STAIRCASE

Narcolepsy kept him on his toes and off his rocker.  Or was it that narcolepsy kept him on his rocker and off his toes?  Or maybe narcolepsy kept him from towing the line and ended up more often than not stuck between a rock and a hard place?  Or perhaps it just so happened that there wasn't the reenactment of the usual parallel experiences of the sudden collapse and smashing into metal picnic benches tucked away amid the fighter jets to conserve aircraft carrier runway space.  If knocking about the unexpected punctuating dimensions of interior design was avoided there was always the colliding along the pinball bumpers of his freely associating and tangential thoughts.  How could anyone possibly arrange a coherent paragraph with the neural tongs his thought salad was being tossed with?  Life as its elements were herded through a topography slapped together with alternating fire escape and bog found itself or lost itself soon thereafter within the awkward prepositional phrase at the end of a run-on incomplete sentence doubled as a result of each subsequent violation into.

That was not it.  That was not it at all.  Not on your life but certainly in the life mentioned above there if the eyes are lifted slightly unless more words are employed and run along doing their thing returning and stepping down to the next level below while the life mentioned above sublimes up into the up and up as the derailing trainwreck of a mind peels off below.  Never mind.  It's down here as well.

It all collects at the bottom the refuse after it collects at the top to be thrown down to the bottom where it collects the refuse the refuse that many times gets stuck on the steps the steps that lead up and lead down the steps that stay where they are they stay right where they are the steps that were built put there to get one places vantage points too high too low and the just right that's so rare and so very brief steps have a habit of coming out from under one when time is taken only a little bit a miniscule digit of time's waning smirk congealing into a weak and fetid belch of misery.  Cannot wipe that expression off of this atmosphere's face. 

Cut fingers now cut brushed stubs of glass from the grandfather clock in order to more easily read the bloodied pages of the aged hardcover book.  The fine strokes of red may have crossed letters and words but one and maybe another or disregard that.  Never mind.  It's down here as well. 

Convinced of taking in passages and possibly a larger sense in the thick of it the red that is the blood that is blood and its pictures hemorrhaged a thousand words.  The unobscured persisted silently in circulating through exposed fistulas approximating the following on the traumatized page:

". . . infantile in fantasies idling infants fantastically senile agile athlete at the least sign of the least he she could do was devote more time be more devoted to others devoting more attention and paying on time more attention to how on purpose if there was one or maybe another disregard that.  Never mind that.  It's down here as well.  Might as well admit it get them to admit it they will never admit how on purpose they did what they did infantile in their ire their fascination with idleness idols standing in front a front for standing for something their on purpose nonsense they committed to on purpose committed on purpose of sound mind and body blown out and reduced minimized minimizing others as they think of others and project their loud voices their pet peeves which have become more important infantile fantastic proportions propositions positions inciting offerings offered on purpose to something more beyond death left behind with rotting bones in holes in the ground a ground for infancy fantasizing immortalizing the senile returning to the scene of the grime and their pet peeves and sparse fur working through light and dark and dark to fill in not fill in bald patches on the dying dog's body that lifted and fell less dramatically due to the diminishing performance of expiring lungs dog lungs on purpose this took place certainly taking the place on purpose of dog lungs with deader cells forming their opinions on purpose opposing each other as bog and fire escape as school pictures and synthesized strings composed by a tired artist nodding off with a lemon meringue pie falling from his sleeping eyes and clogged nostrils kicking the plug out of the wall.  Makes one look for the eventual dropping off with slashed interest in squeezing more life into the on purpose doing that on purpose falling and rising of the dead dog dying dog's body next to last drop of life shoveled with its tongue a rusted paintbrush absorbing stagnant water from the almost empty bowl . . . whole howls offered up to a sky that echoes and darkens a stark proof on purpose and their trajectories of howls offered up out to a sky that echoes and darkens a stark proof thickened with the presence of the thief standing at the bottom of the stairs ready to leave with the little saved in tins and envelopes with nothing written on them a theme anathema to the thief leaving with plenty of time purloined credited to the next flight of stairs flights of fancy instantiating crusts of bread betting on nothing more to come their way except what just came their way . . . a theme growing festering in them a theme an enema to use their internal life against them excavate it out of them into fossilized memories to assume the shadow of hollow and fragile bones."

Flipping pages earlier pages later pages much later pages to a story a so-called upper story higher story looking down on the small and looking through the sphincters of the large.  How did a piece of glass get there?  On this page?  Flicking it off putting off the shattered.

"The old blind man on the motorcycle riding on the back behind his blind wife riding behind her old mother what a woman with what a load no room for plausibility no room to pause only room to keep moving keep from falling to be swallowed up by the ground.  They moved the wind the space they took up the space they moved through."

The grandfather clock the glass the book the blood the staircase tried to re-enter through the corner of his eye the thief long gone such a short time ago.

". . . no room for plausibility . . ."

The broken glass the book the blood the thief long gone such a short time ago.

". . . behind his blind wife riding behind her old mother what a woman with what a load no room for plausibility no room to pause only room to keep moving keep from falling to be swallowed up by the ground. They moved the wind the space they took up the space they moved through."

what a woman

Dark green gown long red hair and those eyes lips of promise of disappointment the blood the book the thief long gone such a short time ago.  The staircase re-entering through the corner of his eye.  Only a matter of time before the book would fall from his hands if that's how it went happened or couldn't with there being so much being and so little room for plausibility what a woman what disappointment only time would tell was what one would hear gnawing at one's leaning to one side and then the next and back again what a woman so little room for what time would tell telling the time between the plugging and  unplugging.


- Max Stoltenberg