LEAVES OF TABLE LEAVES

It's going to be without notice now or has been for longer than the cracked window tells how the outside world outside is filling up with ink dark ink closing in on the sound of feet or paws rubbing against a rug laid with the darker hues of what feet or paws track into a rug from the outside world outside that is filling up with ink dark ink closing in on the sound of feet or paws rubbing against the floor of a nightmare that won't dissolve.  Better off without socks with socks off worse off with them with the odor got used got used to walking along through the stench of feet.  It was the itching the bloody itching not bloody anymore that crusted up and that sticks to the threads sticking to the inside scratching stuck to the inside trying to pull away trying to pull away the threads that stick to the crust to the itching bloody itching not bloody anymore that crusted up and that sticks to the threads sticking to the inside scratching stuck to the inside.

"Are you going to keep up with me?"
"Keep up?  I thought I was leading the way."
"Well, yes, you were until I decided to turn around."
"You're still facing me."
"I am in the process."
"The process of what?  Turning around?"
"No.  The process of deciding.  The process of my decision."
"Don't be turning your back on me!" he shouted as he cut the air with the exclamation mark he brandished like a baseball bat the aluminum kind.
"I thought you might prefer me expediting the process."
"Well, not so fast.  You don't want your decision to be premature."
"You're arranging it so you can keep leading the way."
"In actuality. . ."
"Here we go again."
"Here I go again with what?"
"With your actuality.  That usually means another serious deterioration in air quality."
"I can certainly add that embellishment.  In actuality, I'm getting fed up with leading the way."
"That's because you don't know what it is, do you?"
"It's because I know it too well.  There comes a time in a man's life -"
"And a woman's."
"And a woman's life when you'd rather let someone else have a chance to experience covering the same familiar ground for a change until it rotates back to your turn and you spend most of your turn emptier and emptier waiting for someone else to come smack face to face with the trudging and then it isn't too long before their reaction doesn't have the effect it had the first time it's never the same after that when you share your tickets to monotony."
"Give us a dirge."
"You want a dirge?"
"Give us a dirge a swampish dirge."
"There once was a man -"
"Not one of those."
"There once was a woman -"
"Somewhat better, but not one of those."
"The dead rabbit lay there all night on the ice cold driveway of the washed-up magician's residence.  Its severed foot -"
"That is so contrived."
"Tail.  I was going to say its severed tail could be found by the mailbox."
"That's even more contrived."
"I could have said its severed tail was in the mailbox and I didn't say that.  I'm experimenting."
"All of this is a bad experiment."
"There were these people who took me in and I was taken in all right."
"Found a bottle of medication.  Must've dropped out of someone's coat pocket when they were putting air in their tires."
"They used extension cords.  You just might think twice every time you make comments about the way I walk."
"I congratulate you on the way you walk."
"Don't you think that's a bit over the top?  A bit useless and insincere?"
"Insincere, yes, but not useless."
"2 out of 3 ain't bad."
"When were you taken in?"
"Once or twice, I think."
"Twice?  You let the same people treat you like shit?"
"They looked like they were getting on older and seasoned seasoned wine and talked so different all about plans and I was not to be excluded someone had a plan for my life."
"I was twisting that medicine bottle and the plastic was grinding and grinding and finally when I got it open instead of that cotton ball, I was expecting to find a severed rabbit tail."
"And you found a cotton ball."
"Just the pills."
"Just the pills."
"Just the pills."

Slowing the steps not to understand them any better for being rescheduled when you try to say it again another chance and it won't come out the way it sounded in your head in your head where it won't come out the way it sounded in your head in your head where it won't come out slowing slowing down the steps not to understand them any better for being rescheduled when you try to say it again another chance and it won't come out the way it sounded in your head in your head where it won't come out the way it sounds in your head slowing down in your head slowing down slowing down the steps not to understand them any better.


- Max Stoltenberg