I am (mostly) happy; I am (mostly) healthy; I am (often) in love, and know how to love well.
You have not destroyed me.
So, if you have the balls (oh, wait, I know you do - thats how I came [sic] into existence!), send an email. (By the way, dont take my anger as anger; it is just my usual sarcastic self. Stress control, nothing more. Im also a funny bastard, by the way. Sense of humor the size of my You-Know-What. (Oh, yes, be proud of your son in that respect - if I got it from you, THANK YOU.))
Ive got to get a letter off to Hunter S. Thompson now. Merry Christmas.
Okay.
Your Son, Christopher
P.S.: I love being German. Italian is quite groovy, but I love having German blood; sang froid.
Tuesday, 26 December 2000
Um, God? You're day's past. Your son's another year older, another year deader, another year late for the resurrection. I have no idea what it all means, but that we humans still use it all as an excuse to treat each other like the deadly virus we are, while still two thousand tears later wearing our Sunday-to-church faces around our sharpened teeth, near our cancerous hearts, above our shit-stains and animal denial.God; don't take it personally; I don't blame you. You obviously just didn't know what you were doing when you concocted this mess. I've occasionally tried to light a fire in a howling wind and burned down the bushes myself - but I didn't use it as an excuse to cover my mistake.
God, maybe it's time to come clean. Maybe it's time to get your 'face' down here, pop onto CNN or MTV some night (New Year's would be nice, what with the millennium and all) and tell us all the truth; "Humanity...um, yeah, I cocked it up. There is no Hell; except your own Hell. And what you have always known, and violently denied, is true - Heaven lies between the thighs of your mothers, sisters, nieces, and even your nuns. Heaven lies in the creation and respect of life itself; life is the Spirit."
God, we've still got rape down here - and murder - and war. Didja notice? Maybe it's time to come clean. Our mothers, sisters, nieces, and even our nuns are being raped every day by your dirty work. Mankind - men - are sullying your good intention. Don't make me regret this. Hey, God; c'mon; it's time to come clean.
"All the cocks of the world are God; blooming blooming blooming into the sweet blood of woman." --Anne Sexton
Wednesday, 27 December 2000
After watching Barton Fink with one of my best friends last night, I awoke this morning to a dreamin whichshe and I were sitting in a sweltering log cabin with John Goodman, the three of us vulgarly naked and shot out of our skulls on peyote. In the dream, I had a vision that the next dream I had,I knew I could make come true. The next dream I had (in the dream/vision) was of waking up.I awoke.
I awoke to the sound and sight of my black cat chewing on my eight-foot whip, which I had left out on the bedroom floor the night before. I had simply been too worn out to put it away with the other ones.
Thursday, 28 December 2000
To all readers of my texticity, 12/26/00:I want to offer an apology to anyone who was offended by my lambasting of 'God' on the 26th. I am sorry your god has made me so angry that Ibrought forth my opinionaboutthe years of rape and murder he has visited upon this earth. I am sorry your god has never offered me answersthat my ignorant eyescould see.I am sorry your god is so cruel as to leave us all here, wandering, scarred and bruised, wondering what is real andwhat is evil, with the alleged answers lying only in oblique volumes preached to us throughreligions that try to control us withthe world's worst record of recorded violence while wechoke upontheir hypocrisies, the intelligent among us in fear of death, the ignorant in fear ofdamnation. I am sorry your god can only preach love to those who pass through his rings of fire, and the rest of us are worth only his shit. I am sorry your god has not been able to show us the way to live in pure happiness, beyond, guilt, fear, judgement,betrayal,anguish, and subjugation, without sentencing us to trials of despair. I am sorry I do not understand your path to glory, I am sorry you must shake your head and worry for my inevitable journey to Hell, and I am sorry your god is dead and you can only blame me for your blindness.
Iam happy with this life. Iam as good as I can be. And my God just happens to be fine with that.
Cheers and love unfettered, Chris
Friday, 29 December 2000
Why do sounds hurt the way they do? Why are my hands like spiders webs? Where did you go, right at the moment I needed you? Why the drugs>? Why not, with you an illusion? Where did you go? Go? /To where it hurts less, to type; to think./ I am going to 3whjere I am somewhat less damaged. Why? Because I need to feel like a complete machine. And right, no, I feelincomplete.
"Incom-plete, father>?
]
"Yes; incomplete like a divine machine,." I told my child.
"I feel, therefore I think, "I said to my child, skin so beautiful, like her mothers, in metallic. "I am a divine machine," I reminded my child. "That is why.well, that is why I Hurt."
"Divine," she, my eldest daughter, asked, "divine? Do you really feel divine? Divine is so important a statement that it doesnt even call for a nightly story you have to be billed as a top feature!?!" She turned away in her flannel nightgown, the howling wind clawing at her pristine windows and chilly, huddled form.
It tried to find her, as I dug to the well of her soul and...won?
I say: "I apologize but I was young, and quite deranged. Is there forgiveness; even for a trial? I can offer you a gem; mostly preciousI can give you sapphire; or even onyx! Perhaps something to match your eyes;"
I paused, "an emerald, perhaps?"
"II" Shedrank from her nightly hot tottie. And then she breathed. "I feel you need to tell me everything. Offer me: the Emerald beneathYour Ream of Fire.
"Everything; the truth; my father, my love, eternity; this, all that I am, all that I have, all that I can I offer you."
"I accept." The redhead said.
"I accept NOW."
Saturday, 30 December 2000
What I sow burns, what I reap tears down forests of being, makes people immune and people immaculate and peple innocent lose themselves in the comfortable, courting heat.
I don't know which God it is I indeed seem to be, but whicher has decided to flame through me has done it in the most spectacular of ways, woth womens' screams in the background, forests frying to an ashen earth, oceans thirsty for freshwater, my own soul laughing at the scorch I leave red upon the fair skins of those who trust me.
I am here to burn.
Sunday, 31 December 2000
, I am a cheap car left in the whirlwind of the driving sea breath, the tides and steam that flush upward from the ocean's surface, the power of its need to bring everything back to the ultimate One, the Origin,
, as much as I long to be one with This, I also need to hold on to the scoured skin of my teeth just a bit longer, just a bit longer to keep bloodily smiling and pumping out my jism sweat and feces in humor and jocularity for you to read read read though the Earth itself tries to dissolve you and us and We in its salty breath,
, we're not meant to be here, so let's us make a good impression on things while we've been given this snake-eyed chance.
Happy New Year, talk to you tomorrow,
maybe.