by Tomorrow's Man
December 2001
Saturday 1 December, 2001
December. You have got to be kidding. There's just something about this month...it's just a big ol' bully. Well, okay, let's get to it again.
Sunday 2 December, 2001
Ticking like puppy claws. He runs to the watch. Time trips by, tick, tick. Back across the floor, nails and linoleum a typanic sandwich. Jump to the window. Sniff the pane. Leave a steamed nose-print in the shape of an alien butt. Tick back to the watch. Tick. Tick. Scutter to the window. Ah! There it is! The first flake falls.
Tails wag everywhere.
Tick tick wag. Back to the watch.
Monday 3 December, 2001
It's a great feeling to take stock of your life as it exists right now, today, and to know that, a year ago, you never would have had the thought that you could be so happy.
It is an even better feeling when you have that thought a day ago.
Tuesday 4 December, 2001
If I'm a lush, then doesn't it follow that I'm living the lush life?
Wednesday 5 December, 2001
Baby, I was conceived in passion, baby, I was conceived with lust, baby, I was conceived with an erection, baby, I was conceived with blood, baby, I was conceived close to bliss, baby, I was conceived in a state of crime, baby, I was conceived where the priests won't pray, baby, I was conceived in the summertime, baby, I was conceived in a cold, stark summertime, baby, I was conceived while high, baby, I was conceived as the night flew by, baby, I was conceived with a wolf's red scream, baby, I was conceived on a shivering star, baby, I was conceived in a cloud of atomic blue, baby, I was conceived where the sun don't roam, baby, I was conceived in the foyer of that mad Hermit's run-down, beat-up, bullet-holed home, baby, I was conceived at home.
Thursday 6 December, 2001
Hopping along, occasionally stopping to saw his music through the night air, he encountered the apple. It was big and red, with a rip in its skin from which sweet juices leaked. He tasted of the sugar; and then he grew, just a bit. Though he was still too small to travel very far very fast, his black sheen shone briefly more brightly beneath the full buck moon, and his legs grew too long to continue to create his song. Silent, his sheen appeared to be turning green, and in surprise, he cried out - and heard he now had a voice, as sweet and as delicate as a dream afloat on the night! He tweaked and twittered as he hopped along, happy to have traded see-saw notes for endless melodies.
In a cream-lit clearing, he encountered a beast. Stunned for the moment to silence, he peered into the creature's great eye. The creature peered back, blinking. He peeped; the creature blinked. He twittled his voice and asked. The creature unravelled her snout and snuffed, inviting him aboard. With his wee limbs he climbed up the gray, leathery skin, then once more hopped, to perch on a tusk.
The creature lumbered off into the night, her great ears cupping his tiny voice as he sang to her an endless melody.
Friday 7 December, 2001
God sometimes loves me...but usually only when I wear that pretty red dress...
Saturday 8 December, 2001
I will take the small paint brush, I will dip it in the warm water. I will hold the bare pallette away from your body, to prevent shadows. I will touch the brush, wet and tear-dropped, to the back of your neck. I will run it down your skin, rarely tapping the tip against a vertebrae or two. I will trace your buttocks, out to the left, then under, the up along your middle, back out, around the right, under, back up your middle. Where the brush meets its already laid wet track, I will paint a warm water kiss.
Turn around. Drop the veil. Tip to warm water, then to breast, breathe, my dear, as I paint a caress.
Sunday 9 December, 2001
Kid goes to park, finds rubber ball, big rubber ball. Ball about 39,350 Km around. Big green, blue ball, neat white patches, cool ball. Kid bounces ball, twirls ball on fingertip; Kid's an expert. Kid plays until the sun goes down, Kid runs home. Ball bounces to a stop, sits in the park, still thru the night. Tomorrow, the ball hopes the Kid will come back to play more.
Monday 10 December, 2001
I like to go to parties and then leaves the parties with a big grin on my face and stains on my pants and shirt and an empty bottle in my hand and a full bottle in the other and my hair a sticky mess and cigarette burns in the soles of my socks and a big ol' grin and applause like baseballs flinging from the doorway and tumbling like confetti from the windows behind me I like to leave parties having kept the crowd feeling like they've just been in an emotional popcorn popper, bye bye, hot buttered, me leaving and my big ol' grin.
Tuesday 11 December, 2001
Yummies!
Wednesday 12 December, 2001
He licked along the polished wooden banister that led up to the bedroom. It was what she wanted, what her desire demanded. His tongue lapped the sticky, creamy pudding off of the mahogany as he bent his eyes upward to where she sat on the top step, her smooth legs wide and bare, her right hand gently stroking pale, downy skin.
In the moonlight dappling through the open, curtainless windows, he could see below her smoldering green eyes that her lips were open, all of them, and reflecting dewy sparkles of moisture...all of them. He licked up the wood, faster.
He reached the middle of the staircase as she fell fully naked, the delicate ties of her red, silk chemise having been undone by her long, dark fingernails. She used her left hand to remove her silk, then caress. Her right hand painted itself through the slippery drips from her delicacy.
Three steps away, his face glazed with tapioca delight, an owl hooted outside the windows. The moon sighed. He turned his face to her and grinned. She mewed, an impatient, feline sound, and as she leaned back....
[Inspired by A.C.; to help us all get over hump-day.]
Thursday 13 December, 2001
A pregnant mound of sourdough, fresh-baked, split like Solomon's baby then grilled in butter to a perfect bronze, chewy just enough to resist the front teeth like a play-acting hooker before giving in; chlorophillicly perfect green lettuce, so crisp it breaks like a cheap champagne flute as it is laid like Eden's Garden across the bottom of the bun; One-point-four inches thick of Angus sirloin, grilled at four-hundred-five degrees for six minutes on each side, braising the surface black but leaving the thick middle red and warm, a brimming fountain of pure, animal satiation waiting to burst across the palate;
and a dash of salt.
Decadent hamburger perfection.
Friday 14 December, 2001
Woke up from having two dreams, one in which I was being murdered, one in which my wife and I were being hunted. My wife was jarred - she had also dreamed of being murdered.
By ten a.m., she had been in a nasty traffic accident, and I had sprained my right foot.
One of those days when I know if I had just turned off the alarm clock and rolled over in bed with the pillow securely covering my head, the mattress would have burst into flames.
Saturday 15 December, 2001
No matter what, every day, life will bring you eleven full minutes of joy. Eleven minutes, every day, no matter what.
Gives me a small, crooked smile.
Sunday 16 December, 2001
Exciting mouths.
That's what I like on women.
Their mouths.
A mouth that won't quit dancing. A mouth colored three ways before the kiss. A mouth that you know will taste like clover honey. A mouth with the panache and curl of Rollie Fingers' moustache. A mouth that screams, even when closed. A mouth that sighs and ripples draperies. A mouth that can swallow you whole, leaving nothing for tomorrow. A mouth that means business. A mouth that barely cages teeth. A mouth that oughta be in pictures. A mouth wasted on the young and old. A mouth made to squeak saviors' names. A mouth for laughing at death. A mouth for mumbling dreams. A pink mouth. A red mouth. A full mouth. A wet mouth. A Dr. Seuss mouth that would make Dr. Spock blush. A cold-shower hot-tub mouth. A mouth made to glisten. That mouth.
That's the mouth.
Monday 17 December, 2001
This is the day.
This is the morning of the clever sunrise. This is the morning of the dreaming snow. This is the morning of bluegrass parks, and cotton candy. This is the morning of your lover's touch. This is the morning of money's green burn, and starlight salve. This is the morning of gold coffee chips and diamond eyes.
This is the afternoon of play. This is the afternoon of backs rubbed by laughter. This is the afternoon of skipping making sense. This is the afternoon of karma turned to the sky. This is the afternoon of animal delight, and deodorant. This is the afternoon of erotic recipes, spicy.
This is the night of cool sheets and warm skin. This is the night of satellites and warm stones. This is the night of crackle on the sea, and steam on the lake. This is the night of sixties songs and cigarettes. This is the night of best friends and firelight. This is the night you sleep the perfect sleep.
This is the day.
Tuesday 18 December, 2001
7:14 A.M. Snow, sleet, complete crapola.
Wake up to snow showers coating the window, the cars, the land...but not enough, darn it, not enough. When I was in Grade School I lived for the winter days when there'd be that precious, tell-tale inch upon the ground, and enough of a flurry falling from the sky to warrant a rush to the radio by my sister and me, tune it to WBZ AM 1030, and listen with eyes a-glitter to the school closings, waiting for our town of Malden to be announced: "Lawrence...Leominster..."
Please, oh please...
"Lowell...Medford...Melrose..."
No!!!
For some reason, whomever it was who decided if my town, Malden, got cancelled or not seemed to wake up later than the school-board heads of every other town. I could picture him sitting there in his kitchen, reading the Boston Herald until 7:30 in the morning, his kids running around in glee because their town - he wouldn't actually live in Malden, of course - had already closed school for the day. Then, after taking his sweet time in the bathroom (I had an active imagination), he'd pick up the damned phone and we'd finally hear on the radio, "Malden...Malden Catholic..."; but not until just after my mother would have insisted on us getting dressed for school.
Later in life, when I was in Junior High School, we noticed that we would get snow days often, sometimes when it was raining. My mother's theory was that the new school commissioner lived in Malden, and would roll over in bed at 6:00 AM, glance out the window, and if it was cloudy, we would get the day off.
That's my kind of guy.
Wednesday 19 December, 2001
I'm the little man standing next to your teapot, I hand you your sugar and make things sweet for you, I'm not in a funny hat, though you might think so, but that's really just the way my hair curls, I'm not in a song by They Might Be Giants, but I bet if they knew me I could be, and I'm sure you've noticed that I don't dance that often, but then, you don't often make tea.
Thursday 20 December, 2001
the monkey told the fox that you no longer loved me so I chewed off his ears and out his heart and fed them to the whales. i used the ambergris to make a candle that i burn for you. the fox ran a tight circle around the last willow tree until she died an old death. i used her oily pelt to light the fire that ate the tree that burned for you. the whales sang a threnody for the dead monkey the dead fox the dead tree and beached themselves. suffocating they yearned for you, to save them, but they found out too late that you no longer loved me.
now, a snake approaches with secrets. let's see what she has to say.
Friday 21 December, 2001
Dry, hard, a buzzard’s road. I can be bareback, the sun bothers me no more, skin’s leather or gone. Creeping through the season, someone’s Happy Holidays, tracking across the calendar like this bird-shit stained road, baking, creeping out of the cypresses somewhere around the first week of November and degrading into whipsharp brush and nettles by February.
Step by step. I can be naked, dry, hard. No one’s on this road, no one who I care to make pay attention. Those of you who see me already understand, and you’re naked, too, bare, dry, hard. Blood in al the wrong places at all the wrong times, the trees fall screamless and we keep walking, pausing, shelling the green across the horizontal laterals, then walking again. I choose to do this naked.
Exposed. I’m a buzzard’s road, dry, hard; hungry and unforgiving.
Pass these thrushes and grackles fighting over glittering tinsel that will choke their young. I chase them off, stoop, lift the metallic plastic and it cuts my fingers. I eat it, saving the bird babies. I feel it doing to my throat what it did to my fingers. No matter – I’m dry enough to close up quickly.
“Hi there. How’ve you been? New scar? Yes, atop that other one. Interesting. The Mall, you say? I understand. Take care now. Save those grackles and thrushes, gulls and pigeons, when you pass them in a few measured miles; they’re crazy for that tinsel.”
He is almost as dry, but I’ve got a few years on you all. The flutter of dark wings is closer to my cracked shoulders than any of yours.
Done with the tribute. Time to sit, exposed. Dry. Hard, but that’ll go away; not much left to sustain it. Claw in the dirt lazily and I find a bottle of red wine. After turning it to water, I pour it out into the dust. Grackles and pigeons, thrushes and gulls, vultures and even the buzzards leave the zephyrs and tinsel to come frolic in the cooling, ephemeral mud.
I will rest here. I will dry. I will dissolve into the wind, and be scattered.
I am, and will always be, the Buzzard’s Road.
Saturday 22 December, 2001
The rumble tore a hole through the middle of the house, waking me, and as I sat up in bed - now perched along the crumbling edge of a flaming abyss - I could see death on the water, cloak shattered by the wind, walking steadfastly toward me.
It was just more the fact of the coming end of a pretty bad year.
Sunday 23 December, 2001
I feint left. I parry right, throwing my heart into the stands. A young child pokes it with a stick. The crowd applauds.
The Caesar shuffles left, his mortal coil moon-walking right. I'm left without rules, I'm in a videogame, no end until I die.
The lions come. The griffin roars. My shield melts, and my open chest is exposed beneath my honey-thick tears.
The crowd stands, and applauds. I sink to my knees.
The Heart is dead.
Long live the Heart.
Monday 24 December, 2001 Christmas Eve
She walked with me, talked with me, she lit my cigarette and let me touch her breast, she held me, she cried for me, she used her hand to release me (beaneath the aluminum stadium steps, silver bleachers cold beneath the Hunter's Moon), she mailed letters of love to me, she called out my name, and when I heard she'd died on Christmas Eve two years ago without a word from my mouth passing her ears, I cried.
Tuesday 25 December, 2001 Christmas
It is the gentle knock of entropy. I kiss into the bad breath of my friends, neighbors, Romans, countrymen, family and friends, strangers and lovers, I walk with them arm in arm, gift in gift, pleasantry counterpoint to pleasantry, as we approach the table where we shall all break bread as family.
They trust me.
The thought of poisoning these fine folk with Christmas dinner never crosses their minds, and though it crosses mine I am not found guilty; Jesus be happy, your detractors have failed again.
As Jesus preached love, his followers -- the insane; the brutal; the controlling and afraid; the greedy and the angry, the envious and the lazy, the gluttonous and the cocky and the obsessed (i.e., those who through Reaction Formation -- "the fixation in consciousness of an idea, affect, or desire that is opposite to a feared unconscious impulse" -- make Freud roll gravely proud) -- his followers shudder in fear while I sit in peace.
Jesus and I, we lit up a bong, my bong, named Plato, my yellow pal, all dildo-pretty glass and resin stains.
Jesus took the first toke, a deep one; he coughed a bit, but that was to be expected from such fine, purple crystalline. He told me about the day he said the word Love. He told me about the scowls and stares, the crowd's waves of nausea, the waft of desire to supress it, to keep it complicated, to insist on it being contractual, instead of instinctual.
"Yeah," Jesus said, "they fucked My shit up." All because He'd preached love. Well, and 'cos He was (sorta) black. But don't talk about that. "None of the right people in the right places seem to like Jesus being African." He said.
I told Him, "I don't give a fuck what You are...can't You come back, straighten this shit out?"
"Let Me explain, Chris," He began, "It's like baseball. I was the closer. For a good 4/5 of human history, things went just fine. Sure, wars and plagues and dissention popped up here and there, but evolution was 'proceeding apace,' as They like to say. Then, They brought Me in -- to wrap the shit up. To really Tie the Big Silver Bow on Existence, to give everybody a nice calm walk to the showers, victorious. But, I fucked it up -- not badly, nope, didn't flush it all down the Proverbial Toilet -- but, a closer is supposed to end the match; instead, well...what we've got ourselves here is a tie game."
"Hm?" I said, holding my smoky breath. I passed Him the bong.
He took a deep hit, then, through clenched lungs, He choked, "We're in extra innings, my friend. Nothing's been decided yet. But I'll tell you...you know what'll finally end this frigging dog-n-pony show?"
I was still coughing. "No...whuh...what?"
"Simple enough." He beamed, his eyes roadmaps in red, his beard soaked with bongwater. "You, you guys, you humans, you people, you just gotta--"
"Jesus, whoah! There's the pizza guy!"
I lurched upward at the sound of the bell, ran to the front door, and paid for the pineapple, jalepeno, and sausage pizza Jesus and I had ordered. (I had to remember, Jesus owed me $7.50.) I walked back, opened the box, set it in front of him, and went to get paper towels as he dug in. Fucker had munchies like Pac-Man. I came back, tossed a slice of Bounty in his lap, and re-sat, Indian-style. I took a slice of pizza. Spicy. Hot. Goooood.
We ate in silence for what seemed like an hour but I knew it was the drugs, since we'd only had 1 1/2 pieces each. Between two greasy lip-smacking bites I said, "What were you talking about?"
Jesus said, "What?"
We both giggled like idiots, took our pizza into the livingroom, and watched my new DVD of "Absolutely Fabulous" that I'd gotten for Christmas, until we passed out on the couch, in peace.
Wednesday 26 December, 2001
My body is boiling with the feeling of mosquito bites sliding down my throat and swelling away in the belly, here comes bile like a deranged messenger stumbling past my uvula with a promise elivered to the back of my tongue of stinging tears and bloodspots around my eyes, time to expulse again, the flu's messenger calls, excuse me.
Thursday 27 December, 2001
Curly hare, prickly pair, just ignore your sister's stair; falling knight, a total Boer, Holland has the finest hoes; a driven steak with a bit of time, chocolate moose, then an ice-cream sheik, dinner's done and with dessert this sweet talk I need to brake.
Friday 28 December, 2001
Watch me do this. You, from over there, that head. Dark hair, no smile. Stare past in bright blue. See? Moving. I'm moving. I twitch like breezes. I fall to my knees and crawl, tectonic. Here I'm coming, slowly. Here I'm coming. Wait there, you, that head, I'll be there before the sun dies....
Saturday 29 December, 2001
Here It comes, the Silence, the Bomb. Unheard, unseen, virus to supernova.
The last day. Here It comes.
Hear It falling, splitting the air above our heads?
No.
It smiles in a bloody whisper, but It keeps Its laughter in.
Hear It?
Well, It comes, anyway.
Sunday 30 December, 2001
Cold chaos patterns, ice on the glass, a fingertip freezes to melt in a mouth, steam rises from body and chocolate, soft textile = heaven's touch, winds whimper and leech in like 1/4-forgotten dreams, jarring, curl up close, cuddle as wolves, kiss the cool of my neck and sing to me.
Monday 31 December, 2001 New Year's Eve
1968, and a clot of blood meets a drop of semen; the bees consult the roses in whispers.
1969, and a bastard is borne from the fingernail of God; his first screams are heard by Magdelene on Io.
1970, begin the decade of youth, hot red doors wavering in July sun, yellow flowers that cut the tongue, the smell of honey and burnt sugar poured into the snow, warm wood as it is shorn, and the music of a thousand cat's meows.
1980, and begins the decade of lust, the hairs of the babysitter as a knitting needle pierces the foot, muffled urethral explosions held in by a callow fist, the purple sound of music exciting noise and becoming rhythm, unrelenting, hip-heavy rhythm, the scent of a sister's friend, and how good it felt -- a memory to the Day -- of the time when she did not move as fingers unfolded her, fingers stained so lovely, forever.
1990, and begins the decade of life, the apartments and cockroaches, the tears and broken bottles, the family holding fast, the friends nearby; the bash from drunken pillar to post along streets of cracked glass and cold beaches where the heart can only ever be torn, that drawer that contained one shoe, never cast away, that song that still empties the stomach, yes, the decade of loss, it was, the decade of lessons.
2000, and another decade beckons, this time less athreat through battle-scars, this time we're ready with eyes open, we've got allies and dazzled luck, we've got enemies and know how and when to forgive or kill, we've found magic between grains of sand and keep them safely hidden beneath toenails, and under silk corsets in trailer parks, and atop the doorframe secured with a bit of tape, we've got magic to ski a millennium, so come and goodbye, 2001, come and hello, 2002,
2002,
I'll love you.