HEEDLESS

Coupled she coupled to the air to the barriers resistant to now passes for the settled.  They and their indifference cast over driveways driving away from inside this once now once past yet shaking cranial colonizing bacteria of her scent in force tanking up the man spilling on the concrete discomfort tighten the mouth let no more words not another word or care out towards the filter somewhere around the off center stations forming in the net of fishy dreams rotting with popped out eyes staring up at this silent tanked up man that man besides.


Clock tucking it in the back of her his pants she takes nothing visible with her only all that liquid from in his head the stuff that keeps his eyes searching until vaporized by nonsense or frozen by the misled leading him on and on and above the call of his voice still coughing the unfinished depth perception landing along with the shattered mirror under the table.


Man: I'll get that.
Woman: Get what?
Man: What fell under the table.
Woman: What makes you think that?
Man: What makes me think that?
Woman: Concentrate.
Man: Tired.
Woman: You keep us up.
Man: And for what?
Woman: I was going to ask just that.
Man: Just that.
Woman: You need to refresh yourself.
Man: That's what I need some refreshment.
Woman: Not unlike all that.
Man: All that.
Woman: Go ahead.
Man: Just . . .
Woman: Just what?  What is it?
Man: Refresh.
Woman: Yes, if you go rest now it will refresh you.
Man: No, I mean I refresh things all day long.  Can't have myself or others wait for anything because they say something before words and looks come out of them towards me refreshing things to make it faster nothing slow can't take my time in their midst or when they leave me for a while while they are in the next room down the hall or on the other side of the facility beyond another locked door can't keep them waiting time is theirs stamping moments with their insistence flip open their stamp pads borrowed to return to their impatient desks.


Medicine crushed under foot where she once stood.  Eyes and liquid swirls of a quarter of a memory until escaping out the back or squeezed out by the pupil erect with straining concentration stay awake stay awake procrastinating back the nightmares time is not the dreamer's witness of the distorted.


Man: Where did she go?  Sure.  Time is not for me to apply my thumb or knead into something you probably won't approve of.  Tent the tent in the garage to unfold in the backyard and look up at some part of the sky and tell myself a part some part was something you could possibly take some time to look at more than elsewhere more than looking away as you could possibly look away at a part of the night sky away from here.  Or as usual my eyes will travel without you toward a part some part I could tell myself tell myself something might be worth time held for a moment as my time at a part of out there I tell myself I look at more than elsewhere looked at like all the times I look away from your face that can't be kept waiting made to wait for this time gathered together in moments cupped in my hands dripping not too fast or too quickly as these traveling eyes that travel without you towards and away off and out into the space between the constellations and their representations erased by my eyes scanning across blackness away off and out as the moments leak so quickly from these hands onto the dirt splashing onto these feet here again.




- Max Stoltenberg