Saturday, April 19, 2014

BOTCHED TOMB #29

The wireless cannibals are on the loose stretching logic to rocky propositions and interminable gyrations dividing in half the distance to death's door hacking life expectancies into fleshy cubes to pile up in the back of the bus roofless in the sand a canopy of sunglasses and underwear look upon them or up at them and tell yourselves or each other or only yourself because you are alone have been alone except for all those moments of humiliation the only virtue upheld by those who like to hold them down to the ground where the smell of tires and spit never seem to put out the fire of their cruel turns of phrase after most things are stripped away leaving only a self-awareness that only comes online after all those nights at the laptop with a deflated head in your hands in your lap with pants around ankles only after the pain that echoes in your head swelling with what has been thrown at it heady heavy stuff leaking from the muddy bunny's ears.

This is the episode where the lump and the rind try to rid themselves of all that misunderstanding not most of it this time but all of it and this will include all the things that will come to mind during their project not most of it this time but all of it and this will include all the things that will come to mind during after they think they are done and will have to take it up again and probably give it another name or label and dig their nails into the stuff that sticks and scratch at what remains the corner of a name what is that but a price tag of wasted time their favorite music was always too soft all the leaning into the commitment with words and gestures that could never convince anyone as they stacked chairs not even most of them as they picked at the snacks and left and talked so loud as they disappeared their fading voices still drowning out their favorite music that was always too soft all the leaning all the falling over and the coming to mind after they think they are done and will have to take it up again and probably give it another name or label and dig their nails into the stuff heady heavy stuff muddy fake fur a price tag of wasted time.

"How much is it?"
"It doesn't much matter now."
"Why not?"
"Look around you."
"That's not easy for me remember?"
"I forgot about your neck."
"You did."
"What was it you walked into again?"

"I'm not going over it again with you.  I asked you a question."
"And I told you it doesn't much matter now."
"And it was just someone who mistook me for someone else anyway and that will be the extent of it.  And I wasn't asking about a number or a numerical value."
"The answer still is I'm not wait do you hear that?"
"It's your head doing the thing."
"No this is more like a more steady gradual further and steadily further below down a shaft."
"This is the shaft with the deep dark burnt orange voices slipping away down but slowly enough for excerpts of broken sentiment punctured by regret and complaint."
"Two there are only two voices.  That's essential.  How did you know that?"
"You told me."
"When you were in days recent and back way back the same pathetic whine."
"I could go for a glass."
"You could.  You've gone for a long stretch after losing your sandals step onto an early morning dusting of broken crystal casserole dish."
"Burned my hand on a crystal casserole dish once."
"I heard your department is not well thought of."
"I heard you're a douche-bag piece of shit motherfucking asshole."
"Hit the rewind button on that. What was I thinking?"
"You were thinking you should hit the fucking rewind button!"
"Yes yes I did and now..."
"Now?"
"Now we're back here where we don't even have dead end departments or general ballparks."
"There once was this office and a woman who had recently been hired there and after the tour of the rooms she was shown to her cubicle. She was putting up a picture of a charnel house on her corkboard and suddenly the wall between her cubicle and the next fell with a thud and a grunt that sounded like someone saying who molested the hydraulics? She stepped into the next cubicle tried to step into the next cubicle carefully tripping over the fallen partition resulting in some additional expressions of pain that sounded like someone saying what in the name of all that is rancid threw itself down the throat of a fool to be tormented in the stomach of disgust with an existence of anxious conformism and blighted resentment?  The woman began to grip the partition in order to lift it up.  The wall lifted up more easily than she expected.  There was an explanation underneath and it was Employee ID# HCH-051025-9 and it sounded like someone saying who determined that someone else should get all the credit? The wall had risen up enough now to put a face to the badge. She helped move him to safety. Don't touch me, he said waving his arms to deflect her attempts. He slid his ass along the floor to push himself further away from the partition as he told himself it was her he was distancing himself from. I was just trying to help, she said. Just trying to help destroy my cubicle that's all, he said. I haven't finished yet, she said as he felt his back against the opposite partition and very little room left to maneuver. What are you going to do? he asked nervously. I've wanted to tell you about my trip to the dentist, she said. I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up, he said as he added yet another facial tic to his already comprehensive repertoire of tics.

words and gestures that could never convince anyone as they stacked chairs not even most of them as they picked at the snacks and left and talked so loud as they disappeared their fading voices still drowning out their favorite music that was always too soft all the leaning all the falling over and the coming to mind after they think they are done and will have to take it up again and probably give it another name or label and dig their nails into the stuff heady heavy stuff muddy fake fur a price tag of wasted time.

They had me in the chair.

still drowning out their favorite music that was always too soft all the leaning all the falling over and the coming to mind after they think they are done and will have to take it up again.

One of them who leaned over me was making those sounds of hunger in their gut.

and that's what made
and that's what made
them a little bit more 
recognizable with their dark masks
silhouettes above and below
digging at me sucking up the mess
and that's what made
and that's what made
them a little bit more than
familiar with their frozen faces
attached to the tags
above and below
digging at me sucking up the mess

They had me in a chair, she said. Shit happens, he said. One of them who leaned over me was making the sounds of hunger in their gut, she said, and I think it was the one whose gut was churning told the other about how satisfied he was satisfied with a meeting the night before a meeting of the youth of the youth in the town that was not as dead as others had complained and he had the proof the proof of all their youthful activities their youthful activities of tearing down and cleaning up tearing down and cleaning up that was preparing them for the next day's work and the work that would follow that and within... The work within? he asked. No, she said, within a month most of the youth except for maybe 3 or 4 were killed in a bus accident. What's the matter? she asked noticing him squirming. I'm adjusting so my back won't knock this partition down as well, he said. Don't bother, she said, that's the last partition in this room and it's up against the wall."
"Two there are only two voices.  That's essential.  How did you know that?"
"You told me."
"Yes I tell you and I tell you, but how do we really know there are only two voices?"
"When we think of it."
"And how do we think of it?"
"I see them as lights lights that circle inside my head and they pop in and out they are there and then they are not."
"And where do we get that there are only two voices in all that?"
"When the lights most of the lights have gone out and there is death's sleeve lingering over the last switch to extinguish it all there are only two voices a you and a me whispering in the dark until the inferno of the next day's dawn."
"I've heard it said that when it goes downhill enough it can only go up from there."
"It levels out more like from all the smoothing over. Fuck the blinking lights and all that shit. There are only two voices because all the others bled out from their latest fad diet of platitudes."
"We haven't done much better with nothing to find in this desert either. At least they tried to find a new angle. That's what they always said find a new angle."
"We picked this desert. Also said that didn't they? Just what I enrolled in a different future right? What the specialist ordered change course to follow a new angle. Turned out to be another pressure angle for the gears to get a tighter grip on the skin dried out skin dried out tearing skin."
"Everything was useless then. We'll stop referencing them from now on because when you think about it it kind of crowds up the whole only two voices thing."
"There will only be two voices again when we stop speaking about them."
"And thinking."
"When we learn to stop speaking and thinking there will only be two voices a you and a me again."


- Max Stoltenberg



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