Saturday, January 28, 2012

STUFFED ANIMAL

Wait a few days or better yet a few weeks and they will probably forget the excuses when they haven't heard them for a while a little while again change them somewhat only a little somewhat some of the what they don't notice too much what is said or better yet say less and they'll comment on how quiet things are and remind them of how it helps with slipping in a little nap here and there when no one is looking or while they are looking they get bored and look somewhere else some of the where something somewhat more interesting slightly very slightly more interesting might possibly be happening somewhere else or think of something else some of the thing in their head that bone in their head they continue chewing on inside their box where the detours inside are cluttered with sticky notes.


One of those sticky notes reads:


Why did you do it?  Wanted to make him fit jamming the frequencies frequently jamming him in there get in there making him fit so tightly you and him you are both so tight like zippers bulging and costume the costume just might rip making him fit on the concrete backyard patio so concrete so concretely getting it done making it happen it just so happens that the costume almost ripping don't let it rip don't let him out of the costume going to look so the part for the picture putting this camera down will help free up these hands to get those little arms and legs stuffed in there get that stubborn head in there you are small enough to get in there and stay in there until the picture make sure don't knock the camera off of the plastic chair back here stop making such a fuss you will like this 


Another of those sticky notes reads:


Stop the fuss and relax stop the fuss stopped the crash and it is not playing anymore get the image out of your little fragile stubborn little head knew that it was probably not a good idea to show him the crash the plane coming apart the pilot bloodied hitting every side of the cockpit bouncing about in that bubble bubbles in the bath you like those bubbles would you like a relaxing bath with a mountain of bubbles you can hide in and make sure not to get the bubbles all over and the water keep the water in the tub towel on the floor all soaked with water and bubbles bloody bubbles


And another of the other sticky notes reads:


don't knock the camera off the plastic chair don't want to ruin this moment with you wanting to ruin this moment by knocking the camera off the plastic chair don't knock the camera off the plastic chair don't want to ruin this moment with you wanting to ruin this moment don't ruin this moment by ruining the moment by knocking the camera off the plastic chair don't want to ruin this moment with you wanting to ruin this moment by you ruining this moment by letting them see you ruining this moment want them to see you not ruining this moment by not knocking the camera off the plastic chair don't want to ruin this moment with you wanting to ruin this moment by ruining this moment can't let them see you ruining this moment by knocking the camera off the plastic chair can't let them see you ruining this moment by ruining this moment by getting away




- Max Stoltenberg

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

THIS BEATING

This head that beating this suffering that ailment this irregularity that anomaly this blood that spill this regret that smear this stoppage that continuation this waiting that prolonging this hesitance that silence this dread that intimidation this shroud that exhuming this heaviness that uprooting this crumbling that flattening this screaming that ignorance this recluse that void this stain that rejection this sarcasm that misunderstanding this delusion that nightmare this madness that illusion this despair that condemnation this poison that weapon this other thing that other thing.


"So I said to him is this going to be another one of those no one does their job conversations?" he said to him.


"And then that leads into the could you do this for me exchange," he said to her.


"Which inevitably gets around to yet more anecdotes of so and so and so and so and their exchange of bodily fluids," she said to them.


"Don't forget so and so and their so and so," said no one in particular to anyone else in particular.


They ask questions with answers at the ready get yours in before they squeeze never mind that never mind this legs talking with legs for grinding responses laughed at in the lunchroom all those nothing to add speed bumping on the way to the way what way was that?


"Why does it always end up heading in the wasted potential and need more direction direction?" he said to the speakerphone.


"It all seems so effortless these coordinated efforts," said the speakerphone to the rest of the empty parking attendant's booth.


Closing it while they want their reasons walking away while they want to make their considerations off in another direction while they want their edgewise cliffhangers upcoming events playing the key note speaking in focus objectively populating with objects recycling objections reviewing past fragments breaking up its breaking up and yet this or that plus that comes out to don't be so negative closing it not so negative to close with the so negative to close with the how the world ends closing closing it where the world ends up stuck inside the front door too late for  closing it while they want their reasons walking away while they make their considerations off in another direction directions dotted with flashlights with low batteries with so much darkness in between the don't do it like that think about it until you wished you hadn't done it like that and wished you had done it like this is how the play goes while closing it while they keep it open want so much to keep it open talking with their legs asking questions with their answers at the ready get yours in before they squeeze never mind this head this beating flashlights flashes of red light red faces black hair between knuckles putting minds to it this crumbling that flattening onto desks red bloody eyes closing it while they want their reasons asking their questions with their answers at the ready get yours in before they squeeze never mind this head this beating in this head hands beating in this head flashes of red light red faces red bloody eyes closing it dogs closing eyes legs appear in the shadows of their lowered lids legs close this head appears in the shadows of their lowered lids this head this beating in this head hands beating in this head flashes of red light red faces red bloody eyes closing it dogs closing eyes legs appear in the shadows of their lowered lids.




- Max Stoltenberg



Saturday, January 21, 2012

MIRRORS AND SCISSORS

The door was almost closed.  The door to the medicine cabinet and then it was opened slightly again to create the tunnel of mirrors with the other mirror that faced toward the face and faced the face toward the tunnel of frames and faces and their frameworks with their holes that carried on into the tunnel of frames and faces and their frameworks with their holes that carried on into the tunnel.  The door was almost closed.  The door to the medicine cabinet and then it was opened slightly again to create the


opened slightly to mirrors tunneling into faces facing toward the drain lifting faces up away from the drain that carried on into the tunnel of frames and faces tunneling into the drain lifting faces up away from the drain that carried on into the tunnel of frames and faces tunneling into the drain in the faces facing toward faces into mirrors opened slightly to


carried on into the slightly opened scissors with whiskers that were sticking to their story that they were sticking to the scissors blades of metallic divergence in before a tunnel of mirrors opened slightly again for another viewing of what had passed was passing on into the tunnel of faces facing faces up away from the drain hole lifting up into the tunnel of faces facing faces and their frameworks with their holes drain holes that carried on into the tunnel carried on and on passing on during the viewing another viewing for slightly again opened mirrors of a tunnel before in divergence metallic of blades the scissors sticking they were sticking to the story they were sticking to whiskers with scissors opened slightly into the carried on and on 


and on into tunneling around the face surrounded by fingers tunneling into holes from faces to scissors tunneling around the face surrounded by fingers tunneling into holes from faces to scissors tunneling around the face surrounded by a heavy breath that tunneled its way down out of nostrils from thoughts that fell out and tunneled their way around the face surrounded by fingers tunneling into holes from faces to scissors tunneling around the face surrounded by fingers surrounding and stuck in holes of scissors surrounding and tunneling around surrounding holes in the face surrounded


out of nostrils from thoughts that fell out and


the door was almost closed




- Max Stoltenberg

Thursday, January 19, 2012

BRIDGE OUT

There is a tap on the shoulder a tap the tap on into the shoulder this or that this shoulder that shoulder under a sky terse and cryptic a sky thick pressing heavily to mow down or rip away from the earth and gash a part of the solar system to dislocate this or that shoulder the tap a tap.  Nub was it a nub of another head on the body rambling on and on this is the way it goes with another wanting to be heard more than words running down chins turning away from a precipice where it came in this is the way it goes another wanting to be heard more than words running down chins getting burst like engorged ticks in frowns turning away from a precipice where it came in this is the way it came in this way the way it goes with the tapping a tap the tap.


"Tap tap."


"What am I supposed to say next?"


"Don't treat this like it's some sort of prefabricated dialogue."


"No, I was wondering if we were transitioning to a joke or something."


"This is not funny - just strange."


"Strange can be funny."


"Perhaps."


"That's funny, that's strange, are interchangeable."


"Perhaps."


"Now go back."


"We can't."


"Why not?" inquiring of the man flattening against what was or wasn't behind them.


"I'm telling you we can't go back."


Joining another in turning around what a project what a collaborative endeavor that resulted in not only only not seeing or discovering anything outside of bugs not bugs not in this instance that halted with them as they halted or stacked up as dust between the space bar and the letter V. Who knew?  Who knew?  It was between them and others and you know what reference is being used here or stop pretending like you know go on with you go on pretending.  


Perhaps.


Pretending a collaborative endeavor in turning around joining another what a project.  Who knew?  Who knew?  It was between them that resulted in not only only not seeing or discovering anything outside of bugs not bugs not in this instance that halted with them as they halted or stacked up dust between the space bar and the letter V.  Who knew?  Who knew?  It was between them and others and off the record off the deep end for this will be 


perhaps


outside of the mind one's mind no others return to that when will need to figure that out later outside of this mind putting the others aside return to that when will need to figure that out later when it is later and those that say things will be resolved will either urge those besides the others outside the others inside these walls as those outside the others inside these walls to join together closer together in turning around what a project stacked up with the others not the other others the other things stacked up in a stack of projects piled between shelves with hardly any room left hardly able to get back to back there.


"How would you describe what we're up against?"


"You could say we're up against something that seems to go down a long way," indicated the son of an alcoholic a gaunt old coot who passed his time peeling off labels from bottled water and read about kangaroos while being endlessly distracted by a sequence of thoughts that ran in the following manner as he tore another label, "What the hell is that?  A stench from the lowest of the low.  My feet and nothing else."


Who knew?  Who knew?  Just between us it was between them what a project for joining another in turning around what a waste and it was between them between the toes and it had stacked up and led to this what a stench from the lowest of the low to send up nothing but a stench while their voices and it was between them that their voices muted by the gulf up against it up against them a long way down the gulf muting their voices.


"I thought perhaps they would echo."


"To what end?"


"To bounce around in there and reach somewhere else."


"It's dead quiet and nothing is being brought up."


"Can you see anything down there?"


"Are you kidding?  Even if I continue to glare into it I don't even get any little shapes under my lids if I close them tightly or notice any patterns at all."


"I just cause myself to see things and make up patterns."


"Making up patterns is like laying a picnic blanket far beyond its usefulness over a barren field."


"Perhaps."


"You are stuck on perhaps."


"Perhaps we're stuck in more ways than can be imagined."


"What do you make yourself see?"


"For a brief moment I thought I saw a tremendous mountain of salt."


"Really?  Down there?"


"No.  It was up here in my mind.  I don't know if I dreamt about it once or where I imagined it.  All I know is that I get this mountain of salt where all of us were trying to bring all this salt and we brought our waste with it as well thinking we could make it better because of the salt or turn it into something else and all it did was make us forget about what was back there."


"Back where?"


"What used to be back there behind the mountain of salt and our waste."


"What was back there?


"I don't know.  It was obscured and it was too big to get back there anymore."


"I wonder what used to be back here."


"A bridge perhaps?"


"How would it have been possible?  It seems to go on and on."


"I knew a man who was an engineer.  I'm trying to think of his name.  This drives me crazy when I start to do this because then I get all mixed up in a whole rearrangement of rearranging the oddest sounding names I cannot pull free from the tip of my tongue.  It was one of those names I think he disliked his first name so he replaced it with his middle name.  Actually, he had two middle names and he settled on the second middle one or he just kept the first middle one and dropped the second.  Something about using an initial as the beginning.  Damned if I can even differentiate if it was a vowel or a consonant.  Like other people I knew and he knew he just made up a beginning for himself.  Then he found out he was adopted and they had no information on his real father.  He became so morose he got rid of his last name.  The closest I have ever come to thinking I know what it was was that it sounded like one of those weird parts of a car mixed with a lesser known type of vegetable.  You're shaking your head."


"I was thinking about her and while we were still together so to speak how much I urged to her to get things things that we needed or thought we needed just because I didn't want to bother getting anything had gotten accustomed to it before and after not bothering and she would get them because she thought it pleased me when all it was was a preventive measure.  That's how things are measured in preventive measures."



Who knew?  Who knew?  Just between us it was between them what a project for joining another in turning around what a waste and it was between them between the toes and it had stacked up and led to this what a stench from the lowest of the low to send up nothing but a stench while their voices and it was between them that their voices muted by the gulf up against it up against them a long way down the gulf muting their voices.




- Max Stoltenberg












Sunday, January 15, 2012

IN A CHAIR

There's a switch when the mountain and its red clouds turn to purple hurrying the night along to darken it all in and can't as the enormous shadow still sits there.  There's a switch somewhere to turn it all off.  Someone somewhere.  All this time nothing was being saved.  It all just sat there while in the middle of or in the considerably off center of nowhere as its orbital tentacles wrap around another layer outer layer around as so many are crushed closer together feeling smaller together what a world there's a switch somewhere to turn it all off.  Don't be like that as it may be that as it may not be like that it will be like that longer than it is what it is.


There's a switch and it goes against all matter in a different direction from the direction it had changed from after they changed their minds so direct so over and out behind the behind the behind and their moving forward and they are moving forward behind the behind the behind as the rest does not move to be moved when the mountain and its red clouds turn to purple hurrying the night along to darken it all in and can't as the enormous shadow still sits there.  There's a switch somewhere to turn it all off.  


In a chair the picking of the nose now there's a piece that could use a dose in the blue rooms with blue walls and lines and angles intersecting into machines for sitting in a chair the picking of the nose now there's a piece that could use a dose in the blue rooms with blue walls and lines and angles intersecting into machines as one of those smaller softer fragments and a stickier bit of information and a hand scratching against the partition smears the snot across the documents that fall from the corners of their mouths its mouth their mouths sitting in a chair digging an elbow into the smears digging in dig in.  No place in its side to place a hand or a foot no plug no switch no color.  Drib and drab side by side in the rotation of the wheel at the stay of execution.


Blinking at each other
Staring into faces
with astonishment
that twists their heads
into shapes no longer recognizable


pages fall out of the scrapbook
along the off ramp
missed a mile back


Blinking in time
to little switches
spreading them out


Blinking in time
to little switches
spreading them out 
further apart


She wrote them down what good did it do as she locked what she wrote in a box.  She wrote them down what good did it do as she took the box back.  She wrote them down what good did it do as she took the box back that way.  She wrote them down what good did it do as she took the box back that way she had come.  Some say it was holes some say it was cracks or the body of water decided upon.  She wrote them down what good did it do as she took the box back that way she had come.  What good did it do that way she had come behind the behind the behind and their moving forward and they are moving forward behind the behind the behind as the rest does not move to be moved when the mountain and its red clouds turn to purple hurrying the night along to darken it all in and can't as the enormous shadow still sits there.  




- Max Stoltenberg

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

ON THE STEPS WITH DEAD FLIES

Eyes are a mouth with hands that are somewhere out of the frame.  Seeing is reaching and just moving around.  Perhaps nothing of the kind less kind these these days flirt with stranded canoes.  Fell into it for giving up and lying down when the mouth either leaks bitter spit or starts running some tape stuck with the negative glow of shadows on another retina didn't know it was back behind the tabled or discarded or queued for deletion or tuna can lids from that visit to the platform and its cancelled departures running a larval picture show.  Pillow wrapping around the nape and tucked into the corners of the peripheral voice lollygagged into indifferent steerage.  Shouting not shouting being picked up by some tape stuck.  Stop right there.


"Shouting?  I wasn't shouting."


"Who said you were shouting?" corrected the thick-voiced man chewing on a slice of green pepper.


"Perhaps I was too emphatic."


"Nothing in bold, nothing in italics, nothing underlined or capitalized.  Who said you were saying anything at all?" corrected the thick-voiced man who sounded more narrow after a slight correction chugging on a tall as well as wide silo of soda.


"I just thought maybe you were thinking there was a slight peak in inflection somewhere in there might have distracted you from what you were doing."


"Have you heard the one about the actresses backstage during an intermission of their play?"


"Is that the one where they have some chess players join them to solve some mating problems?"


"No, not even close.  Distant, in fact, from what's, in fact, being conveyed as if you've been, in fact, unawares all your life while the rest of humanity has been finishing and refinishing things while you let yourself, in fact, stay in the kitchen in the heat, in fact, taking it lying down, and, in fact, getting swept into the drain while, in fact, the stopper is placed rather snugly.  Making stoppers more snugly recently to prevent the likes of you from making a comeback, in fact."


"I thought one of the chess players helps them figure out a mate in 5 or maybe it was only 4."


"Are just imaginary numbers imaginary or all numbers?  Aren't numbers made up to represent amounts of objects?  Who cares?  Is it just those who made them up or those who are following along or those who are just following?  I think I indicated that before or didn't I?"


"I don't quite follow."


"Of course you don't.  Your holes are riddled with tab strokes taking you down another rabbit hole that comes out onto a misty and prematurely ended scenario on a hastily erected walkway over a desert chasm.  Or, in fact, perhaps, your riddles are holed up in some unkempt room unjustifiably oversupplied and thoughtlessly undermaintained where imagined pain is oversympathized with while it is unimaginably sliced from my pie, in fact, I can feel the slicing.  Like a spiral-cut ham packed for leftovers upside-down.  All the slices are on the bottom.  To slime these hands and to have to stoop to more slicing.  In fact, my pain requires the much needed redirecting of witnessing other people truly make their way through genuine obstacles as they are buffeted about like objects and come to a much deserved rest in pools of foam.  And do they take it lying down?  No, in fact, they don't even bother with wasting their time waiting on orientation to show up, and they re-emerge into the spotlight of the however many minutes (and I will forego a number here, in fact) of fame that has been made increasingly affordable to stimulate participation.  Who would have thought that better discounting would result in so many staying put to be involved.  Now that's entertainment!"


"I -"


"Thoughtless.  That's all I will say about it.  Thoughtless.  In fact, come to think of it, those weren't my questions at all.  The actresses backstage during the intermission of their play which I recall was about a lesbian bakery where they stick into the dough either maple leaves flattened between pages of an out of date medical dictionary or, in fact, if I recall, it might have been just body parts.  Despite the seasoning, they are all startled backstage when one of those theater masks thumps on the floor.  Don't ask if it was the tragic or comic face that fell.  When people are kept in their place they see less of the ocean and the waves  and its refutations toward the sky and everything else.  If you have to extend your intermission for whatever excuse or complaint you have regarding this melancholic existence then maybe you are demonstrating that you were destined for the backstage.  The fallen mask instigates dialogue between the actresses about lost loves and dreams.  I am trying to summon up how the discussion was allocated but it was not evenly I can assure you.  I can't stomach when one person monopolizes all of the conversation.  The enormity and volume, and particularly, quality of their voice makes my organs start to fail.  One of them speaks as if shouting yet not shouting."


"Nostrils," one of them backstage said, "who would have  thought," she said, "that looking down at a dirty backstage floor and into the abyss of artificial nostrils would make me think of all the tissue that was shared between us and how it was the sickness and tears that at least pre-empted all the shit we told ourselves with silence.  Each took turns in its own moratorium in a relentless diarrhea of programming.  From then on, every relationship was characterized by more flights of fancy and by that I mean more and more time consuming video clips of stage mishaps.  A larger and larger percentage was taken up with actors and actresses taking turns being whipped around their imaginary worlds, ripped out of their beds, crashing into walls, and colliding into windows and doors that were supposed to open.  They improvised their scripts to where they saw flying as a destructive activity and countered any encouragement to an adventure with sarcasm.  Their only speculations left to them was more sarcasm muttered in the dark on a stage where the latest collapsing wall had to be impetuously reinforced."


"I don't remember if any of the others said anything else.  They probably did or probably didn't.  It's hard when thinking of attempting to consider any of the others, the others backstage."


Seeing is reaching and just moving around.  Perhaps nothing of the kind less kind these these days flirt with stranded canoes.  Fell into it for giving up.




- Max Stoltenberg

Sunday, January 8, 2012

SEEING STARS

The mind is scraping against low hanging tree branches.  Lines are blurry and defronting into air falling between monotony and discomfort. Waking up while walking along the sidewalk and stopping to notice puffy eyelids in a mirror leaning against a overflowing garbage bin. "Tough to get out of a kneeling position once the legs get that bent the rest of the thing gets pulled down to the basement underneath one's waste," were the thoughts that leaked out in an incontinent betrayal of muted erasures.  


Each of the following musings could be discovered as defaced playing cards on the TV trays haphazardly assembled between sides of a dialogue collapsing into the cardboard for recycling.  Not a fan not for some time not enough time to not be a fan of anything everything pulling for something until clothes are kept on for some time not enough time to not be a fan of anything everything pulling for something pulling on this body until clothes are kept on for some time enough time always plenty of time to deteriorate into an aversive wilting presentation of presence almost almost not. 


Ends means that ending after it ends means over after it ends means that ending after after lost the place place place the means end it ends after it ends addressing replies before it gets cancelled ends means that ending after it ends means addressing replies before it gets cancelled ends before it gets it after it ends addressing replies before it gets on the toilet is that where after lost the place place place on the toilet still warm no hot sharp squeezing still more in there after lost the place place place on the toilet still warm no hot sharp squeezing its going up its going down make up its mind what mind squeezing still more in there long giving up on synonyms the same words will swirl around until the next flushing plunger watching the man beating her with a plunger was it?  Was it a plunger?  He sure made her uglier with every hit.  Never saw rubber bounce so little and leave so much.  Was it a plunger?  For all the waste that gets pulled back.  Pulling and pushing lost the place place place.


Measurements for what?  Stars are reflected in the sunglass lens that has popped out.  The other the other is gone and only reveals the dirt where nothing grows in measurements for what?  For what?  Don't ask.  It pulls and begs the asking stripping down to the begging for this it has come to this.  That over there away don't ask it pulls and begs the asking stripping down to the begging for this it has come to this.  Gouging them out.  Plucky now cover the Earth in trash to fit the mirror for disposing of its glass and the face behind dubbing silence with an all too familiar language too familiar marking the cards.  Plucky now cover the Earth in trash to fit the mirror for disposing.  Measurements for what?  For what?  Don't ask.


Wilting presence almost almost not and the pulling desists for some time not enough time until the pulling continues not a fan of hands and handouts and all the pulling that comes with them and them and their pulling for something so many fans and their pages and pages and books and books and buildings and buildings of fans all pulling the rest of the world until it breaks bent legs and crumpled bodies to break away as the exposed roots of the world dangle until they are pulled back into the astro turf for replacing knees replacing legs replacing hips replacing hearts replacing eyes replacing minds not a fan of donors not a fan for some time enough time for not being a fan of donors pulling shoulders that want their shrugs want their slump towards the other side of the world away from the pulling everything pulling for something not a fan for some time not enough time to not be a fan of the pulling on cold metal bars of glass doors that are closed and shake for pushing pushing and pulling in out open closed open all hours for running out and pulling and pushing and automatically refilling and replacing parts and replacing wholes only parts pulling for the whole thing things pulling and pushing not a fan for some time not enough time for not being a fan a fan of not being pulling back the dangling roots the exposed roots pulled back in and covered in shit fertilized for replacing for rushing air escaping with the wind knocked out of lungs not a fan for some time not enough time for not being a fan a fan of not being pulled back in for reviving not a fan not enough time in a slump too much time until its noticed and the pulling the braided rope thickened with threats refuses to break always refusing as bodies break and get replaced not a fan gnawing on the vinculum at the midpoint just assigned just trademarked the fool on either end.




- Max Stoltenberg

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

DRAFT

The draft killed the back against the tent with the canvas that came away from the icy mountain the canvas that got away from the brain and left crumbs all over the lap and gut.  The draft killed the back against the canvas the brain against the body the draft killed it gradually then swiftly then slower than gradually and fooled the subject into the next draft that killed another part of the subject another  part of it.  Cold quiet desperate frostbit hands in the pockets finding another rock to let fall and clack on the rocky floor once again upon another time upon the rocky bottom of it all.


The draft killed in the direction of the same frequency of the same tendency towards coming back around the back as in back to the back draft killed against the tent with the canvas beaten by the wind into a dazed heaviness anchored to the rocky floor while everything else around the subject at hand frostbit hands and inside the head came away the more it tried to come away break away up and through it stayed anchored in a lightheaded frozen balloon of a face tied in a knot at the neck where was the ice pick?


That can't be it it can't be that the draft killed it and that's how it is for the arrowhead further unburied by a stumble it came away from its grave to be included for a drift from anchor to anchor through ways and means not its own dragged along by faces tied into knots at the neck.  Dazed heaviness returning to coal-filled skin and bones for the next variation of adjustments made at the last moment until replaced by another.  That can't be it it can't be that the draft killed it and that's how it is for the arrowhead further unburied by a stumble it came away from its grave to be included for a drift from anchor to anchor catch their drift like a cold stitched together with drafts that envelops you for a lifetime and then some shipped in boxes of envelopes sealed and dripping with the adhesive of procedures and the spit of forked faces tied up in knots at the neck.


Where was that pick that word that was picked from the ice coating the inside of the head?  Fell through the cracks in the knotty subjects looking up through the glass of the ice underneath where they were have been left in too long to drift from anchor to anchor from port to port on the sides of the laptops from port to port at the bottoms of their walls from wall to wall coming away from the Earth frozen over to preserve the decay.  Left in too long left out too long just scratching the surface clawing at the ceiling underneath controlled for less drift from anchor to anchor from port to port at the bottoms of their walls from wall to wall coming away from the Earth frozen over to preserve the decay.


Under a crocheted blanket where gaps let out sleep and let in daggers of dim life the thread is fraying between patterns that cannot be untangled from the clouded expressions of the cratered eyes that bore into the spaces leading down under crocheted linen laid out over another draft put off until another day that arrives too soon with shaking and nausea as tea mixes in the gut still covered with crumbs another revision put off this dull ache will shove against all language before it mingles with the rayless frozen dust within the cratered sockets from which muted knocks and thuds can be heard choked out of the structure just outside that never reposes.


That can't be it it can't be that to be the horror of being in the story told to the subjects in the dark of the tent of the cell for the subjects in the dark to come away with the draft the draft that killed the backs of the subjects with backs against the draft only place left to sit in the dark left out too long to be enlightened by the cremating flame that spread beneath dead asses killed by the open hands opened to the book opened to the desert opened to the rest of the planet frozen over to preserve the decay.  


The canvas remains against the draft and its dark cold the canvas remains bare to shield the bodies within the bodies the subjects of bodies the subjects of stories told in the dark around the cremating flame burning on both sides of the cell wall keeping bodies against the dark of the night's void and the light of day where the cremating flame and another collaborative draft that tears away what springs what steps what marks in the ground remain coming away in the draft exhumed from graves into shiftless indecision between the rifts of padded walls cushioning inexorable revisions with less gaps sewn by machines into the next release of stuffed animals packed with stuffing left out and left in too long coming away with more gaps to be sewn shut into the canvas remaining against the draft and its dark cold.




- Max Stoltenberg

Sunday, January 1, 2012

UP TO HERE

Mumbling outside in the other vicinity of a pulled abdominal. Spelling mistakes, spelling errors and their over-corrections can prevent or cannot promote a sentence from finishing to finish with a shine that comes from showing up day after day as that shine lets other elements manage things into a smoother and duller feeding of the parts through the tracks hardening tracks of hardened people and animals parched after fainter and fainter reproductions can't make it out not a word for the life of a gastrotrich.  Not a word of it.  Maybe one or two but like that helps.  


Shouting filled with passion rage passionate rage followed by some response of a fruity nature a passion fruit ripe with rotting furry carpeting with invocations of the son of a bitch half-remembering lines from a sad stanza tanked full of wasted pursuits of lashes waving their indifference that came out to here where the stanza passing on its fainter reproduction as it passes its passing on underneath the wheels managing turning their turning keeping it all on the field and until they are ready for more heads to land in the laps of the spectators in the next row and their anticipatory airs can't wait to take their next row their next imbibing to embellish their anticipatory airs deadening the impact as breaths are taken away by the ever redirecting airbags.  Can't make it out not a word for the life of a gastrotrich.  Not a word of it.  Maybe one or two almost maybe two just maybe one if that but like that really makes it come out to anything.


Whispering in the alley over in the next neighborhood up close to the glass the glass of the window of the van blown out from the inside blown out towards another world separated by larger space debris if they'd just let him finish his question his suggestion of what he thinks it is so tired those wheels that keep turning their turning and not in the mood for his question separated by larger space debris if they'd just let him finish his question his suggestion dismissed into another room in another neighborhood emptied for the scurrying of little feet insect and little minds occupied to compare the heights they can clamber upon the mounds of what has made it up to here in the estimations of the irritated nerves separated by larger space debris just let her finish her question her suggestion of what she thinks it is so tired those wheels that keep turning their turning each turn separated by larger space debris if they'd just let her finish her question her observation of the bigger eyes that only come up to here on the chest of the spectators in the next row and their anticipatory airs can't wait to take their next row their next imbibing to embellish their anticipatory airs deadening the impact as breaths are taken away by the ever redirecting airbags.  Can't make it out not a word for the life of a gastrotrich.  Not a word of it.  Maybe one or two almost maybe two just maybe one if that but like that really makes it come out to anything.




- Max Stoltenberg