Tuesday, September 29, 2015

OBLIVIOUS STROKING

He always considered today just yesterday in remission a pain to shoot through his mind putting an imaginary gun to his head his eyes widening as they split his view from over his own back to watch the bullet passing like a subway car plowing through forgotten memories waking up briefly just before they were obliterated his ideas always culminated into a cul-de-sac of mediocrity and repetition tripping over the wire recharging his phone pulling it off the table and smacking against the tile floor cracking the screen apps shrugging along the fracture. Recidivism blues totaling up to peroxide poured into your lap. Where are the shorts? Where are the boxers? There they are on either side of the flesh tower with its smoke stack billowing out colors of pain scrubbing bubbles of abrasive lacerating cleanser driving driving when I'm driving if not in this parking lot of a shit-hole inching along a slowly vomited exaggeration a pogrom of another aspect of myself another swathe of the dream the nightmare is peeled off and flung to curl up in the corner until the dog will carry it between its morsels of conjunctivitis and then ejected out its ass in the backyard among the other searing rocks covered in noxious dark pudding. 

"Then I told him my name."
"And then did he hit you?"
"No, he hit me before that."
"That's because you didn't tell him your name."
"It's not that easy to remember to say to remember anything to say anything when you get hit."
"You need to pull yourself up."
"I do when no one is around but that's rare nowadays and the meat gets rare or raw that's what I meant it used to get like that during a period not a period what word am I looking for?"
"Your name you told him your name after he hit the snot out of you."
"I remained pretty congested actually never could clear that up allergic to the desert and all the stuff that pretends to grow in it and the trash."
"Eventually you got to some rank and serial number eventually something toward the prelude to the conclusion eventually?"
"Model number I think it was."
"Serial number you mean."
"He didn't want or whoever he answered to didn't seem particularly interested in anything identifying me."
"That's weird."
"It's not weird at all really more a come to expect it as the way things will be from now on or how they've always been."
"It's still weird."
"Spoken like someone whose favorite words are: weird, really, and seriously."
"I wish I could have had both of them removed."
"Why on Earth?"
"Well, for starters this looks like all we've got and on the other hand I wouldn't have to wear a fucking bra."
"You're book-ending with on the one hand and starters?"
"You're missing the point."
"I am missing the point both of them. Interval that's what I wanted to substitute for period. My find and replace is rather languid."
"How many times did he hit you?"
"I didn't count. I was kind of focusing on getting up off the ground so he wouldn't kick me."
"Model number of what?"
"I don't know. Something I thought I had. He didn't believe me. I didn't believe me. My head doesn't feel like it can hold a conversation anymore even though it manages to fill in what the other person is saying that's why I think I just stopped going so I wouldn't have to carry on with anyone else just know that I would fill in what they would say in here this skull that feels like one of those brittle boats that someone steps into and both their feet go right through the bottom. I think I will just you will just pull the trigger and off I go again you go again I go have been going on can't sleep my head doesn't feel like it can hold a conversation anymore even though it manages to fill in what the other person is saying."

And that's when he decided she needed to make up her mind about the emergency brake whether he was the one who left it up as he tore the sleeve of his sweater reaching over to rub the knuckles of his right hand against her smooth face that wasn't that smooth wasn't that young wasn't that open wasn't even there wasn't that even wasn't that it wasn't that. And so he put it down where she could find it and maybe get it done she had put it off for so long and with a good half-assed reason only a run-over owl could fabricate. They wasted the rest of their time arguing about destiny and fate and paralysis.

Tomorrow had a pass
On clouded judgment
extra spaces filled with
obscurantist gestures
floating nightgowns upset
with windy sighs
more frequent now
than an 8th grade math teacher
looking looking
where she wishes
she wishes where
she could not be
could not
a tub sculpted by discouragement
forced into lips
wrapped about a cactus
stitched shut 
spineless worms
slither to the gym
strutting across cremations
spackled with semen
smirking at the thick window
of his ignorance
where the silent windy sighs
fall to the latest hang-up


- Max Stoltenberg

Sunday, September 20, 2015

DID A NUMBER

Leave me out of it like I have to say it it happens when I don't ask for it while the clouds thick with classroom ridicule can't install updates installing updates configuring it out for they were looking and sneezing in a hurry to avoid wiping themselves dripping with clouds leaking thick remains as another hem legs turn the corner out of watching after the backs of knees is that what they are after hardly worth the effort of having eyes having anything else above the nails of your toes. What are they after these days? These days after what they have been after all that they have been after these days knowing what it takes to take away what little is left to go enough of a dusty way between a couple of dead trees separated by a neighborhood or two someone is annoying over there whispering about relationships formed out of people looking up at those awkward moments catching someone else's eyes looking up or over into that awkward moment made out of someone else's eyes that look as if you just exited the foulest stall.  I've told him once actually I didn't tell him what I saw the other night or some time in between me and her the one with the dress that the rough bench couldn't let go but the rest of the crowd could not plenty of ifs, ands, ors, and buts in their short sentences long on ire and wide on bumping in to her her ideas of the sky when it still had space for sounds from mouths before they became twisted into pretense and sham eventfulness.

"A $1.37 for your thoughts. I know I know it sounds steep but I get tired of the change sliding around in my night stand and it's not enough for a chocolate bar that'll melt before I get it in my mouth in this oven of a place I can't get out of or enough for a soda and the cost has gone up if you haven't noticed and I know you have noticed so fuck that I want to get rid of the change or I'll put the coins on your eyelids if my all ready shitty mood gets any worse."
"I was just looking at the ceiling at the ceiling tiles."
"I can see that. What were you thinking and I thought I told you to keep your eyes closed."
"My eyes burn if I keep them closed."
"How do you sleep?"
"Not very well. Plus I don't have to do anything."
"I am the one with the hair-cutting equipment."
"Isn't it over there by your mirror? I did ask for a shampoo? My head's in the sink right? This is the sink?"
"What makes you say that? How do you wake? With a stare? With a case on your mind with a staircase in your head? I'm hearing I'm hearing right now or was it sooner earlier than now when the world when the world was I have to close my eyes but I don't want you to slip out of my sight out of my vision statement don't pause don't slow down at least not too much and just enough to keep going so the end so the ending doesn't come off as a question. What was I saying? It went over my the front of my blouse under this uniform ripped my blouse on my day off got called in Janet was sick again like I was it went right over the front of my uniform over my breast where my breast used to be I have to close my eyes but I don't want you to slip out of my sight I'm hearing I'm hearing right now or was it sooner earlier than now when the world when the world was always an oven."
"I just wanted to know if my head is in the sink the back of my head it is a little wet but that could be due to you cutting me a little too closely as you are wont to do."
"You're the one talking about wanting to do whatever the hell he wants. Looking up at the ceiling your eyes moving in the L-shapes of a knight from one tile to the other. You can reject my stab in the dark all you want but you know and have even admitted it yourself that you've been hit right behind the ear lobe left one I think I know definitely behind the left ear lobe. When I was about 9 years old I was in a chess tournament they had it in the gym which was the cafeteria they had all the tables out and I think my board was even set up near where I had eaten and the stains from my lunch of salami with mustard the yellow splotches were still there and I was thinking all I was thinking about was getting rid of those yellow splotches couldn't get rid of my stupid moves I wanted to get rid of those yellow splotches."

A title credential doesn't
balance out anything
puts you in a tube
sliding down a rectal cavity
out into the world 
where it stops 
where you stop
until you realize
you have to get up  
and run and hide
stand in the shadows
by the window 
until the Sun comes out
to play with your competence
want to be back
she does he does
where they can pretend
they didn't fall in
stepped too close to the edge
of the machine's gaping ass
what a premium fracture
right down the middle of each
of your eyes
writing smaller with your looking
averting your cluelessness
from the space filled in
by their existence
again
washcloth too dry
to break up any sign
of my foolish being here


- Max Stoltenberg

Monday, September 7, 2015

OFF CAMPUS

Betting on nothing hold the barred degree of lack of excitement nothing on betting she can't hold her denim and it was used by some what do you call them him? them who have all the fucking everyone else the clouds spark in the night and your neighborhood your house seems to become so thin like all the rest of your life has done in your brain in your memory's asphyxiation like stretching the lips of a balloon or the way questions have always done to your own mouth drawn across the classroom and into that white screen where it rolled up over the top of the chalkboard over his balding head sweating with hatred for me and my diminishing friends.  Relax they tell her to relax and fuck that and that just doesn't work nothing works working all the time sleep becomes a large flat rock breaking away from the face of a larger rock leaning towards a dam. Nosing towards a hole in the clouds of dust mentioning the contingent and necessary mixing them up as this open mouth fills with miscalculations turning too early again going down that road this road looking at the same unfamiliarity over and over merging into the harsh live stream rippling with static the rats retreating between the alphabetized spinal columns all repeating after me not after me after themselves, "It isn't a problem. It isn't a problem," saying it through the glass filled with scrabble tiles or was it another game repeated after me repeated after them after them damn it after me fuck me. I can tell can't tell what have I been saying all this time? Can't understand a fucking thing they're saying all too well clear as a button down button up shirt with a coffee stain on about the size of a dead baby's footprint what a waste of coffee how can one remember which leg the shit rolled down under the cuff ankle warm in the embarrassed winter.

They had regretted taking the stairs half of them had regretted because she could never count on him to regret anything and that was just the way in the stairwell and very little was well in there depressed by memories a quarter of a dozen an eighth of a half dozen and many others that had struck her like tiny pieces of wall or some minuscule bugs several of them insects and many others that had struck her annoying thoughts that ricocheted inside and outside of her especially against her neck against her she was used to that not going down another flight calling down to him looking at the dark rectangle for a head his head of tangled greasy hair to continue orbiting the drain of the lower tract of their building not their building just a architectural cadaver that hadn't ruptured enough to expel them into the desert's artery gummed up with the excretions of the contemporary plazas of carcinogenic incorporations.  She leaned on the rail to apply her brakes always applied too late.

"We should have taken the dumb waiter instead."
"The damn what?"
"I didn't know it was called that. I could have sworn it was what my uncle told me it was."
"It smells like someone's microwaving popcorn."
"Burnt popcorn."
"My uncle didn't have a scrotum."
"I don't want to know how you found that out."
"He told me."
"I thought you were going to offer the usual my uncle took a nap on the rocks by the beach cover story."
"And then he showed me."
"Are you getting any closer to anything remotely like the first floor?"
"They burn popcorn in accounting don't they?"
"I thought it was in training where they had a constant reek of overcooked shit."
"That's the bouquet of singed muscle in training but I thought they were in the other tower."
"No wonder so many of us are out of compliance with the 17th floor bridge being damaged because they didn't want to cough up for maintenance."
"They still expect us to make it across with a third of the floor missing and their obsession with transcendence."
"I'm nodding off up here. Just come back and we'll try stairwell D, C, no D, D."
"Are you sure about that DD?"

"I knew a cashier at one of the gas stations where I used to live who told me about one of his mother's teachers who was known as Mrs. DD. Those were on her headstone, initials, DD was her initials."
"Headstone?"
"When I nod off I start to have the same dream of being in a cemetery where the headstones are close together moving in towards me like the cubicles we have upstairs."

Anxious head on a hot pillow worrying that it went through twice sucking out too much of what is left too soon before it is replenished replenished only with enough to make one sick in the stomach indigestion's heat fountains up into those thoughts that repeat locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked open to what crawls out of the desert like you like me made it across don't know what I was thinking to make it across the desert to here and now I always know what I am thinking over and over indigestion's heat fountains up into those thoughts that repeat locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked open to what crawls.

"Are you listening? I was telling you about the cemetery not the cemetery the cashier not the cashier his mother not his mother the headstones are you listening? Are you coming back like I told you? Like I asked you? Always wanting me to be so polite not draw anything towards me except those headstones but that wasn't what I was really wanting want to talk to you about what he wanted to talk to me about probably made it up what he was telling me that day I couldn't print out a receipt and I needed it to keep track make sure there was enough left enough left and there is always enough left and it keeps me so polite when I'm out so as not to draw anything towards me except those headstones and I scream when no one is around and my throat crackles stings as I fear a hand to pull me out of the house out of this box into the desert in the center of the circle of them turning myself around to come back to where they started to come back to the why won't you come back why aren't you listening are you coming back like I told you like I asked you always wanting me to be so polite not draw anything towards me except those headstones but that wasn't what I was really wanting want to talk to you about what he wanted to talk to me about probably made it up what he was telling me that day I couldn't print out a receipt and I needed it to keep track make sure there was enough left enough left and there is always enough left and it keeps me so polite when I'm out so as not to draw anything towards me except those headstones."


- Max Stoltenberg