CONCERTO FOR BRUSHSTROKE AND PLAYERS

The hammer was on the ground next to a grave that had been dug with the back end of it. The digger sat down next to an empty cardboard box looking around it to see if the hammer was still there and waited for the stomach pain to subside. And the stomach pain continued on in keeping with its resolve. The things remained where they were unless rubbed by the weather until more choices among them the choices of words stirred them up into an internal dance of motionlessness.

arrows do not actually move
tell the hearts they pierce
that

with all the moving around
of which parts matter
at the time of entry

we leave them alone
and bother each other
instead

nothing moves 
not really
after all the collisions

spaces for the margins
of existence
poetry retreats
from the margins of books

Get up get up get out of there it's not that deep I regret having said hello again and again during those earlier times I saw you I see you now I see your predicament and now I am blind I've lost my sense of the dimensions I should talk right maybe I shouldn't as the dimensions come pooling back shitting out like diarrhea in the dark corner of my mind goodbye says shut the fuck up while the marks of getting up and getting out wander away into it out of it get up get up get out of there it's not that deep I regret having said having said having anything at all said ripped from the room whipped like a plaque stuck the wall of forgotten expiration dating matched paired up like tangled cord behind and under the desk where asses bang heads into fake wood screwed together adhering to nonsense having nonsense come out with the afterbirth after it was too late out in the open where tree branches drop leaves coming a long way for bark cold bark of smelling the cut of hurt thumbs part to push up the wound bulging with ignored questions they're they're going on to something else too late out in the open where tree branches drop leaves coming a long way for bark cold bark.

"I can't remember what we were we talking about?"
"You're doing this again because you don't want to discuss it."
"How can I? All I get is did it have to do with I'm not even getting that."
"Are you seriously going to swipe everything off the counter of our conversation and into the hole of your coma?"
"No no I'm not. This is the coma."
"Do something else with your arm like getting it stuck in a lathe?"
"I don't know what I've been drinking."
"The house is surrounded."
"House?"
"The building the building is surrounded."
"Someone is going out to talk to them."
"You don't have to do this."
"What? Make shit up?"
"No I mean go out to talk to them."
"I wasn't going to go out to talk to them."
"I'm asking you to reconsider in short this could be this is an opportunity to be the roundabout in the circular argument that can finally be employed to bolster the weaker passages through the woods through the nothing but arid spaces you know you've always known what needs to be said to them now go I'm asking you to reconsider."
"Being employed isn't what it used to be."
"Now you're just making excuses. It's understandable you have your doubts and what day like today that arrives at last today on this today without it being put off until today without doubts?"
"What I'm getting at is that that someone is already wrapping up out there."
"You've missed it I tell you a bonehead for chiseling at the hands of the mob. You had your chance the chance and allowed the thin conduit available to you to them to fill with dirt desert dirt."
"Wasn't I the one who said existence is the narrow course between the runs and constipation?"
"That was said by the woman in the camouflage shorts in that awful joke you told the night you couldn't stop vomiting."
"So I did say it."
"You claimed it was inspired by some friend of yours who shared a similar joke that was actually quite different and even more tasteless with its gory details of old lady bridge players interrupting their bidding and play from the dummy with the presentation of sex organs found stuffed in brass instruments."
"I don't find your line of reasoning persuasive in the least. A slathering of the macabre is no different than the surgical mask covering a physician's alternating smirks and expressions of disgust."
"You had your shot."
"We keep changing the angle and missing a vein."

We've been out of the woods for too long and look for a canopy in the waste the quench has lost its way in the back of our throats to trip over itself and cough we choke ourselves into tears without the emptying of a sorrow that never comes only escapes with our euphemisms and chairs stacked in the back of our minds standing with our faces turned away from the table under the cracked glass spilling unpleasing water trickling towards a smashed bug its surface tension cannot lift its crushed its crushed while all the while we've been out of the woods for too long and look for a canopy in the waste.


- Max Stoltenberg