by Tomorrow's Man
June 2001
Friday, 1 June 2001
I met a blind man today. He approached me needing directions to get to the River; I'm guessing, since it is so beautiful out right now, that he wanted to sit on the new, plush grass and listen to the multitude of melodies, the birds in frantic song, the joggers huffing in rhythm with their heavy-gravity steps, the dog-paddling centipede echoes of the scullers rowing by. He was well-spoken for the 20 words we exchanged, and he had that aura of sensitivity, of empathy, that is possessed by people who are simply, sublimely, nice.
I held him by the arm and faced him in the right direction, gave him exquisite details about every pothole, puddle, and tree-root along the way, and watched him for three steps as his red and white cane fell quickly into the rhythm of a peppermint-candy pendulum cat-whisker arc, then moved along my way, the opposite way.
I felt decent. Then I regretted one, strange thing: that he could not see me. I knew my face was touched with a wonder that would never have been if he were not blind, and that paradox rested like a lilypad on the thought as I entered the train station heading home.
Saturday, 2 June 2001
5:15 AM
I have not slept an actual wink all night. I have had a four-hour long dream. Ready for the kicker? I have been dreaming that all of my texticities - fictional, real, and otherwise - were happening to me over the course of this very evening. I was drowning in the white flames of a volcano, crashing through the windshield of a Pacer, having my heart ripped from me (literally), having my anger melted from my pores like silver, feeling the sensation of cockroaches spilling in birth from a scab on my tongue, being trapped on an oil-rig while the incredible whine of hungry, carnivorous cicadas drew closer, closer...it goes on, into parts that are more memory than dream, but the residue is just as thick on my tongue.
I woke up over and over again through the night, but the final part of the dream knocked me out of bed with a 'fuck it' and sent me heading for coffee. I dreamt I was in my new apartment; the weather outside was the buffeting storm that is lashing chilly rain at the windows as I type. I walked up the echoey stairs and into the bedroom, where I could see a flicker on the computer screen. As I got closer, I could see that the flickering was the words of all of my texticities, including this one, scrolling by at the rate they were happening.
And are still happening.
Sunday, 3 June 2001
It will end. Some morning soon, you will wake up in this same haze and step into the hot shower. You will lather. You will cream. You will slough. You will exit, dress. You will see a smile in the mirror. You will don textiles that speak soothing poems to your skin. You will drink a bit, eat a bit, fil yourself, empty yourself, just past calamity. You will depart, and the surprise of pinkness in the air, melody in the molecules, and lilacs calling to mate on the wind will sweep you into the slipstream of a bright, sunny day.
Yes, Bongo, there is a Santa Claus.
Soon.
Monday, 4 June 2001
Look, closer, closer, yes Kid, it's what you think; there is blood on the pages. Is it yours, is it yours? It just might be, yes yes. Do you want it there? Did you mean to bleed? Did you dream?
There is blood on these, my pages.
Tuesday, 5 June 2001
Stiffen the populace, give me time and a large field of green, let me align them like dead batteries on the sea in the pattern of my name, I shall kiss the first on his cold, stiff lips, I shall topple them like dominoes, I shall introduce myself to the Strawberry Moon.
Wednesday, 6 June 2001
This and. This and. This. And this. And That. And his. And hers and. Miss. And now. And. Then. And when. Who knows? And how. And why? Because, yes. And yes. Ten. Toes. And now. And his and. Hers did. Miss. And now. And now. That becomes. This.
Thursday, 7 June 2001
Bubbles forming around me,
tickly and many,
holding my breath is easy,
the stick down my center quivers
as I feel your fingers,
sticky,
grasp at my feet,
I'm reluctant
to break free
of this creamsicle,
a glassed-in pool of orange sweet,
but as your popsicle there is only
one place I would rather be,
and here I go to my dissolving destiny,
oh how I love
when your mouth opens
around me.
Friday, 8 June 2001
They are lifeless, lightless, complete intangibles, yet we birth millions every day.
The campus is alive with fauna in full flower, and also with the roar of steady construction on the monolith of the new Hawes Hall.
I walk the paths through the verdant trees, I step through them lifeless, lightless, and enter the greatest one now laid to the land before me; it is the birth of a shadow.
Five stories high this building goes, but do they notice the swath of dark they lay upon the ground? The birth of shadows. We birth them every day, lifeless, lightless, intangible, everywhere, our own and others; how inspiring are these somethings so ... not?
I have written often of shadows. Many have. I birth some every day. I sit in a world of them, quiet and moving with the speed of the moon.
I watched my shadow morph through the strong, warm sunlight this morning as I crossed Anderson Bridge from Cambridge to Boston, the scullers stroking away at the glitter on the river, the seagulls and pigeons and grackles writing their names with fleeting lines of shadow in the places I had just tread. They don't know their bodies as pens.
I know my shadow. I watched it morph, shrink, grow, distort. Odd that something can change so perpetually and never feel pain.
The birth of a shadow is the easiest call to life - for birthing and born - of all.
[Friday, June 8, Addendum:
I was originally going to write about walking over the bridge and for no good reason at all deciding to swing my arms in time with the opposite leg of the usual; i.e.: ever notice that you swing your left arm with your right leg? Well, sometime today, try walking around with your left arm swinging in rhythm with your left leg, and your right with your right. Get back to me with your results. --CA]
Saturday, 9 June 2001
I left my book in that car. I left that car in that lot. I left that lot in that vale. I left that vale left of center. I left the center at the age of five. I left five for a life of six. I left six and proposed to the seventh. I left the seventh for a broken chair. I left that chair for survival. I left survival for stability, and a car. I left that car in that lot. I left that lot yesterday. I left yesterday behind and dammit, I wish I'd remembered my book.
(I still don't know what I did with stability.)
Sunday, 10 June 2001
"Blessed be the man who invented sleep."
--Andrew Carnegie
7:41 A.M. Why am I awake? Ah, yes, a day to work. Work work work. On a Sunday. Even God got a day off. Eh, such whingeing. I volunteered. So what, I like to whine. It's pretty out. I don't mind it too much, being here. But I wanna go home. It's sunny and warm. I'm making good money. Overtime. I need a time out. Maybe I'll go for a walk. If I stay, I'll get done sooner. Okay, okay; back to work. In a minute; have to do one thing first.
The toilet paper in work is never as soft as it is at home.
Especially on a Sunday.
Monday, 11 June 2001
What am I doing here?
I must be protected from many things.
I will just watch her dance.
I am the thickness and strength of banana skin. I am bruises.
I watch her dance.
Tuesday, 12 June 2001
This place is finally hopping. Oh, sure, it isn't exactly knocking the sheet rock from the ceiling, but it has definitely begun sharing attributes with a jack-rabbit containing a small anal electrode.
Wednesday, 13 June 2001
It's a down day. It's a heavy atmosphere, thick air. Breathing an option. Cigarette? No reason not to. Diet, drink, die, eat, sleep, depress, supress, repress, wander, pick your own order.
I'm in a deep violet room. I'm under a spoilt milky way. It's just, simply, a heavy day. Walk through it, around it. It's the drunk puking on the sidewalk in a clown costume. It's salt peter in the sugar shaker. It's the clown crying in the station.
Oh, no, wait, that's just me.
It's a heavy day.
Thursday, 14 June 2001
I am seething.
I just found out that someone is reprinting some of my short stories, many of my poems, and most of these texticities at another site on the web as their own.
Vampire Lex. Scrabbling like a fat, filthy rat at my dried blood upon these pages. Why don't you just come here and bend over and let me give you a personal injection wrapped in sandpaper, hm? You like me sooo much. Face me. What are you going to write if I stop?
Is this a karmic smiting from my use of Napster? Should I sue? Should I cry? Should I just write really sucky stuff from now on so she has nothing left to steal?
I know what I should do. I should give Ted Nugent a call, have him bring his favorite twenty-ought-six down from Michigan, and go ourselves out for a little Soilent Green hunting. Consume, and be consumed. Don't forget - you take away a man's soul, and he has nothing left to worry about.
None of you have ever known me this angry.
Note to you, plagiarist: After I'm through with you, you will wish that Sebastian had been real.
Friday, 15 June 2001
It took me about nine seconds to decide whether or not to write today, whether or not to keep my blood flowing, nine seconds during which I slowly clawed the skin off of your face for 900 years in my timeless mind, nine seconds to write you this:
I am fire, I am anger and all the hate that humans have ever known, I type with blood on my bruised fingertips and drying stickiness on these maroon-black stained keys, I am HATE, I am revenge's empty, hungry belly, I am your every nightmare and I am coming to throttle your dreams, to rend your life from your lies, I am FURY like none have known, THIS IS A PROMISE TO YOU, you who stole my blood and have made me DEATH, I am every new vampire's thirst, I am teeth gritted on copper and mercury, I am the suffering your cells have not yet felt, I am the anger of bees, I am the end of hope, I am the shiv snuck into heaven, I am the hurricane over your salvation, I am forgiveness with a razor, I am the ashes of Christ pounded into your throat, I am murder by metal, I am wheels and desire and the luck of broken mirrors and you are destination, I am alacrity and haste on the highway, I am a plastic bag - you are the Head, I am the quickest cancer, I have become one goal, one purpose, this is my incantation to Kali, your Destroyer, this is a prayer already answered from the echoless joy of Hell, I am your contrived fear come to Body, I AM FURY, I am purpose, and I am coming for you, I am nowhere, I am TRUTH, and I am COMING-
(STEAL THIS)-
I promise.
Saturday, 16 June 2001
Sunday, 17 June 2001
The tide is turning on the charlatan. Voices from coast to coast, from Los Angeles to Boston, from California, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Florida, even Canada and England, have been raised to one pitch - KILL THE CHARLATAN!! - and are ringing through the slipstream to settle upon my quiet town in Massachusetts.
My fingers, this blood on these keys, shall bring you FIRE. I know what you are doing, charlatan, I know what you have done. You defame more than just me; you actively suck energy from a man who trusted you, even as I type this. Well, you diseased vampire, his trust is shaken. Your world is collapsing. And as we all know, your friends do not exist (except in your schizophrenic mind). And don't think I don't know what this means - I know exactly what happens when you destory the soul.
Fortunately for me, you never had one. You are nothing but a sloppy, ugly, demented mosquito, a tiny vampire with rotting teeth.
Keep sucking those Marlboros, charlatan. It is usually the last request of the damned.
Firing Squad -- ready...
Firing Squad -- aim...
Enter Phase Three.
Monday, 18 June 2001
I can't say it.
I CAN'T say it.
I can't say I have been flattered by this sallow, shallow, doughy, psychotic leech of a woman ripping off my every word, because I never felt it.
I let my heart scamper loose out here for all to see; this is its playground. It often takes my brain and my balls with it, leaving an amalgam of jocular, visceral part-prints in sticky red across the screen - the shapes of these letters, the density of my thoughts.
I am flattered by she with a set of my prints photocopied on the wall at her desk, there to glimpse and invoke an occasional, uncertain smile. I am flattered by he who uses a piece of the mass of my thoughts as a line in one of his songs. I am touched by your letters.
She, the Vampire Lex, never touched me. She only reached across miles and raped me. Fingerless. Dead-souled. She took my heart, my brain, and my balls, and stapled them, dying, to her own sleeve. She spattered my blood on her walls. She thieved my alms. She never felt the weight of my thoughts holding the blood in my body.
This has been my first lesson in learning the difference between loving robbery and the brutal violation of flattery.
I can say I am in pain.
Tuesday, 19 June 2001
I vow to remain as blank as this page.
Wednesday, 20 June 2001
Cybersex typed too fast:
"Take off your pangies..."(enter)
"My pangies?"(enter)
"Yeah...oh, your panties...yeah, I wanna see your hot snotch."(enter)
"God, you're so beg...I want yio to sick my tots..."(enter)
"Oh, yeah, I'm sicking your tots, god, lock my bells..."(enter)
"Oh, your bells are hige, I want you to dome on my gots!!"(enter)
"I am, I am, I'm goming all ocer yer tots!"(enter)
"Tes! Tes!!!!!"(enter)
"Hes, I'm GIMONG!!!!"(enter)
"OOOOHHH!!!!"(enter)
"IIIIIGGGGG!!!"(enter)
"Wow...what's your name?"(enter)
"It's--"(BREAK)
--PLEASE RE-ENTER CREDIT CARD NUMBER--
Dasm.
Thursday, 21 June 2001
Child Abuse Is Wrong.
Sign on train. Says it. But adult abuse. That's fine. Just fine. Machine hungry. Must eat. Feed machine. Machine keeps going. Machine goes, makes more children, protect children (child abuse is wrong), they become adults, feed machine.
Child abuse is wrong. Feeding machine wheel of consumption is just fine.
Friday, 22 June 2001
I was born of God's seduction of a leaopard. I was given half a cat's senses, half God's naivitÈ.
My tongue was given the liquid roll of the Disseminator, here to bring pleasure through touch and speak.
I was endowed this ability by a clever cat's seduction of God.
Saturday, 23? 23? Who Says? June 2001
I can hear your claws clicking, clicking...I can hear your claws clicking.
Sweet Jesus, chill me to my bones. Cold they are, where did go my blood? There, in the life of the cactus, there in the life of the thirsty boy, there in the life of the bat.
Feet in different directions. A car accident? Is it happening around me? What is this a conspiracy, an accident, a--?
Pink phone, green feet, hopping, here, there, I was hired for this.
I swear I just pulled this beer out of my cat's ass. No kidding. It's a Bud; tastes the same. No kidding. Bud. Ice. Light. A paradox of paradoxes, yes, easy enough to see, I bought a 12-pack. The diet. 6.5 gms of carbs per brew. Okay.
Where the hell am I? It's cold.
No drinking. Not me. Not drugs thanks. I'm just as high on life as I could possibly fucking be.
right true right true left true ruight left right left true true turyuey turye tuerye ruifhgtt rithgtj left left left lef tft left right true true fask fake fake fake fake fake
nicotene. caffeine. sunrissssssssssssssse. slowly. it's summer. summer should take it's time, gonna be et up soon enough. summmmmmer sunnnnnnnnnnnn
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno think not this time will pass call cops now
What's this mean? <<<<<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>>>>>>>?
End of thought. coming. like sleep. to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE(MATCH THIS SCREAM I DARE YOU)EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Okay. Now it's soundproof. Just me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and sleepy and the smoke smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me death and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and death the smoke and dying me and sleepy the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke and me and the smoke smoke smoke
signals.
Sunday, 24 June 2001
Lay down with your face. Feel the hardness of teeth.
It is a dubbed bassline, beating lower than your heart.
It is quiet jazz, too late.
It is what feels like the end.
Decay and sunlight.
Chew.
Monday, 25 June 2001
Okay, I know this is pathetic to the point of filler [I usually put more effort into my filler] but doesn't the phrase "[that] is the furthest thing from my mind." beget question?
If is it so important as to remain within the deliniated definition of Things In Your Mind, doesn't it automatically follow that it is less far 'away' than the furthest thing?
How far away is that?
Here is a test. Is the furthest thing from your mind further away than:
1. Panda mating?
2. The levels of MSG in the monkey's brain consummÈ being served in fast food restaurants in Taiwan this Summer?
3. How many people died from suffocation by used condom in April?
4. Boll Weevils?
5. Gout?
I didn't think so. So stop saying it. I know, I know - using that phrase is probably "the last thing you would ever want to do."
Tuesday, 26 June 2001
I did it today.
I went inside, the way I usually do. I did not become a super ball to the young, robust black woman making conversation with me (a perfect dusky mimic of a redhead I lusted for at one time), nor did I dissipate into the sea of my gin. Instead, I became, to me, a WRITER.
Big shocker. To me.
While my dribblings here have been satisfying to me in their own extra-sugar-in-the-coffee kind of way, I have always felt myself to be a wonderer, a charlatan, a wanderer across the blank, white page trailing a leaking pen that dribbled coincidental patterns. I have always been shooting at the sky, oblivious to the tumble awaiting me at the levee.
It has been a day of illustration.
I have, I think (always hedging my bets) found my art.
The epiphany, the thing that has kept me from realization? Ego - the smackdown of it.
I do not want You to ooh and aah me. I have never craved the crawling of eyes.
I desire of You - the collective YOU that is everything and everyone to me, the All of You -- to see me as a well-worn canvas, a palimpsest; as a stage, home to ghosts of greatness from tap-danced toe to aria; as a flailing exposition, from Moon to Earth.
I desire to be the place where You go to crave.
Wednesday, 27 June 2001
It's just me; her; the platypus; the remote. He is kissing his mother, though I can barely hear their sighs. Detatched faces run by the window, alarmed; I am not afriad; I think they are senseless.
There is a sound in the night, a sound like none before. It carries weight in the shape of life, but it is the size of death. It has the wings of a butterfly, but screams like metal to metal.
Another creature is watching. Several. They know I place these words in this box. They know what I am saying. The coldness comes when they turn to look directly at me instead of into this box.
Time to return. We all do. Entropy. The heat collides with the cold, and somehow we have more faith in the cold being victor again. The cold will come. It is on the way, it is on the way. Until then, I will watch him kiss his mother goodbye, and I will wish dreams to me, and to her, and to the platypus, and to the faces pointing at this box.
Thursday, 28 June 2001
Found out this morning that I am the hunted obsession of a sociopath with a fifteen-year history of getting people she does not like out of her way; those she does like end up in hospitals or prison.
Screw my diet. I'm having a beer.
Friday, 29 June 2001
Nooses tighten. Lies always decay, spoiling into truth. Skunks, too, die, and rot. Numbers grow, when fighting death; you are strong, but outnumbered.
My name is Legion - just as is yours. The difference is, I have a soul for each name close to my breast; you have not even the one you should have called your own.
You murdered your own soul.
There is a figure in a dark cape resembling a tall, gaunt man who is waiting for you, Legion. You have promised me a visit from him, by your leave. Remember, though, after he comes for me, it will be your turn.
Nooses tighten. My name, also, is Legion.
Saturday, 30 June 2001
This all just might not last. Fire engines and ambulances are panicking back and forth by my window. I am typing this by lightning-light.
The strongest storm of the year. Picking up men and smashing them against trees. Hail ripping through heads. A Volvo just floated by upside down, wheels smoldering...how's that for safety.
Someone out there is hanging upside down. I should help him. I don't understand who said that lightning rips apart the sky; it seems to me it is a lattice of angles and death holding the sky together as one indefeatable, powerful entity. The lightning even connects heaven to earth, if by hellfire so be it.
The person hanging is gone. So is the boat, sinking with more fire. Lights are dimming like termites in the wires. The wind is rising. Someone is screaming. Sirens. Crash downstairs, water everywhere. God what did I do with the flashli