Friday, September 27, 2013

CLOSET ENTRANCE

Pressed the button and nothing happened the door did not open of course it did not open since it remained closed nothing happened after the button was pressed.  Wait a couple of moments more than a couple of moments shipped in smaller dimensions the packaging is made so thin and what they use as stuffing to protect to buffer doesn't help much to limit the damage the shapes that's how things are shaping up into all kinds of geometrical patterns that fit crowd to fit into the cluttered disappointment of backyards where there are the frequent exposed views of a flash in the pan.  Trying to ignore the stiffness in the neck as it makes its adjustments re-calibrations at another awkward angle to catch a glimpse into the window of someone sitting to look at a computer screen a blank computer screen.  A face injected with emptiness stares at the expressionless monitor tapping keys vehemently on the keyboard perhaps after silently measuring out machine sliced moments and what could they possibly consist of for the one who measured and struggle to feel the bits crumbling up shaping up dissolving into tinier tinier bits evaporating into the most insignificant particles between the walls of their fingerprints.  Somehow the button was pushed and there was an opening but not of a door more like a stopper and whatever got one to this point drained out from the upper to the lower and out through the feet somewhere in the feet the heel maybe the heel that's what it feels like drained so low can't tell anymore.

Walk take a walk
Into the desert

What are you doing?  Working.  Working on what?  Working on instructions.  Instructions for what?  Directions not instructions.  Directions to where?  Not directions as in getting to a location.  Then it would be instructions.  They can be directions as in taking medication.  What medications are we talking about?  It has nothing to do with medications.  Are these medications anti-psychotic medications?  The instructions directions are for folding chairs.  Are these anti-psychotic medications for really fucked up people?  And it's not what you think and you might think it's about the difficulties involved in unfolding the chairs.  You want to call it what you want to call it in terms of the problem the real problem being that it's about people having a problem with having a problem is that it? Or is it that it's about people having a problem with people having a problem with having a problem is that it?  You might have thought that's what I was going to continue to think and not update my thinking about what you were thinking and you could possibly possibly probably definitely maybe be thinking that the real actual forgot to wipe dilemma is a lack of appreciation of the complexity of keeping the folding chair open and preventing it from collapsing when all along it's an issue of closing the folding chair the teleological folding if you will because it's not about having something cheap to sit on but to be able to store many chairs against a wall that happens to be available and carrying 2 or 3 at a time and calculate the appropriate angle to stand them without the sliding down out of position into a humiliating clamor.  Who has the problem now?  Me?  You?  That fly you and I have been swatting at unsuccessfully?  Was it me who let it in?  Was it you?  Was it someone else and how did they get in here without our knowledge to let the fly in?  Is it your assumptions that are the problem?  Maybe maybe not or maybe it is you are your assumptions and you as a person wishing at your foul well full of bio-hazard putting all your ostrich eggs in one baby carriage looking to the day that never arrives where we can be normal when it's that we are normal and that's the problem.

Walk walk with me
Into the dunes
Into the next wave of emptiness
and wonder 
and wonder why
we've been plagued with strength
that endures for nothing

What are you doing?  Medicating.  For anxiety?  Not medicating.  What do you call it when you've given up on all the massaging and the stroking because not a thing is coming off the way you want it?  Masturbation?  I said given up.  That would be called giving up.  And that's it is it?  Just as clear as that?  The thing is giving up is so muddy in its conception in its execution that's exactly what you step down into when you step out step off and leave and move on to something else and the next step is into the mud stuck in the clarity of the uncertainty and the only certainty is that if you change your mind you are changing it to go back on your resolve and having had enough so you can go back to that step up to just above not having anything but uncertainty.  Are you sure about that?  About what?  About uncertainty?  No, are you sure you're not taking anything for your anxiety especially about the shitty electrical work you did for the store downtown that sells nothing but beer steins?  I'm not an electrician you flat diet soda.  That explains the shitty electrical work.  If you want to talk about insisting on things being the case, I once worked with this asshole actually I worked with him twice I don't know how that happened I just know that for some absurd reason periods of my life get episodes re-ordered because of their popularity for amusing others and I end up repeating the same crap and playing the same sidekick again but can't seem to disconnect from the approval numbers.  Anyway, this guy I worked with had the thickest darkest eyebrows I've ever seen and they were shaped by his ire from within and the hot wind from outside that swirled around us and between us and among us and it was as if his unwieldy mess of human fur string and eyebrow cabling was deliberately arranged into a display that advertised like a haughty awning above a foreboding kitchen below to enter it despite its disgusting appearance and reprehensible history.

Walk walk off
Let me walk you off
Let me let you walk me off
into the dry space
gutted for homes to be nailed
to the corroded scalp of the world
Remove me 
Drag me off
Use my body as an eraser 
to rub out my name
to delete my birth my afterbirth
to obliterate my age 
that stretches on


- Max Stoltenberg

Monday, September 16, 2013

A PRETEXT TO A SYNDROME

Inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted to select to use to inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips not cancelled just went about something else the usual shit until the trip was too late to get into the only getting into was reserved with all of its reservations was reserved for the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted.

They it was just her her it was just him it was just her and him separated by the singular they they preferred to associate with when they in darker times past darker than the current dark times where nothing was current only overdue refraining from associating with all the routine going over it haven't we we've been over this associating with interpretations reloaded for aiming at someone's spot where it really hurt or they thought they could take it take it for what for a spell into the alley or behind the building to get it out of their system look at the filth on the ground that came out of one end or another so much for ends reloaded for aiming aiming at the spot gets bigger gets smaller skin for a spell into the alley or behind the building to get it out of their system a brief silence in the choking and then the choking continues the tortured music the empty metallic applause of the present always continuing a wheel a steering wheel disobedient to crashing off the road a tree gone by blurred away into disobedience to crashing cemented into the straight and narrow present always continuing with the present the now the pill of their cure the plural they preferred to associate with over the alley in the building back in the building a room they it was just her her it was just him it was just her and him separated by the singular they they preferred to associate with when they in darker times past darker than the current dark times where nothing was current only overdue refraining from associating with all the routine going over it haven't we we've been over this associating with interpretations reloaded for aiming at someone's spot where it really hurt or they thought they could take it take it for what for a spell into the alley or behind the building to get it out of their system look at the filth on the ground.

"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing."
"What are you thinking of?"
"Of?"
"Or about?"
"I can't decide if it's an of or an about."
"Does it make a difference?"
"To some."
"And what about you?"
"I haven't decided."
"Are we going to go over the whole thing?"
"I think we go over it without realizing it and more quickly than we think."
"There should never have been racetracks in the first place."
"You say that now but they keep you alive."
"That's my point."
"You have them inside of you keeping you going.  You have them in your blood your circulation."
"Bloody piss poor circulation is what I have."
"That's what sabotages your miserable facial gestures.  Fucking surreal they are."
"Don't you think I know.  Do you see me looking at myself in the mirror?"
"No, I just see you and the sagging and the chasms and abysses that form around the sockets of your eyes."
"Saggings, chasms, abysses."
"Maybe we didn't follow the instructions."
"Sockets, eyes."
"Maybe it's because we followed the instructions."
"What are you getting at?"
"Maybe we missed a step or took steps and overlapped onto somebody's toes we did."
"Took steps?"
"Overlapping."
"Is this about getting out of line?"
"No. Just making ourselves redundant again."
"Are you going on about solidarity?"
"Solidarity?  There's a word for solidarity . . . #2."
"My deficiencies might be external but yours are certainly internal."
"Don't forget about your piss poor circulation."
"Remind me why don't you?  That would be both wouldn't it?  Fucked up on either side of the wall of our being."
"No wonder they assigned us to this building."
"Makes me think about the woman who found a height and she loosened her scarf."
"Because her blouse was next."
"It was so she could reach with the fingers of her right hand to scratch an itch on the left side of her neck."
"Why didn't she use her left hand?"
"She liked to use her right hand.  Plus she was carrying a napsack."
"What was in the napsack?"
"A collection of letters including one that some would say didn't belong and that's exactly why she made sure to put it in with the others."
"Why would some say it didn't belong?"
"It wasn't about catching up on the year that had just passed the year before the previous one and it wasn't about laying things to rest or reminiscing about days when there were people who could recall or think they could recall people who speculated about things that used to be sprinkled over places that had forgotten them.  It happened to be from a colleague who used to ask her what the latest bag of parts had been sent down to them would say to them and how it would say it to them and what it would do to them with its parts once they had been arranged in the order they could make of the tiny pictures on the folded paper inside the bag of parts that had been sent down to them from the building on the other side of the desert."
"What did she write to her?"
"She never read it before she took off all her clothes was disappointed by a short breeze that wouldn't return and she jumped."
"The blouse probably was next."
"I'll make you next you scum-clot.  Actually I do think about me and her and being next and then I think where am I going to find a height nowadays?"
"I know the options are getting more limited when it comes to refusing to go on.  There's this dream I have once every few months or years and I'm not even in it I'm watching some schmuck trying to run away from one of the latest monstrous graders they've just come out with for the next whatever they're calling them now and he finds himself running along a road that turns into a traffic jam that turns into a crowded lobby that turns into these hurdles one after another."
"On a racetrack?"
"And he just keeps knocking them over and stumbling and falling down."
"A racetrack that loops around into a meaningless looping around?"
"And he keeps smashing into them each and every one of them and falling down getting bloodier and getting up and smashing into the next one."
"I told you there should never have been racetracks in the first place."
"The only thing I like about it prefer about it is they the singular they."
"They make the print on these folded papers smaller each whatever they're calling it now."

Inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted to select to use to inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips not cancelled just went about something else the usual shit until the trip was too late to get into the only getting into was reserved with all of its reservations was reserved for the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted.


- Max Stoltenberg