"We only have one pushpin."
"I know. It's been like this for long enough."
"Long enough for what?"
"Long enough for me to know."
"You must be pretty dense."
"That would not be far from dead on the mark."
"And what would be dead on the mark?"
"Some poor old bastard by the looks of him."
"When did he get there?"
"The morning flames of the Sun torch another cadaver as well as expose the night's most recent defecation."
"I wonder if he was killed in bed."
"You're wondering can be compared to windowless shopping in this abyss. Beds are body-bags with pillows."
"Are you suggesting that it might possibly have been manslaughter next to the bed?"
"I am suggesting nothing of the kind. I doubt very much this dead sap has been anywhere near a bed in ages."
"Ages? And how much does that amount to out of my life? Your life?"
"My life. My life amounts to stumbling into my final destination: a warehouse full of crumpled up empty water bottles."
"If only I could come across a phone."
"Just so you could confirm the silence of the universe on the other end of the line."
"I might get a connection. You never know."
"What a stroke of luck it would be to have your head refilled with the same old noises the same old regurgitations."
"It was you making those barfing sounds last night that interrupted one of my dreams involving a hospital administrator going on and on about staffing levels and non-formularies and how he can't seem to find good honey anywhere and he's spewing this all from the backseat of my car while I am trying to navigate our way out of this strangely designed neighborhood consisting of roads mapped out like Venn diagrams. Then I hear this disturbed gurgling coming from what I think is the engine only to find out it was you making those barfing sounds last night that interrupted one of my dreams involving-"
"A hospital administrator in the backseat of your car. I've heard this somewhere before. Have you ever had a car?"
"Just in this dream I had last night. I do remember during the dream being aware of taking the time in my head to notice what it was like to drive. So this is driving I was thinking to myself. And just as the space began to stretch a little that's when I felt like I was in a box with wheels as if trudging over a cheese grater and it kept closing in on me my head the pressure closing in feeling it in my lobes inside the tiles of my ears and turning from one street around the next corner onto another street the same street around the next corner the same corner looping into circles a pattern of knotted labyrinths nested inside each other streets and corners looping as your eyes split in halves shimmering with the dying juice of fruitless traveling mirrors reflecting each other into endless dark tunnels."
"And then I woke you up with my vomiting."
"Not just yet there was the dead animal."
"Dead animal?"
"Next to me on the passenger seat."
"Could you tell what kind of dead animal it was?"
"Now that I think about it the windshield. It was on the windshield. Some nasty organ that had to do with digestion or excretion perhaps smashed right there and blocked my view."
"An internal organ collided into your line of vision."
"Just as I thought I saw a woman who reminded me of a young lady my mother took in as a renter at this abandoned amusement park we squatted at for a while."
"Did she actually have money to pay you rent?"
"She would pay us with money she found around the park."
"Why didn't you just scavenge for the money yourselves?"
"My mother insisted on having about the place the kind of woman she didn't want me going off and marrying and I didn't feel much in the mood for scraping up loose change that had mostly accumulated by the merry-go-round. Didn't believe in marriage anyway. Being in her vicinity was enough. Until she disappeared."
"What was she like?"
"That's when you woke me up with your barfing."
Under a bridge
grabbing at wordless sayings
chest open shut nodding
disapproval fumbling
for a place to latch onto
a beam of the towers
one of them
climbing back down
after the rot
tired thoughts
that die in their sleep
the night before
under a bridge
grabbing at wordless sayings
climbing back down
still fall
not too far
enough to keep going on
with the unconvincing
persuasive dragging
through the desert
under a bridge
after the rot
tired thoughts
that die in their sleep
reawakened by the sand
kicked in their facing it
with the unconvincing
persuasive dragging
through the desert
"Maybe he was dropped from the sky?"
"Who? The poor bastard over there? I haven't heard or seen anything flying over."
"What about that really long menacing shape we spotted the other day?"
"You mean that cloud?"
"It wasn't just a cloud. There was some unusual sound coming from inside of it up there like some great metal doors opening up to release another expired prisoner."
"What you heard were the doors of your brain crapping out exhausted rationalizations."
"Maybe he was always here dead for some time and was lying under a waste pile that got blown away during one of our many dust storms."
"That might initially seem a little more plausible than your first speculation, but garbage tends to collect here rather than be dispersed from here."
"That's true. The only validation in my life has been parking."
"So you had a car?"
"I managed to get a company car briefly until I totaled it crashing into a row of portajohns. They decided not to replace the wreck and demoted me instead to working in the copier room. Spent most of my time clearing paper jams and having to read over their nauseating catch phrases like: make change a habit until it becomes a routine."
"At least you had a company car. I never had a car. I dreamt about driving a car with a hospital administrator in the backseat."
"Bitching incessantly about non-formularies."
"Exactly. Have you heard this?"
"I have another speculation."
"About what?"
"About the poor dead bastard over there."
"What about him?"
"I think we have been approaching the problem of him from the wrong direction."
"The wrong direction?"
"All the time we have been trying to reconstruct how he (the poor dead bastard) came to be situated thus dead on the mark over there when we have been ignoring how we came to be situated thus dead on the mark over here. We are nothing more than in our vexatious attempts to keep him (the poor dead bastard) in our thoughts he (the poor dead bastard) has been keeping us (the two worthless shits) in his thoughts."
"You mean it isn't as we surmised?"
"Not by any means. We (the two worthless shits) will not find rest in the black screen of the computer monitor being shut down for the last time. No heralding of an endless obscurity or stupefaction. There is only to be us (the two worthless shits) to linger in the indestructible particles of a corpse's afterthoughts."
Can't get it out the how is it put hard put to get it to come out right or even wrong or out at all only stuffed between molding coats in the closet to drop when the walls tremble with decay's feigned curiosity landing on the dirty rug among the overturned roaches brittle shells of former organic disgust how is it put hard put to get it to come out right or even wrong can't get it out the how is it put hard put to get it to come out right or even wrong or out at all only stuffed between molding coats in the closet to drop when the walls tremble with decay's feigned curiosity.
- Max Stoltenberg
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