a snow of butterflies: texticity, October 2004

by Tomorrow's Man

April 2001

Sunday, 1 April 2001

5:41 AM

Mr. Yo-Yo is too radical for me.
I'm Mr. Watch.
I'm Mr. Wait.
I'm Mr. See.
I'm Mr. Know.
I'm Mr. Know Every Nothing.
I'm Did Not.

My problems can't be solved by spiced Bacardi.
I'm on the rocks.

And this has nothing to do with a drink.
I have nothing to do with what you are feeling. oh

now I do.

There isn't a poet

dead or alive

who could get down

IN ONE LINE

what I am trying to say

right now.

Monday, 2 April 2001

I came first, but not last. Just ask that tired chicken sittin' over by the window smokin' a cigarette and eatin' Doritos. I guess that debate's over.

Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Damn strong wind blowing out there today. Never let it be said that Spring as a lamb or lion didn't have plenty of muscle to flex.

I got just outside the Harvard Square subway entrance and threw down the end of my cigarette as I have countless times in my post-work walk-to-the-station-pursuit-of-mild-cancer but this butt had no intention of be suffocated beneath my boot and it rode the wind.

In the three long bounces away from me my eyes steadily rose to meet the angle of the butt's red tipped trajectory a second before it's small self flipped beneath the left rear rubber tire of a motorized wheelchair - the longish, person-carrier type - as it idled before the opening doors of the station's access elevator.

I was abashed for a moment but then the wheelchair blew up.

When the EMTs were treating my burns and butterfly stitching my face in three places the Cambridge Police Sergeant explained to me that I was the prime witness of the crippled ex-veteran's suicide. The chair had been rigged with three sticks of dynamite and an electric trigger. Aside from the inside-outedness of the veteran which was still being mopped up from the street by figures in those ET-looking space outfits, I was the only person seriously injured.

The EMT said I was lucky - if that strong wind had been blowing the other way, I would have been immolated.

Lucky me.

Wednesday, 4 April 2001

I'm having one of those days when the IDEA of caffeine gives me the creeping be-jeebers even as I scarf down the next gallon of iced coffee, my tongue is a red carpet for tourette's-like thoughts, my jitters have jitters and those jitters are breeding babies creeping out of their shaky little skins carrying tom-toms and every time I open my mouth to speak my voice sounds like I'm a slap-fought radio dial with the antenna turned up waaaaay receptive.

(Never enough caffeine. I kiss you, I kiss you more more muh muh muh my scrumptious coffee!)

Thursday, 5 April 2001

No next moment will ever be like the last one used to be; it's the genetics of illusion - the breakdown of the Life Game - that morphs and iterates time, makes darned sure that the next moment will never have been repeated.

This possibly could not have occurred again since no next moment will ever be unlike the last one could have been, i.e., History will never repeat itself; History repeats something Else. When a duplicate event occurs, it is the mirror held like a skipping stone poised and kinetic toward the tensile surface of the future - the image (the action) itself ready to be thrown.

This possibly could not have occurred before; and with no next moment ever being like the last one might have been, I am quite satisfied that there is a chance that it could be happening right now.

Friday, 6 April 2001

I witnessed it walking home along the beach. The Poland Spring truck jammed on its brakes but not soon enough and sent the sausage cart and its food everywhere. The old Italian guy who was walking with his little sausage cart was fine but his sausages, french fries, and the like were scattered. In moments seagulls swooped down from everywhere in the air for the free food being soaked in a deluge of broken six-gallon Poland Spring water bottles scattered around the pavement.

The guy driving the Alka-Seltzer truck never slowed down as he attempted to beat the yellow light at the intersection not 50 feet from the accident but as he tried to cut left in order to make the light the truck toppled, sending thousands of Alka Seltzer tablets bouncing and rolling across the ground and right into the morass of sausages, french fries, onion rings, spilled Poland Spring water, and ravenous seagulls.

The seagulls...well, they aren't known for their stunning brilliance. They beaked up anything they could get down their gullets. I had to turn and run from the scene as they began exploding like gory Fourth of July in the air everywhere.

Saturday, 7 April 2001

It's a tiny option. A sliver of skin. A pinch, ow, a pinch, ow, but damn I have got to get it, I've got to rip it off. Chew chew chew. I'm not nervous. I'm not unhappy. I'm not hard up. I'm not hungry. I've had some coffee. I've had a good beer. I'm still dreaming. But fingers find their way to teeth, and teeth connect around flesh. Something is idle. Something is askew. I'm not sure what, but until I figure it out my fingers will pay.

Blood. And I don't know if it's from between my compressed teeth or from my stripped dark pink cuticle.

Maybe I just need a cigarette.

Sunday, 8 April 2001

I've always wanted to be the smallest possible mass of the highest resiliency material that bounces, i.e., I want to be a tiny superball. I want to be invincible, too, a tiny invincible superball. Immortal and bouncing.

I want to be borne of a cloud, speed toward the ground, hit a sidewalk in Mombasa, bounce at full speed into a Kenyan's nostril deflect around in there for a bit before zipping into his lungs, bounce through a tiny hole in the tissue wall and then into his large intestine (damned parasites, he should see a doctor), boing in spirals until I'm shot from his colon while on a trans-Atlantic flight, slip through a tiny crack in the fuselage at 32,000 feet, speed toward the sea and hit so hard that I ping off of the surface, shoot far enough up through the sky to resist gravity (not a whole lot pressing upon my tiny sphere of a body) and slip through the ionosphere, then accelerate constantly as I approach the moon where finally, my goal before me, hit her lunar surface at full velocity, and make a tiny crater to call home.

Monday, 9 April 2001

What are the odds that I would see five people in pink hats and three people with pink hair in the course of 17 minutes this afternoon? I guess it was odds-on.

First warm day. Flower smells. The sunlight not just a charlatan's breath; I feel it on my neck, it places warmth upon my skin. Ripples on water are glittering less sharply, perhaps fuzzed by microscopic life beneath the surface hitting a farenheit at which they can finally fuck like fiends. Birds are chirping, loops and melodies in endless breaths from beaks, sonnets instead of threnodies. The moist loam cushioning my feet purrs and smells like rut while the air stretches out along its kinetic blanket of earth (we the mighty mites), waking up warmly from a thousand pleasant dreams. Smiles are wider; teeth are brighter and eyes are shaded at memories of weeks of grey rainbows.

Yes, even humans are lovely and sensual and most attractive now, on this first warm day of the year. There is a great hug of gravity pulling every animal around me nearer, nearer, to salty warmth. Spring hasn't taken its shower yet, but I think its having it's morning coffee.

Oh - and did I mention that all the women are wearing less clothing? Oh, right, yes, the sun told me no need to even write that down....

Tuesday, 10 April 2001

"MANY THINGS ARE DESTROYING ME." his shakily hand-written sign read. I watched the pretty Filipina drop a bill into his basket.

Yup. Many things are destroying me too. Quickly. Slowly. Indefatigably and sometimes so harshly and with no other goal that some of those things burn themselves out.

But many things heal me; most of the time. If I'm dying, I'm dying at at rate that pleases me. When I wake up comfortably, not needing to pee, enough sleep and not too much, warm and fuzzy as a kitten with sunlight dancing in between the blinds on silently delicate wings, I heal from the daily things that eat me. Other things: When I am kissed by my lover and her breath smells of me. When my hair is raised by a warm breeze acting like sprites in the Spring. When these words tick together like a slope of dominoes. When I consume the last bite of a Fenway Frank with mustard. {The Perfect Taco.} A woman glancing at me ... a second time. This paragraph growing. Your eyes, moving, here, right now. Yes, and then, your smile. And mine.

You heal me.

Wednesday, 11 April 2001

"I SHOULD TAKE MY PILLS NOW SO'S I CAN GET POLISH." [Text/Context Note: 'Polish' as in from Poland, not smelly stuff for the well-being of your furniture.]

Why do people say things like this to me? I'm quietly sitting at the baseball game and watching the Red Sox rout the Orioles 10-1 while scarfing down my third Fenway Frank in 45 minutes, and this skin-creepy woman with a Southern drawl thicker than my mustard has just got to say something like that, doesn't she. And of course, if you've ever been in the grandstand seats at Fenway, the person sitting next to you becomes a blood-brother by the seventh inning; I mean, you get dizzy inhaling each other's carbon dioxide.

And since she's now tuned me in, I can't help but hear all of the psychotic human vocal burps all around me in the stands:

"IF YOU THROW THAT PAPER AIRPLANE YER GONNA PUT OUT SOMEONE'S EYE AND THEY'LL BE BLIND AND YOU'LL HAVE TO LIVE WITH THAT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!" (The girl speaking was about 7; the boy throwing the plane about 5.)

"JOE, BET ME I CAN'T EAT ALL THREE OF THESE HOT DOGS BEFORE I THROW UP!" (Drunk, Irish, Male, shirtless in 40 degree weather. Joe took the bet. Unfortunately for the family sitting in front of them, Joe won.)

"WHERE DID THAT THING GO? I SWEAR IT WAS JUST HERE. I HOPE NO ONE STEPS ON IT, I COULD GET SUED." (Whatever it was slithered away!)

"WELL, THIS AIN'T THE FIRST TIME WE'LL BE THROWN OUT OF A PUBLIC PLACE FOR INDECENT EXPOSURE." (Joe's friend again, taking off his pants to clean the puke out of the crotch with Miller Lite. Ironic, no?)

"CAROL, WHERE DID YOU LEAVE THE KIDS?"

"C'MON MANNY! HIT ME IN THE FAHKIN' HEAD! LET'S SEE YA HIT ME FOR A HOMERUN!!!" (Call me a baseball snob, but we were well inside foul territory; I hoped Ramirez would hit him anyway (no, it wasn't Joe's friend that time).)

"OH, DAMMIT, I FORGOT THE DEPENDS. KIDS, GIVE YOUR GRANDMA SOME NAPKINS, QUICK. AND BOBBY, GIVE YOUR SISTER BACK HER PRETZEL!"

"DADDY, WILL A BALL HIT ME IN THE HEAD?" "PROBABLY NOT, SON; BUT DON'T WORRY, DADDY WILL CATCH IT." "YOU WILL?" "SURE, AS LONG AS I'M DONE WITH MY BEER."

"THERE IT GOES, GRAB IT!" (NOT about a ball hit to our section, but about the slithery thing beneath our seats.)

"WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THAT TO ME IN PUBLIC?!? I MEAN HOW CAN YOU EVEN PUT THAT FINGER IN YOUR MOUTH!"

"DIDN'T MATTER THAT THE DOCTOR GOT IT FROM HIM, SO LONG'S HE'S GOT IT BACK." (My favorite Sounthern-accented woman again...she's so fun out of context.)

"C'MON, LET'S GO. THIS GAME IS BORING."

Oh, those folks just had no idea.

. . .

Thursday, 12 April 2001

I just realized that I am exactly the kind of person who, if I went into a restaurant bathroom and a weird guy followed me in and while I was standing there pissing he washed his hands and then made to leave but he was only faking it and instead came up behind me quickly and pulled out a gun but I knew it all along and whipped my right arm up in an arc that caught him hard across his extended wrist and the gun clattered away and I then smashed him in the nose knocking him to the floor and I recovered the gun and pointed it at his cowering form just as two employees came running in and I told them both to go call the police and get the manager and both of them left, would then pretend that the bleeding-nosed scared weasel of a culprit tried to attack me again and I would shoot him in both kneecaps.

Let him tell the cops it was unprovoked.

Friday, 13 April 2001

Saturday, 14 April 2001

11:54 P.M.

People magazine. Rolling Stone. Places to know someone you know will never be known, and you don't care even a little that it's true. See that man next to you? Never a soul outside of his breath will have a clue that he kisses the beast every night before he lay himself down to sleep, a sacrifice to save your soul, and mine, and his.

Every night, he fails.

But, y'know, at least, he tries.

More than I can say for me re:

Anyone's Soul But Mine.

Though...I did not kill anyone today. And by my 11:57 P.M. count, I had committed 117 acts of niceness just in the past 21 hours; okay, sure, Easter might have had something to do with it (not that I'm a devout Easter-Person fan, but watching all those folks out there be nice to each other with slightly-but-trying smiles pasted over their typical egg-faced I'll-See-You-On-The-Other-Side-Of-Hell grins), I was overly kind today.

No one deserved it. But me. 'Cos I'm nice. You have no idea. No idea how nice I am.

. . .

This might have been of those episodes (2:51 A.M. now - I've been here a while) when the weather bit big time (I'm the only one of you that, three years and four days from now, will remember the sun's tease, yet, the wind's bite), my eyes are still about 13/16 lidded, and I'm not sure if I could even get a hard-on enough to enjoy a blow job.

Yeah. It could have been one of those episodes. Then.

. . .

I fought a blind spot recently, positioned like an enemy satellite over Satisfied. The information received

was

incomplete.

. . .

[A blur means yer winning, my friend, don't forget that - a blur means yer winning.]

. . .

I promised my mother I would not say the F-word today. Twenty-four effing tortuous hours on a day that effing-well deserves it. Good thing she has no idea I made the promise.

. . .

Okay. Enough subliminal ranting. I'm going to go finish my beer under the waning skirts of the Pink Moon. Here come He tongue. I'm going to kiss Michelle and my other soul sisters, connect saliva strings for frogs to hopscotch across the great seas, and mix up a little life.

You can meet me here.
I'm making the drinks.
Or, you can sit there, connected to

Sunday, 15 April 2001

A hand on up to the body of Christ

Fire reach down, fire consume

Extended hard, his final seed

Sticky in our throat of need

Choking, we turn from the moon

And desperately pray to the corpse of Christ.

Monday, 16 April 2001

Ah, well, that was ponderous now, wasn't it. Context, context, my tiny falcons. Just read every third word. Or add a word progressively through the sentences based on reading the second word of the first sentence (i.e., second sentence, read the third word, third sentence, fourth word, etc.). There are all kinds of ways to read things. To keep things from being what they could be. Or better yet - to keep things from being what they were meant to be.

Do you read me?

Hm. I thought so.

Try this.

Pussy.

What'd you think?

Are my eyes lidded...heavily?
Am I wearing a smirk? Or an outright smile?
What does the scruff of my beard smell like? What are you thinking?

Just what is it you are thinking?
Is it what I am saying?

How about this:

PUSSY.

I hope you blush.
I hope you feel warm blood.
I hope I am, with one undefined word and vague context, drawing your attention enticingly, inexorably, and with uncomfortably arousing curiosity toward one place, a place that may be a part of you; or painfully close to you.

I hope you think this is some of the nastiest material I've licked across this screen.

If you don't think that,

then

maybe

you
are

wrong.

Tuesday, 17 April 2001

I have no boogers in my hair.

Wednesday, 18 April 2001

Dancing dollars and dead presidents, hoops licked with cold fires of debt and damnation, our training to fear a digital fist polished in the immediate sky and waiting on each click our fingertips make to say 1 or 0 to our existence, tick tick tick goes time by like a dragonfly's wing that brushes your ear and you just itch it away without ever wondering what you might have just missed, the take and take of being here and here and always longing for the glittering oasis of there, there that is the same mirage in each of our dreaming minds, take the tick and clock your neighbor like she's just a rung on this banana ladder, we're blonde and dying, we're brunette and crying, we're balding and for some reason noting this distinction matters, it's all been our own creation, it is our every finger circulation-free as we clutch like roses at the dark mirage, this is perpetual, this is our world, when we are awake we live the splitting of adam while from this vacuum where should be breath we pray for truth to shatter our endless illusion of a warm, full-mooned honeysuckle-kissed sweetly dreaming eve.

Thursday, 19 April 2001

Remember that scene in Deep Impact toward the end, when Tea Leoni and Maximillian Schell (as her father) are clutched in each other's arms as the comet hits the Atlantic seaboard, the winds rise, the water recedes with a cataclysmic, foreboding gush, then the sun is blocked out by a 100-mile high tidal wave, and then Tea's character scrunches her eyes closed and buries her face in her father's chest and murmurs her last, plaintive word, "Daddy..." before the great rushing wall of supersonic water turns them into salty molecules?

Well, your orgasms should always feel like the back of your brain is Tea Leoni; and like the tidal wave barely qualifies as a metaphor.

Friday, 20 April 2001

What's more Evil: That I think I am truly the embodiment of Satan, or that I'm really convinced that you are?

Stepping on a scorpion minding its business on the pavement, or crushing a spider dozing away on the wall?

Feeding spolit milk to a nasty old man, or drinking the breast milk of a missing baby?

Masturbating to thoughts of sex with my cousin, or daydreaming about killing my father?

Finding blood in the morning and not caring, or caring to find blood in the morning?

Chewing off my own fingers, or cutting off yours?

Lying to a fat woman to make her smile, or lying to a beautiful woman to make her weep?

Coveting all of your wives, coveting all of your daughters, coveting all of your husbands, or coveting all of your money?

Voting for assisted suicide, or voting for capital punishment?

Stealing a CD from a corporate music chain, or buying one for a ridiculously low price from a desperate man on the street who is in need of a needle for his fix?

Loving her for her blue eyes and her blue eyes only, or hating her for the past pain she caused me?

Succumbing to the desire for emotional punishment, or succumbing to the need for physical torture?

Wishing to publish a pornographic autobiography, or wishing to publish a novel of pap and safe lies that would be consumed like manna for the masses?

Knocking over a gravestone, or pissing in an urn?

Setting a church on fire just to see the flame, or devouring the minister's wife beneath the pulpit?

Killing a dozen roses, or remembering her birthday with nothing more than twelve gentle kisses?

Murdering the son of Hitler, or claiming to be the Son of Christ?

Using the last budding branch of the last White Maple to set aflame the last copies of the Classics, or aborting a rape-baby with a coat hanger?

Stealing a deaf man's hearing aid, crushing a crippled man's plastic legs, or slaughtering a blind woman's dog?

Drowning your worst enemy, or drowning yourself?

Painting a picture of Traci Lords fully clothed with her legs spread, or painting a picture of the Virgin Mary smiling in ecstatic rapture?

Causing a man to divorce his wife through spoken seductions, or causing a priest to quit his church through whispered truths?

That I can't help but be condescending to anyone who likes a love song written after 1979, or that I am Jesus reincarnate...and I just don't care?

Saturday, 21 April 2001

Ah, finally, he is free. I thought he would never be released. I thought he was crazy, back in January, when he climbed into his bright red scull, carried it slipperily out into the middle of the frozen Charles river, dropped it to the ice with a strangely dead echo, climbed in, and began rowing. His oars scraped the surface for eighty-one days.

Now, though, he is free. The Springtime warmth has rid the river of its frozen floes, and he is gliding away, thin, shaking, but smiling out reflections of the sun.

Sunday, 22 April 2001

...the miasma of wet sawdust coupled like a catfight to the redolence of rodent pheromones....this can only mean trouble.....

Monday, 23 April 2001

There's an A in my name there's a B in my ear there's a C just outside my window there's a D in death there's an E making my left cheek itch there's an F in a dirty word there's a G next to Whiz when I'm stupid there's an H in a hot place there's an I next to this other one there's a J at the end of my fishing line there's a K I'm sure but not on this box there's an L ell ell all over the place there's an M at the end of things that taste good there's an N in the mirror with jagged edges there's an O where her mouth is and it's so so exciting there's a river of P must have been the coffee there's a Q all alone without U there's an R at the beginning of a lion's yawn there's an S in the shape of a snake's whisper there's a T for two and 2 for T there's a U and now Q can be happy there's a V and I smile without needing to explain there's a W where? where? oh, there it is there's an X yes, right there, marking the spot of course there's a Y because we like you and then there's some Zs, who've already fallen asleep.

Tuesday, 24 April 2001

Come back, come back, come back as a bullet and we'll hear you, we'll hear you, slicing our love songs, cutting through our pretty blue, come back as a bullet, please, and ripple our world.

Wednesday, 25 April 2001

You've had a great day. You've had a rotten day. You haven't had enough sugar. You've had too much caffeine. You've never been so wired. You've never been so tired. It must be the job; it must be the weather; it must be the plumbing.

Maybe it's the damned karma.

Oh, Lord, give you a break.

Thursday, 26 April 2001

An Indian stands in the doorway, his quiver full of stars. He wears a smile of haughty, but kind, anticipation. I am not sure where I am. He matches me, drink for drink, without moving. His eyes never leave mine.

I walk over. His expression never changes. I lean close, to hear his whisper: ...stars and asters...the full flower moon dipped in honey, stored in sweet wax...pollen and bloom...the sun sets for her...it rises for you...light sky, dark moon...asters; and stars...and stars...

I pucker my lips.

Friday, 27 April 2001

I have never spent so much time as I have today wondering about thumb muscles.

Saturday, 28 April 2001

Something explodes in your mouth.

Intent: hunger? curiosity? neccessity? Texture: cotton? slate? glass? Flavor: sweet? sour? copper? Expectation: bill in the mail? sudden thunder? spider in your hair? Reaction: aroused? surprised? content? alarmed? Action: spit ... swallow ... vomit ... smile ... dream?

Something exploding in your mouth. An orgasm, an audit, a perfect sunset; nothing hits you the same way.

Sunday, 29 April 2001

Heat come on, touch me, take me from here to St. Louis, I want to touch the Pacific Sea, I want to feel the earth warming me, move closer sun, whisper to me how this Summer, once again, you will save me.

Monday, 30 April 2001

There was nothing untoward about him, nothing shocking, black boots and slacks, grey short-sleeved shirt, longish hair pulled back, not attractive, not ugly, plain bookbag on right shoulder, walkman on hip, eyes intent on a trade paperback with a black and white cover, one of the hundreds of us on the train, except for the foot-wide sign taped to his chest, declaring:

Look at me.

He never looked up, never acted peculiar; he adjusted his headphones once, flipped a few pages of his book during the 17-minute ride.

Look at me. Standard block letters. Black ink on white paper. Look at me.

The woman seated across from me was looking at him. So was the man next to her, and everyone else in the row of seats. None were blatantly staring, but all snuck glances, most of them nervously, some with a wry smile, but we all looked and looked and looked.

We could not look away.