Monday, June 30, 2014

LIGAMENT EXTRACT

And under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under the road that widens and narrows and widens. Do you want to hold on to what you have left? Do you want to dig your fingernails into the ceiling underneath the shoe used to hammer you into place like a nail. They don't like it when you say lost. I said it once that might be all the times I get to say it today before they burst in like kicks in the chest now now the soup the stew of air has been left out to sit too long left do you want to hold on to what you have left? Do you want to dig your fingernails into the ceiling underneath the shoe used to hammer you into place like a nail. They don't like it when you say when you say I know not you I say I say I know not you you I know not I tried to know you maybe not hard enough I would explore when I when my orbit was my orbit collapsed a sick caress here and there our yards bonded together with mucus and each other's bodily oozings.  

"I am."
"Go ahead."
"Go ahead what?"
"Go ahead and say it."
"Say what?"
"Finish what you were saying."
"I did."
"I thought it was a dot dot dot."
"It was just a dot."
"How was it just a dot?"
"I was answering your question about who is an exemplar of madness on legs."
"You started talking like you always do in the middle of a sentence and left us hanging even though I'd rather it was from a crossbeam in a garage."
"None of the houses I saw around growing up had garages."
"None of the roads I saw around growing up had houses."
"I miss all those interactions."
"With people?"
"No, with medications."
"Back up a bit."

And under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under that slice was a drop of blood forthwith to cry of senders and receivers wires tangled in shelves and desks squatting on the dirt rocks for throwing at the mountains sinking as you close in on them sinking under the road that widens and narrows and widens. Do you want to hold on

"Not that far back."
"Blood?"

when I when my orbit was my orbit collapsed a sick caress here and there our yards bonded together with mucus and each other's bodily oozings.  

"There was no question."
"Maybe you were improvising?"
"The last time I tried that we didn't speak to each other for days."
"It was weeks."
"Days weeks who gives a shit? It was quiet nonetheless."
"Quiet? Even if we had tried to converse we would have been drowned out by all that noise that kept screeching back and forth under our feet made by those machines and we ended up in that foul caved-in chamber."
"It couldn't have ended there we had to be revived by an air pocket. And those were more like insects making that screeching noise."
"By rubbing their wings together like maniacal violinists?"
"Mesh speakers on their underbellies."
"How do you know that?"
"A couple of them ran me over during that time I was an afterthought to you."
"Are we going to revisit that again?"

Tense and curt responses from their organs both had small pipe organs they copied each other smashing their paws into a cluster of migraines plumes of what looked like shredded newspapers but were not with no news just a lengthy sluggish downpour of pages of score lines intertwining with saps and dupes.

"I don't know where we are now."
"We'll circle back around for him."
"Back around to that again?"
"For him."
"Not him."
"Just for a reference point so we can have a nice fresh restart."
"Nothing fresh about it being our 20th or so restart."
"Must you always round up?"
"I thought I was underestimating just to be fair. No point in being fair I guess."
"And what reference point are we supposed to use to circle back around for him who we keep referring to as our reference point for just repeating ourselves?"
"We'll know by the gathering of garbage cans that we're getting warm."
"Fancy that, getting warm in the desert."

Press them together
Touching overlapping regret
Meant for the unfinished
incompetence mingled with vomit
it is assembled into a gross cake
in the back room
for its stench to roll over
into backyard graves
at the sound of our voices

"It can't be a gathering. More random than anything else."
"He could have put them there."
"I doubt it. He never had any limbs."
"Just past the cans is the hole."
"You mean the hole in your reasoning?"
"No, the hole he was tucked into just past the cans."
"There was no hole just past the cans."
"All right, the hole was a little further on past the cans."
"Get it through your head about there being a hole."
"I could have sworn there was a hole."
"You could have sworn and rather colorful expressions you used last night rattled about in my fucking skull and prevented me from obtaining a wink."
"Fine! We're working our way up to it again the complaining and the arguing about the complaining and the arguing and the angry shouting losing our voices and the quiet that is too brief before the clamor of our shit backs up from beneath us to flood our silence run over by it as we run over it again and again and again until the truth of it is we took our anger out on him and you can deny it all you want that you didn't take part in it he has no bones let alone any skin any trace no hole to speak of."
"That suits me fine no bones no skin no trace no hole to speak of."

Tense and curt responses from their organs both had small pipe organs they copied each other smashing their paws into a cluster of migraines plumes of what looked like shredded newspapers but were not with no news just a lengthy sluggish downpour of pages of score lines intertwining with saps and dupes.


- Max Stoltenberg

Saturday, June 21, 2014

HALLS OF PUS

If I said anything to you you'd put me away not very far just a little more than the distance you already keep me at and so I have nothing to say about that part wait there goes another one like a little tin can you flick with your index finger over the edge into that abyss you locate only in your mind but can never seem to come upon until you run into someone else and I have nothing to say to them or to you standing across from a life 40% discouragement and 60% hesitation adjacent to a future that has become 99% disinterested and 1% percentages under the narrow belly of graying thread hanging by not if you let it waste your thoughts in the cracks of the windows blocking the view of the sky muffled with the semblance of clouds are they or are they storms of dust dust storms churning up what tries to rest from aging toward dying and blows them on away from their graves and into the laps of burning faces rubbing their eyes to rid themselves of our age forgetting not really what we did or said and with that I have nothing to say to you you'd put me away not very far just a little more than the distance you already keep me at and so I have nothing to say about that part wait there goes another one like a little tin can you flick with your index finger over the edge into that abyss you can locate in your mind but can never seem to come upon until you run into someone else.

I go back over it sometimes a lot of the time that is my congestion that never clears up that never goes away I am the one who does instead walking down to what's not there anymore and in its place is a sign or what the sign was on bars of metal for reaching out for drawing away after contact with the scraping heat.  We are disease packaged in unraveling drains knitted with that last nerve stretched by pills nowhere to be found picking up the crumbs on the curb those are crumbs aren't they didn't throw up too many times on the last occasion.  

"What's that reek? Is that your pants?"
"It's always been my pants. It's only gotten much worse."
"Can they actually do that? I mean is there an axiom?"
"I used something else when they were stacked too high you couldn't get from one end of the room to the door."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't remember what it was called."
"What it was called?"
"What it said on the box."
"What box?"
"Of detergent."
"We've never had a room since I've known you at least."
"At least. I do that to people."

Where had he put that book? The novel where the architecture professor was having an affair with one of his students and neglected to show up for an anniversary dinner date with his wife. Where had he put that book? Maybe it fell between the seat and the door and as he reached the car swerved onto the shoulder and into the dirt. Stepping out into the desert he discovered the flat tire and opened the trunk to retrieve the donut. The therapist was on his way home late for his birthday dinner his wife was waiting with the kids reassuring them it would be any minute while he struggled to get a hold of the donut and clumsily lifted it over the rim of the trunk. 

"We need to go back."
"Haven't we discussed this already?"
"When did we do that?"
"Do we need to go back in your mind?"
"Didn't we agree that was a bad idea?"
"I thought you didn't remember."
"About going back, but not in my mind."
"It's all rather inside out or outside in I'm not sure which when we keep coming back to it it being the going back over it rigmarole with the positions and arguments that led up to the agreements and the pretensions that led away from them into forgetting and exhuming shit when it's again your turn to dislocate one's knees before novelty until you're nothing but a salmon swimming up a stream of guilt."

Where had he put that book? The novel where the architecture professor was having an affair with one of his students and neglected to show up for an anniversary dinner date with his wife. Where had he put that book? Maybe it fell between the seat and the door and as he reached the car swerved onto the shoulder and into the dirt. Stepping out into the desert he pushed with his heel on the tire iron and it resisted him as did the ground as did the rest of the world until he felt the metal hit the side of his ankle as his foot slipped off back to Earth back from his suspension hadn't gotten far enough in his reach to determine where that novel had fallen if it had really fallen between the seat and the door.

"Food is overrated."
"You're just saying that because of our unrequited hunger."
"No it is overrated. It always got in the way of doing something else I'd rather be doing like running running around running away and then you'd get called back to the table and sit with them and the sound of their voices the weather patterns the shrouds that covered everything you did from then on. Just when I was becoming familiar with not missing it it had to come knocking with its slithering its way through you and make its vomit its shit the factory's tapestry headphones with their vice-like grip on your head wringing out the tears from your fuse."
"To you everything is overrated."
"No, just existence is overrated."
"That's what I mean."
"I have to start somewhere."

Where had he put that book? The novel where the architecture professor was having an affair with one of his students and neglected to show up for an anniversary dinner date with his wife. Where had he put that book? Maybe it fell between the seat and the door and as he reached the car swerved onto the shoulder and into the dirt. Stepping out into the desert he pushed with his heel on the side of the head and it resisted him as did the ground as did the rest of the world until he felt the metal the machinery of his routine that had veered off the road hit the concrete someone had started to pave in the desert a fragment of a path he had just stopped to help that's what he said with his presence with a look until he put his foot down on the side of this head that had been thinking for too long about living too long around too much meaningless nonsense as his foot slipped off the back to Earth back from his suspension hadn't gotten far enough in his reach to determine where that novel had fallen if it had really fallen between the seat and the door.


- Max Stoltenberg

Saturday, June 7, 2014

THROWN IN A GLITCH

That was not very helpful the voice echoing down the hall getting away from this reminder of the unnecessary left with nothing to recommend itself where he sat at his desk and felt the words back up in his mouth and into his head along the paths tunneling through his skull to resentment and only hearing the echo sliding down the hole of his existence making him gag about to throw up and lift his hands up toward the resigned clouds that bring no water only sand on the back of the neck. Precipice head dented in supposed to match the expected so it will go as planned can't find the basket to hide a flattened votive under names older stick figures could make some faces in a blank space for making some older stick figures only the impressions of lines as the Earth pushes out our lines and footprints erasing our burrowing in time worms dead worms in dead ends.

He left his hat on the floor next to the chair that must have been what happened and then the dog got it took it outside and now it's in a corner of the backyard surrounded by feces and weeds she wanted to apologize for being so technical to him of all people and he was of all people the first to complain or second or third to complain being the first to procrastinate to complain that she was using big words and in her routine that was shackled to his routine like an old train car she decided to tell him to go fuck himself.

Can I talk about her? Can I mention her without there being any room left for her to mention anything about herself? Can she talk about herself? Can she mention anything without there being a stream of emissions at the bottom of the page submissions of expression on her behalf with all of their suggestions for her future for her body where she should go and with who and with what? Can I mention her without them dropping various tools sharpened and unsharpened clean and unclean at the bottom of the page with their directions with their instructions for her?

The bottom line never ends. I have nothing to add. Why should I? All the contributing has squeezed us out fallen out of their back pocket until they discover until they remember us we have been chosen to be stuffed in their back pockets until they stuff their back pockets and we fall out by the road by the road they find us. The bottom line never ends.

She looked up to him. Not because he occupied a higher position well he did occupy a higher position but not in her mind but in the room they had chosen to stay in not that they had chosen to stay in the room perhaps a case could be made that they had chosen to stay in the room in the first place but not that they had chosen to have such difficulty leaving. He spoke down to her not that she was fitted into a lower position even though it could be stated with confidence that she was in a position lower than his or that it could possibly be attributed to how he spoke to her in a manner that suggested he was an arrogant condescending fuckface. 

"Are you stuffing your bra?"
"Are you stuffing your head?"
"With all sorts of nonsense. And you?"
"What is that now?"
"What is what now?"
"Is that actually music?"
"Are you kidding? It's always almost always someone trying to get an answer and not giving the other a chance to finish as well as get their explanation in. Forget that. Why even bother speaking at all? I spend more of my time lately chewing the inside of my lips both of them."
"Both of them?"
"Upper and lower."
"Hide and seek. It was never about whether I was found or not but whether I wanted to be found."
"I was always it."
"I was it and more often than not I would never be found and I'd sit there crouched down in some thick bushes and the fading light of day became engulfed by the darkness of a closed in space where the world was wrinkled tight and the noise of everyone else drowned under the surface of wanting to play when they ran off they ran off and even though I knew they were gone I'd come out slowly from the cover and walk about gently and hesitantly until it left my mind in a puff of smoke of forgetfulness that this day had ever occurred or was taking place and then suddenly there they were playing I guess they gliding along past me and as they all looked around I knew I was still hidden out in the open."
"I was always it."
"What do have there?"
"Some shred."
"Pulled it out of your bra?"
"From my breast."
"Your breast?"
"My left boob to be more precise."
"Is there any blood?"
"Look at the stains on the shred."
"That's red ink."
"Not all of it. Red ink has . . . red ink whatever."
"What were you going to say?"
"Something clever about red ink or so I thought but now I know why my head that the other girls at school used to ridicule is misshapen because it's infested with ellipses."
"Your left breast is misshapen as well. It has that depression right there. That must be where the shred is leaking from."
"Or where the world has pushed down too hard."
"You have to keep backing up into yourself on the other side of a depression. So it's not a shred-filled implant."
"Last dust storm blew this crap into my shirt and bra. Nature is quite the taxidermist."
"It always seemed to me that black ink had more blood mixed into before it was put to paper."

The bottom line never ends. I have nothing to add. Why should I? All the contributing has squeezed us out fallen out of their back pocket until they discover until they remember us we have been chosen to be stuffed in their back pockets until they stuff their back pockets and we fall out by the road by the road they find us. The bottom line never ends.


- Max Stoltenberg