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The bottle had no message had no cork had no color had no had no water to float in only suffering to see right through it and on towards the barfed up empty canvas a tasteless wafer thin portion of the world eating itself with every crunching of the dry wind the bottle rolled rolled over sand time had no patience for what was trying to re-enter slowly slowly less than slowly less than that less than that broken pieces of unidentifiable things what is there what is not there nothing is looked at trash hills to be glazed over accumulated by what had to have in a thick scum layer of ought to be dumped.
Nuts brittle on a small branch with sharp spines castrating the air cloudy with dust curling over dull refuse parts and shreds of tangles and confusions misused baggage lost on carton flow stacks of the drab rollers spinning lobes of evaporated flat vision screening out filters and more unidentifiable things what is there what is not there nothing is looked at trash hills to be glazed over accumulated by what had to have in a thick scum layer of ought to be dumped.
Continuing with the infected area natural or so it seems natural to what exactly naturally purple that is what things unidentifiable things look like when they change to purple as well as other muted shades of silence where so much decaying into each other bumps into all aspects of everything every unidentifiable thing bumping and turning against each other smudging ashen purple the makeup of the inanimate. Always old. The world was always old shelved in the assisted living corner of one of the bottom tier universes shitting on itself.
- Max Stoltenberg
Dragged kicking and screaming was thrown from a window nailed into a picture frame banging its head against cavity walls disposed of rejected and expelled from sentenced to crushed into a space too big for its blood to stay in one place a course in tragedies extorted and appropriated into a line a narrow passage that stretched for breath after breath nonsense was at the window how did the view get trifled with too late to be left alone too late to be left. That is not that is not dust but the dried guts of a bug the only thing they could be correct anyone about if they were given the opportunity and they never weren't that is not dust and they never weren't.
Not fit for a couch not even fit for how they couched their fits time has been shot into the skin like flakes of cereal soaked with grape juice the experiment of a child the beginning of the familiar odor of failure to permeate every piece of clothing out in the streets and up close under the nose dangling from the top of the brain tortured in the private narrow suffocating bedroom pressing issues someone else pressing issues someone else pressed the down button and now its taking its time down the shaft its time to look ahead straight ahead at the towels on the wall of the elevator blocking the controls towels unwashed towels the room is heading straight down the down button someone else pressing issues someone else pressed the down button and now its taking its time down the shaft.
Reading between the lines between the walls between stories between floors that is reading between talking between each other's running out running out of things to say they had run out on it all by getting away from it all by tucking themselves in between it all a tight squeeze for all the running out on it all they ended up ending up running into it all into each other into each other's running out running out of things to say that had run out on it all by getting away from it all by tucking themselves in between it all reading between the lines between the walls between stories between floors that is reading between talking between each other's running out running out of things to say they were floored the backside of wallpaper.
Lack found it difficult difficult to open his mouth to speak let alone turn his head. He mumbled, "Are we horizontal?"
Centesis stopping her what little movement she could make in order to hear Lack better, asked, "What? Are we what?"
"Are we horizontal?" repeated Lack.
"Are we vertical?"
"Or are we that?"
"You found your hat?"
"Which one?"
"The one with the weird symbol on it."
"5 of them had weird symbols."
5 boxes of personality test booklets out of 11 had been lost in shipping how else how else? would it happen? would it happen? how else would it happen but when they were distracted by the 2nd violin section evoking the deaths of many at the hands of those evoking many whining otters if given the capacity to gargle leaving 6 boxes behind.
"Which one?"
"The one with the weird symbol on it."
"6 of them had weird symbols."
"What if you had half as many hats?"
"And how would this come about?"
"Because I asked the question."
"No, would this be the result of some accident or due to carelessness on my part?"
"Carelessness on your part?"
"Well, yes, do you realize how long it's been since I've had a cup of coffee? I would have thought the withdrawal symptoms would have subsided by now."
"So what would happen if due to caffeine depletion you had half as many hats?"
"I probably would feel just as unwell as I do now."
"It wouldn't narrow anything down for you?"
"Narrow?"
"Narrow? Anything? Down for you? You know in terms of narrowing down particular hats with particular weird symbols?"
"We're wedged inside framework so that my balls can be floss for a pair of nutcrackers and you're asking me if cutting my hats in half narrows anything down for me?"
"Yes."
"It has to be the weird symbol with the two sets of thick lines."
"The lines that go which way? Horizontal or vertical?"
"The ones that go - never mind."
"Whichever direction we're going."
"We're not going in any direction."
"That's right. I'm glad you're here to remind me."
"I'm not glad I'm here. Or that you're here for that matter. You know what I mean."
"I do. Thanks for reminding me about that."
"You do."
"I do."
"I do."
"You do. How does that strike you now saying I do?"
"I used to listen to my stereo in my bedroom when I was a teenager and I would put the speakers on the bed and lie down with my head between them and it was better than headphones until I would hear a knocking on the door and then it was over and there's the thought of going deaf because of the music but now that I have my head stuck between two walls and all I hear is the hum of machines or the scratching of the bug legs and their abdomens linger right where my head is and I can feel the terror of their hunger knocking on my skull it's only then that I get the I do my ear is smashed against it all I can hear is something else's digestive process and my mind is ready only then to get it ready to explode. And here I am can't reach you can't touch you if I could get one of my hands into one of my pockets I don't think I have any more anecdotes left in there. And how about you?"
"I used to be told that I'd go deaf if I continued to listen to my music too loud as well. And they were right and I don't give a shit because what am I missing that I had to hear from them and anybody else? They wanted me to make even better use of the inheritance we'd been given until I looked at my hands at my fingers and how thick and dirty they were as if it was my idea. What am I missing going deaf with my music? I'm not missing a damned thing of their going on and on about my imagination and exaggerating things damned things my bedroom growing up was piled with things damned things an inheritance of blame. What am I missing going deaf with my music? Getting out to what? Nature always had a dry silence for me. And we thought we were going places when we said those two words."
"Who'd have thought we'd end up in this place? At least we're home."
"Home?"
"Or something resembling home. Never mind. It's the caffeine withdrawal."
"How long do you think you can keep using that excuse?"
"As long as the symptoms last."
"And how long do you think you can keep using that as an excuse?"
"As long as my neurons keep chirping the logic of that's that."
"And how long do you think your neurons will keep chirping?"
"As long as I can still hear that little bit of air escaping from your mouth that resembles when you used to laugh at my jokes."
"I used to laugh when you used to use the excuse of having said something nonsensical because you panicked. Now you have to convince yourself that my sound of irritation resembles laughter."
"Or that this place resembles home."
"Resembles. Does it get harder to convince yourself?"
"Sometimes. And sometimes its easier and sometimes its harder. Too stuck to even go through the motions."
"I once thought I heard that sound like water running and I felt this rush go through me because it was like I thought I had left the sprinkler on as if I really had and then I thought as if I really could just declare leave the water running it's so dry out there it'll never be enough just keep gulping it up disappearing and then I think I hear voices talking as if its people in a break room at work talking about other people as if its a TV show of people talking about other people talking about a TV show and then I think as if it really was a gardening show and then I think about the water running again and how dry it is out there gulping it up absorbing it away disappearing even though I still think I hear that sound of water and maybe its outside or inside me until I almost fell asleep when they left this section alone and moved on for a while too short a while until I could hear them come back with their bug legs scratching until I feel their abdomen by my head like you do like I do until it's neither what's on the inside or the outside that counts."
Dragged kicking and screaming was thrown from a window nailed into a picture frame banging its head against cavity walls disposed of rejected and expelled from sentenced to crushed into a space too big for its blood to stay in one place a course in tragedies extorted and appropriated into a line a narrow passage that stretched for breath after breath nonsense was at the window how did the view get trifled with too late to be left alone too late to be left. That is not that is not dust but the dried guts of a bug the only thing they could be correct anyone about if they were given the opportunity and they never weren't that is not dust and they never weren't.
Not fit for a couch not even fit for how they couched their fits time has been shot into the skin like flakes of cereal soaked with grape juice the experiment of a child the beginning of the familiar odor of failure to permeate every piece of clothing out in the streets and up close under the nose dangling from the top of the brain tortured in the private narrow suffocating bedroom pressing issues someone else pressing issues someone else pressed the down button and now its taking its time down the shaft its time to look ahead straight ahead at the towels on the wall of the elevator blocking the controls towels unwashed towels the room is heading straight down the down button someone else pressing issues someone else pressed the down button and now its taking its time down the shaft.
- Max Stoltenberg
Hollow flashlight
on the upside down
paper plate dented
and empty cups
frozen in the middle
of a step
of a dance
brought to a stop
by the ending of the breeze
Unfriendly clouds heavy
with distaste for what they ground
under their wheels
thickening with the belts that wrap
around their sunrises and sunsets
darker grey
shallower black
Dropped in to say
after they leave
behind their echoing
denunciations
after they leave
a residue in the eyes
always there
for suspecting
suspecting
Objects steeped in pouches
carried to terms misused
unfortunate incidental roads
sinking into the wasteland
to appear again
in the next dead end
- Max Stoltenberg
The hand hovered around the door-handle the hand hovered around again was that sound like a dark machine circling the house or a group of people or someone at the wheel of a large truck power-washed with their shit they only gave for that specific purpose don't crash into a home without it back lower gums hurting like that time when they did what they did under artificial light where no one seemed to be able to see a thing rows and rows of others rows and rows of rooms rows and rows of halls linked together by separation threaded together by clothes that needed to listen to the time when the ass said it was time to go when stomaching things ached to the sound of a father's temper tempered to that sound around again was that sound like a dark machine circling the house or a group of people or someone at the wheel.
The hand hovered around the door-handle hovered around the door-handle off for another dig but this is about hovering is it not is it hovering in air in atmosphere this biosphere with masses floating hovering in it just standing sitting there hovering here this biosphere wrapped in a bag of flesh what's coming out now? won't come out maybe take a peek scratching the glass of the outside inside a larger sack of space a container hovering inside the outside of the inside of another bigger box folded in on itself for recycling used for recycling as the edges wilt and droop from the stains of connection with other things that hover just standing sitting there hovering here off for another dig but this but this is about about what was it is it it is it was what was what was it hovering away below hovering in dirt buried not to rest buried to hover in the cemetery's grease traps.
The hand hovered around the door-handle around the door-handle hovered the hand the hand that obscured the gap between the two wooden boards in the fence slanting slightly away from each other warped versions of their former connection or alongsidedness now they imposed on the next pair of outer wooden boards seeking confirmation of their positions rubbing splinters together for let us we must rub splinters together as the hand obscures the gap between the two wooden boards in the fence slanting slightly away from each other warped versions of their former connection or alongsidedness now they imposed on the next pair of outer wooden boards seeking confirmation of their positions rubbing splinters together for let us we must rub splinters together as the hand obscures the gap between the two wooden boards.
"We don't have much further to go."
"We have much further to go."
"We don't? I mean we do?"
"We have much further to go."
"And why is that?"
"It is to be a drag."
"Is that to be the theme?"
"Themes? We're all out of them. The damned thing is just going to drag on I tell you."
"The problem is I believe you."
"What have I told you about that?"
"I need to stop a moment."
"Try all you like. You can't stop moments."
"Enough of your pseudo-philosophy, I'm getting another one of those draining experiences."
"I've seen this before. What do they call it? There's a name for this. It's referred to as you don't want to deal with anything because you are a pathetic excuse for an inadequacy."
"Yes. That pretty much sums it up. In a nutshell. In an eggshell more like. Careful how you move through space there."
"So this is you. Tired of the signs following their admonitions and restrictions. Tired of tearing them down and staring at the blank wall behind them. Got your expectations up for open spaces. Demolition makes room for more crowding. This is how you want to be memorialized as a sign."
"I only want to rest maybe sleep and while you're talking about memorializing I'm open to that too."
"You know you won't be able to sleep. You have the most difficult time of it and I don't see how you could even imagine to on this sand."
"Is that what you call this?"
"Why? How would you describe it?"
"I don't know. Throw up some adjectives and I'll see if I feel like rolling around in it."
"Let me take a swat at it. How about sandy?"
"That name's not ringing any bells."
Eraser rubbings covered the angrily trammeled correspondence no getting in the last word this time it would just come back no longer at this address at this address there would no longer be a coming back no longer at this address two addresses remaining where they were empty until replaced by more words struggling to correspond to something to say under eraser rubbings covered the angrily trammeled correspondence no getting in the last word this time it would just come back no longer at this address at this address there would no longer be a coming back no longer at this address two addresses remaining where they were empty until replaced by more words struggling to correspond to something to say something to say
"What was that?"
"An interruption I think."
"No, what you said."
"I didn't have a chance to respond I was interrupted."
"There you go again. You and your interruptions."
"If you could be a sign what would you say?"
"This property condemned."
"And I would probably -"
"What are you doing?"
"I was going to share what my sign would say."
"Did I ask you?"
"Well, no."
"And there you have it."
"And that's it then?"
"Perhaps if you ask me what I have planned for tomorrow I might ask you to tell me what you have planned for tomorrow."
"There's no need for me to ask that because we both have the same plan."
"And which plan do you think we both have?"
"Isn't it the one having to do with hastening our deaths?"
"Well, yes, there is that one, but it's been put on the back burner due to poor luck."
"And how would you define poor luck?"
"I don't know lack of materials and no proximity to precarious geological locales."
"What precarious geological locales?"
"You know - like an abyss?"
"An abyss?"
"To fall into?"
"I think we're already at the bottom of one."
"That could explain why we're having so much trouble agreeing on textures and how to describe them."
"Maybe if we find our way out of this abyss we could fall back into it and have done with it finally."
"Why would we do that?"
"You know hasten the hastening."
"How would we do that?"
"Reverse engineering I guess."
"Oh no not that. They wouldn't be wanting us doing that. Now get on with your guessing."
"Was it no more eye contact?"
"I was referring to the list of adjectives."
"Crumpled."
"If you had asked me about my plans I would have been taken back to never having washed my car for an image for itchy dried out eyes."
"Crumpled plastic used to occupy my time when I was young. I would crumple it up so I could watch it expand and grow and it looked like it was alive. Did you ever do that? What's something you liked to do when you were young?"
"Young? So long ago it's as if I've never been young. In fact, I've never had a car. That explains why I never got around to washing it."
"Watching that plastic open up moving on its own until I remembered I was making it happen. Make it happen. The more I made it happen the more I noticed how dead things really were."
"How long has it been since I've worn clean clothes? If you had asked me about my plans I would have been taken back to leaning over an old washing machine tugging on wet tangled towels mixed in with the clothes and I can't see her purple blouse all I see is the towels that I know were in there because they had been shit on by our dying dog just before we put her down and I can't see the dog I know the towels smelled of her and it's gone washed out I just leaned in tightened my grip on the towels wanted to leave them wet but its gone washed out."
"I think our plan was to get back to town and see if anything has changed."
"I told you we shouldn't have left."
"You were the one who made that speech about if we stayed it would be as if we were sitting looking at the clock slowing down the hands and how it would be better if we went away and came back."
"I didn't think I was that persuasive."
"Persuasive? Coercive you mean."
"You didn't have to listen to me."
"Well, I did. We'll just make a U-turn when the time comes, is what you said."
"I said that?"
"Yes, you did."
"When it all starts looking the same over and over it's hard to know where to make a U-turn."
The hand hovered around the door-handle the hand hovered around again was that sound like a dark machine circling the house or a group of people or someone at the wheel of a large truck power-washed with their shit they only gave for that specific purpose don't crash into a home without it back lower gums hurting like that time when they did what they did under artificial light where no one seemed to be able to see a thing rows and rows of others rows and rows of rooms rows and rows of halls linked together by separation threaded together by clothes that needed to listen to the time when the ass said it was time to go when stomaching things ached to the sound of a father's temper tempered to that sound around again was that sound like a dark machine circling the house or a group of people or someone at the wheel.
- Max Stoltenberg
Don't want to hear about these flashes not of light but these flashes forward and back through tense palms that flip through cards with pictures on them call them photographs if you will even though that is not what they are cards stiff and bent and fingerprints sure they are sprinkled like crumbs over furniture and counters and car windows but they really set those cards on their way to being worn out for the backyard to form an unwieldy sheet like a chunk of roof slid off the top of the house. Toppled stacks of paper cut-outs formed a chain of corresponding limbs of vellum sweeping themselves over the edge of the table motioning each other to get lost. She'd thumb-wrestle his caressing fingers away. Someday they'll inevitably lose their way attempting their pitiful endeavors towards the outskirts of what they forgot they were talking about thinking of something maybe to do with an unfinished note with the words "nothing except the truth" in the margin somewhere somewhat slanted.
It comes back around to that choking sensation one of the tubes inside that just might burst or it will persist in its hazarding another swallowing its latest guess at legs sliding down his throat ravelry of mock acknowledgement a din frosted with nausea the nausea the it of existence that comes back around the regurgitation of yesterday into tomorrow spilling its pale color of undigested day and night crocheted together with shut the fuck up.
"Nobody it'll just have to be."
"Swing."
"My arms ache."
"No not that. What ever happened to the swing seat after it fell from the set?"
"It fell did it?"
"Yes it did. We talked about it the day after it happened."
"Another forgotten backyard conversation?"
"We had our chat in the sideyard."
"So I suppose you've catalogued which side we were on at the time as we felt our way along the plumber's snake through the shit drain of the world."
"There's nothing to read while I do my business. That's all I'm going to say for now."
"Give it a few now's and another overflowing paradox of the naive will brim in your mouth."
His mouth remained closed as his cheeks inflated.
Are you going to leave it like that?
Suppose.
Suppose what you want.
That's what's being done. Supposing.
Suppose what you want and it'll still be.
It'll still be what?
It'll still be.
It'll still be what? is what I'm asking.
It will still be.
Spread apart your contraction with one of your fingers digging around in the seat of your pants.
When you lost it.
Lost it. That buzzard that uninhabitable idea turned most of the hair grey and left the darker patches to mockingly display wasted youth.
Wasted.
Haven't swallowed for cellars of hiatuses re-emerged from the open metal doors and clanked them shut started hopping up and down on the rusted surface desiring to fall through until the ridiculousness of the whole thing triggered a sick laughter rejected by the latest tomb. Don't open anything now haven't opened anything sitting here. It's about time you retracted yourself back underneath.
"You're guessing about the time."
"I count backwards and forwards and backwards through the years and I can say I don't have a favorite age never had a favorite age. Used to think it might be right now until it became this right now. Just right is hardly given a chance to start it's suspended suspended with chains and you tighten and loosen your hold on things chains hard to find where to put yourself while motion only turns the stomach into an oven for burning up on the inside everything you thought you could take from the outside where the trees without leaves and the eyes without color dissolve into a cauldron where the pain and the deforming pressure nightmarish conversions of heat and searing memories."
"This is where you kick me in the head."
"You're guessing about the time."
"Am I? I thought I was dead on. Not dead yet, but still on and if you could do us a turn and turn off the lights to the old noggin with a hard enough kick we would be much obliged."
"Obliged? You'd be a corpse."
"Then pin the bill to my chest. I won't feel a thing."
"Nor pay anything."
"No not a thing."
"I'm in the wrong line of unemployment."
"I'd like to propose a toast."
"What are you doing?"
"I'd like to propose a toast."
"What are you doing by proposing a toast?"
"I thought I'd change the subject."
"Did you prefer multiple choice or fill in the blanks?"
"Multiple choice."
"I used to think that until the more blanks that show up in my head."
"You don't say."
"I do unless I draw a blank."
"Truly inspired."
"Inspiration is looking for genius exhausting almost every pore almost every orifice realizing you started at the wrong end."
"I think you mean perspiration with both lungs burning using up almost every branch for kindling from the bronchial tree."
"That's respiration dumb ass."
"Jack ass if you don't mind."
"You never told me your first name was Jack."
"It's not. Or maybe it is. Thought it started with a letter no it's not."
"Either way your last name is ass."
"Where is that blood coming from?"
"It's probably my nose again."
"Been doing that a lot lately haven't you?"
"A lot but certainly not enough. Run out of ideas run out of wool run out of chains run out of flat on the back run out of flat on the face run out of running out sitting here on the edge of the desert more sand to mingle with old dry skin that brushed up against a picture of her that the wind took away and replaced with the latest trash that fills the living room the room where the wall eventually gave way to the howling of the dunes writing incomplete answers in the blanks of a gradually erased landscape."
"Stop bleeding on me."
"When you withdraw yourself all the way back under the table and leave me alone."
"And then you'll stop talking to me?"
"I don't know about that."
"Drawing another blank?"
"If I had one less blank could I do without the likes of you in my head?"
"I got nothing. I'm drawing a blank."
"My paralyzed imaginary friend at the end of my days that drip on as the smallest leak of an ulcerous bag of nerves is drawing a blank a sloppy hole that goes right through my head right through my last nightmare and back up through my mouth that hums and whistles all the tunes I hate and can't get rid of."
And having followed the directions the steps leading up to walking down to the bottom for a foot in the door that closed on perseverance slicing it in half half awake to re-position the tongue under the table and catch the crumbs hard to chew working on it what must be said in response to those cold words in this dry hot atmosphere dusty with crumbs hard to chew working on it what must be said in response to those cold words in this dry hot atmosphere dusty having followed the directions the steps leading up to walking down to the bottom the dark bottom for a foot in the door that closed on perseverance slicing it in half half awake to re-position the tongue under the table and catch the crumbs hard to chew working on it that crumb think might be able to see that crumb off in the distance have to follow into the desert after that crumb catch up to it in the desert have to follow after it after having followed the directions the steps leading up to walking down to the dark bottom.
- Max Stoltenberg
Ground to the last day of what ground to the what day will won't will last against the will against last ground the latest ground too late for filling a dented fingernail extending an image a reflection and not a finger not a hand not a life not in the least rumpled against the up and down of between sky and ground the air restricting entrance upon a time upon a day what day will won't will last against the will against last ground the latest ground too late for filling a dented fingernail drawn against draw it back drawn out ground to the last day of what ground to the what day will won't will last against the will against last ground the latest ground too late for emptying a dented fingernail shaking away slowly slowly a little less slowly from next to the nail won't will won't will last against the will against last ground lasting letting letting lasting shaking away slowly slowly a little less slowly from next to the nail won't will won't will last against the will.
Within the block
Chipping away
Within the chips
Blocking off
Lifting an ear to the
tilted silence
a thumping outside
passing by
getting closer
a thumping outside
getting closer
Head a head lowered just a little lower than the bench smelling of sitting there much too long sitting there had to sit there a bit over over head a head lowered just a little lower than the bench smelling of sitting there much too long sitting there had to sit there a bit over a bit turning a bit to the side eyes brown eyes turn to side and bump against the side of eyes brown eyes turned with a head lowered just a little lower than the bench smelling of sitting there much too long.
He'll make a friend for her lonely and thinking thinking lonely lonely and walking away made for walking away into loneliness he'll make a friend for her lonely and thinking thinking lonely lonely and walking away made for walking away into loneliness pressing her head into his neck choking him he'll make a friend for her lonely and thinking thinking lonely lonely and walking away made for walking away into loneliness next to his loneliness he'll make a friend for her out of what out out of what out of what day what ground to the what day will won't will last against the will against last ground the latest ground too late for filling a dented fingernail extending an image a reflection and not a finger not a hand not a life not in the least.
- Max Stoltenberg
Forced laughs and heartburn chalking it up to a grid of hopscotch washed away by a downpour sniffing each other's cracks in each other's arguments behind each other's backs to the beginning to the beginning to the beginning that can't be found at least not in the least bit concerned they don't seem to be as concerned as they used others until their makeup ends up ending up on their empty pizza boxes thrown away with what they regurgitated until blue in the face red in the eyes brown in the rear and purple in the private interest more invasive with every opening.
Just for openers while waiting to be terminated.
Zipping up under the chin of the flesh puncturing hose stopping for a bite to surf through channels wedging themselves between two places swept out of memory with each breast stroke. Letting down another tip here's another tip letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the branch another branch grown letting down another tip here's another tip letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the branch another branch grafted in letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the branch another branch cut off letting down into the dirt by the trunk its roots pushing and pulling where to walk away where to stumble closer letting down into the dirt cut off branches letting down another tip here's another tip letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the looking up at the letting down the letting down of holes between branches letting down breaking up the immense hole of the sky into tinier holes letting down broken up into cells each with its corner for letting down the waste of gaps and holes.
Tuberculosis on the other side of the door there is a knocking on the inside of this frame that doesn't match the landscape of thoughts that can't take a hint tuberculosis on the other side of the door there is a knocking on the inside of this frame that doesn't go well with the landscape of thoughts that can't take a hint pounding pounding headache cracked into odd pieces with an incongruent chisel. Sheets torn open with public confessions and private parts let the cat out of the bag and into the backseat speeding to the arena showing up before the bell rings tuberculosis on the other side of the door there is a knocking on the side of this frame that doesn't match the landscape of thoughts.
Coined terms have spilled out and roll downhill gathering no use for drinking songs voided onto the discolored sidewalk as coined terms fall off the curb into the gutter. It was at this juncture at this intrusion upon the last round the last next to last stream of not letting his worm the subordinated underling devote his attention to things diamond and kite-shaped (as well as canine-shaped not so much as in the dog but as in the tooth) and draw hardly an infinitesimal bit of his effort of cognition toward the drenching of his trousers with piss.
"Wet yourself again, sir," said Expectorant looking away as the legs in the soaked pants followed the choreography of a fallen alarm clock messing about the ground pathetically insisting on continuing to collide with the Earth unimpressed with its meteoric and anti-climactic descent.
"Sire," corrected Haphazard managing rather chaotically to reach a position of sitting up on the street corner and in an attempt to look regal or sage-like he placed his hands on his knees and feeling the urine in the material cleared his throat.
"I apologize Your Magisterial Seepage," answered Expectorant, "my forgetfulness is held in place within my constricted nostrils in the presence of your silent but deadly e."
"Perhaps it would be better for me if I made all your words silent and bathed myself in quiet," Haphazard said.
"I eagerly await your return to the waters of a bath but who am I to hope? And don't trouble your benevolent self to answer that question. They are all still here in here," Expectorant said tapping the side of his head and picking at his finger after it had come in contact with his hair. Continuing he mentioned, "All those hallways and rooms I tried to fill with my anger when others tuned me out all those steps I ascended and descended forcing all the shit I was supposed to give about anything to settle in the bottom of every muscle until the only remaining field of interest left to me was the septic one," said Expectorant.
"Hallways of a thickening darkness due to a lack of windows, a preponderance of windowless walls, or a dying Sun make my stately brainpan itch beneath my fastigium," remarked Haphazard.
"Your fastigium was blown off in a strong dry wind. Are you sure it's not your scalp eczema?" said Expectorant.
"You retrieved it for me like a penitent mutt," exclaimed Haphazard.
"It was you who in the end placed it back upon your moldering brow when I assisted you in finding the express lane to go fuck yourself," said Expectorant.
"Then where is it now?" asked Haphazard.
"I don't know exactly, but it disappeared into that traffic you threw it into during one of your histrionic and tiresome anecdotes," said Expectorant beginning to see images of cars, trucks, tires, headlights, and something resembling treasure and a mine-shaft cave-in."
"Histrionic and tiresome anecdotes, yes, I was planning on proceeding with one until you opened your disgusting well of a yap. I ought to wire it shut. There's enough barbed wire about. Of course, I would command you to do it yourself. Ah, traffic. It used to line up in my honor for miles. I would wave to them and their faces registered a hearty laughter behind glass windshields increasingly obscured ever so a testimony to the changing variety of what would tend to fall from the sky. The only occasions I could see faces was when they opened up so they could toss their gifts to me. Their humble intentions was only marred by their poor aim. My person, I suppose, was willing to be a banquet table for their recently purchased groceries since my halls were blanketed in the fogs of my many campaigns. Hallways of thickening dark was where I began," said Haphazard.
"Until I interrupted you with a question my leech," interrupted Expectorant.
"Not a question you fool. 'Twas a limerick or other and you still need to work on your articulation," said Haphazard wringing the cuff of his left trouser leg to squeeze out some excess piss only to discover that he succeeded in cracking off some crust of some kind. Haphazard kicked at Expectorant and said, "Now get on with it."
"Get on with what?" asked Expectorant.
"Get on with your limerick you mucus membrane," spluttered Haphazard.
"I'd rather you just try to start again and I can keep interrupting you my leash," said Expectorant.
"Come on you essence of what's underneath the refrigerator, I'll even feed you some of my own lines I've been working on since your production malfunctions have only become worse of late," said Haphazard.
"Don't let your criticism be biased by my most recent stretchers," insisted Expectorant.
"They never made it quite above a couple of notches below utter failure," said Haphazard.
"I was suffering from strokes on each occasion, O Hollow One," said Expectorant.
"And yet here you are still at my beckon call to receive my words as my own generosity to aid you in your time of waning adeptness at limerick-making. Now do try to summon what flickering spark remains within you to pay some feeble attention as I feed you the lines," announced Haphazard.
"The only lines you feed me are your insufferable sentences and the strings of snot from your nostrils," muttered Expectorant.
Haphazard recited the following,
"There once was a king on the lam
No one denied that he was a sham
The winds blew him this way
And the winds blew him that way
And all he could blow was a ram."
"And this is an excerpt from your upcoming oral memoir?" inquired Expectorant.
"No, someone else's. A fair lady spoke it to me when I happened upon her in a forest," said Haphazard.
"I know you're old and decrepit, but certainly not old enough for forests. Are you sure you didn't pull this out of one of your nightmares or demented states when stumbling into a patch of weeds?" asked Expectorant.
"Your attention deficit is legend. Perhaps I overestimated your threshold for side quests," said Haphazard.
"My day is made out of side quests," said Expectorant.
"That's because you waste so much time with your commentary instead of just taking my words as they are," said Haphazard.
"You would rather I focus on what gunk is spit from your mouth than all the things you have broken?" said Expectorant.
"You don't appreciate how hard it is to find things to break," said Haphazard, "parts need to be made smaller. Threatening lumps of sugar and asteroids need to be chunked down. Don't want any cataclysms scaring you half to death."
Expectorant replied, "Why stop at half to death? Oh, that's right, you have to live longer in order to have regrets."
"Want to know what else the fair lady said to me?" asked Haphazard.
"When would you have had any contact with anyone else?" Expectorant asked.
"I wander off when you are not aware of it," said Haphazard, "she spoke of her last love affair and the shapes she would imagine in the smoke of his pipe and then entertain him with stories of animals piloting spaceships fueled by their recycled bodily discharges as they searched for another planet to colonize in the far back section of their galaxy that they have been told by their latest chatter show guests is inhabited by those who walk around with their hands in their pockets a species consisting entirely of non-functioning males. To smoke a pipe like I once did and watch the smoke wrap its way through the top of a hedge. I could tuck myself in a corner of a hedge and envy the smoke that would fade away."
"I wish you would wander off for real. Women will be better off the less contact they have with us. Until then I am condemned to a universe doomed to run parallel to oblivion and never meet it none too soon," said Expectorant.
"Don't be impertinent. Nothing is stopping you from following me," said Haphazard.
"It must be where I started off. I began with wonder and then I remember every once in a long while to do it again and it only seems to stir up a sense of wondering when I'll be sick and tired enough to stop accepting your promises of us eventually finding a better place," said Expectorant.
"Would you like to see me levitate?" asked Haphazard.
"You mean stand up?" clarified Expectorant.
"What is the purpose behind your name?" inquired Haphazard.
"You mean besides loosening a congestive build-up?" asked Expectorant.
"No, what device does it serve for those who who ..." asked Haphazard.
"For those who what?" asked Expectorant.
"For those for those who might encounter our words?" asked Haphazard.
"Encounter our words? Unhinged is what we are unhinged since we encountered that so-called invisible point in our lives you and me you and me both. We sat at a desk in a row of boxes and that was when they documented. After we were asked to leave that was when the documenting stopped once we became unhinged," said Expectorant.
"So, you don't think we'll ever be remembered or we're even being watched?" asked Haphazard.
Expectorant replied, "Only if you drop dead before me. Although I dream of it being the other way around."
"Why don't you think we're being observed?" asked Haphazard.
"Observed? Are you kidding? Don't you see the blinds being drawn shut in the windows that aren't covered up yet? And most of the homes still standing have the telltale signs of boards and the barbed wire. Observed. Gave up my observing long ago when growing up and it was every night at dinner observed my mother rocking from side to side in her chair at the table. The oldest chair she said was passed down to her from her great-great-grandmother and I always thought she was comforting herself in it. Until one night when the power went out and in the dark I bumped into the chair and sat in it. It seemed to swing my entire body as if out over the edge of some primordial chasm. I tried to escape its instability and ended up smashing into the dining room wall. With the ruckus I caused one would have thought someone in the dark would have voiced some concern, but their voices remained silent until they started cursing at each other in their growing frustration at not being able to find any flashlights with working batteries. And I returned to it," said Expectorant.
"Returned to what?" asked Haphazard.
"Returned to the chair. I returned to it because it was the light. I knew the light was going to come back on at any moment and I needed to get used to sitting on that chair in the darkness even though it felt like it was about to give way I was just going to have to get used to it," said Expectorant.
"Be honest with me, am I turning into a zombie?" asked Haphazard.
"A zombie?" asked Expectorant.
"I am a creature of habit you must concede that," said Haphazard.
"If you put it in that fashion . . ." wavered Expectorant.
"Well? Am I zombie or not?" asked Haphazard in his demanding tone.
"You might find the monotonous rhythm of your mechanical walking through the stench of washes and abandoned towns and yet another expanse of wasteland hard to snap out of but all you have to do is turn around and find me there right behind with the same mechanical walking. I don't know. Why are you asking me? I think the actual zombies are in the houses untouched watching the colored lights flashing inside that can be seen through their windows until they draw the blinds shut," said Expectorant.
"And that's the extent of your explanation for why you still think we are not being observed?" asked Haphazard.
"You talk as if we're in some kind of medium," said Expectorant.
"Aren't we? When I think I might be turning into a zombie I feel not quite myself and unreal as though in a medium of some kind as you say unhinged by someone else for someone else," said Haphazard.
"The medium we find ourselves in is a solution of air. It's supposed to be good for our brains, but by the time we've managed bailing out the last bucket of air from our lungs the maggot of life has eaten deep enough into the center of our skulls to send us going around in circles wrapping our yarns around one of the few testicles to seed in the cosmos," said Expectorant.
"Very good. Now find yourself a pile of filth to bed in for the night and I will call for you at dawn, jester," said Haphazard.
Expectorant asked, "And what would you like me to begin your tomorrow with my sovereign rash?"
Haphazard replied, "The zombie who thought he was a king."
"Never heard of it," said Expectorant, "but I'm sure I'll be able to go from there."
Haphazard yawned, "I'm sure you will."
Just for openers while waiting to be terminated.
Zipping up under the chin of the flesh puncturing hose stopping for a bite to surf through channels wedging themselves between two places swept out of memory with each breast stroke. Letting down another tip here's another tip letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the branch another branch grown letting down another tip here's another tip letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the branch another branch grafted in letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the branch another branch cut off letting down into the dirt by the trunk its roots pushing and pulling where to walk away where to stumble closer letting down into the dirt cut off branches letting down another tip here's another tip letting down another tip here's another tip for another sap letting down somewhere in the looking up at the letting down the letting down of holes between branches letting down breaking up the immense hole of the sky into tinier holes letting down broken up into cells each with its corner for letting down the waste of gaps and holes.
- Max Stoltenberg
