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