Friday, January 29, 2016

DEPLETED GNAWING

And then they separated for good for worse for themselves for each other's other standing by the counter waiting for that fly to land far enough away to hit it with the swatter without letting it know they were each of them was swatting at the fly that had landed on all those piles that surrounded what was left of their neighborhood draped in dry avoidant eyes that looked at dimmer displays while the student attempted to swallow and didn't answer the question was never very good at answering questions or posing them never was and don't think that will ever get much of even a little better ask away and they or each of them or only one of them or neither of them will tell you withhold or still won't know how to consider a casual walking by a lumbering by as you get a sense of your internal organs stealing the sheets from each other.

Existence is a bad idea way past its expiration date. And the bugs all along were not the nuisances swatting at each other with our dots and dashes and blanks. Imagine nothing. The apartment reeked of the future tense sniffing for an earlier smearing of the interior design fiasco.  Stretch these hands and wait and wait for no one to show up only look over your shoulder yeah right wigs are strewn all over the road between closed stores smashed windows hidden behind trees emaciated by time by each of them playing around them.  Grinding grinding grinding grinding grinding.


- Max Stoltenberg

Monday, January 25, 2016

FITS AND STARTS

It starts with a title
It starts with a label
It starts with a question
It starts with a guess
It starts with a pun
It starts with a refrigerator magnet
It starts with a sliding ass to the floor
It starts with a blinking and twitching
It starts with a spill

It starts with an empty bin
It starts with a missing limb
It starts with a typo
It starts with a pause
It starts with a pass
It starts with an excuse
It starts with a cause
It starts with a just because I said so
It starts with and I didn't want to come today
It starts with a skipped line
It starts with not looking more carefully at my baggage that you took that you took for your own and you had to drag it across the carpet across the metal of the mechanical sidewalk  that ends at the missing tile in the ceiling opening onto a dark upper level where you will step very carefully not at all until you keep walking carefully around each other napkins there are napkins in my mouth who put them there who put them in my soupy next steps step very carefully not at all until you keep walking carefully around each other and put your lips on the refrigerator door and can't open the brown lettuce been there behind the magnet of the shape your state of mind is in until it tears itself away from that battery and starts over again and it starts
it starts with a familiar mistake
it starts with a pain in your fingers
it starts with that blankness working its way up into your aorta
it starts it starts it starts
it starts

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

DISMAL UNDERWIRES

They are watching this this is watching for where they are several weeks ago deflating the time bomb next to the oven stepped into it stuck to the bottom of this shoe-string budget not moving a muscle except when it escapes him and orbits around her navel a stagnant pool of excess trappings squeezed out of the peroxide analysis and she stares at you and stares at you and then asks no more questions marching up the stairs to the next expectation in getaway hideaway from no one because they are watching this this is watching for where they are several ago deflating the time bomb next to the reminder that clicks something in your jaw most of your jaw away from what you've neglected to do or think about unless you are attempting to fall asleep tried that one again.

She went to the store and couldn't find anything that had a color dark enough for her to find the abyss she rolled over into the other night and it led to the nightmare about the houses and the meteors and it went on for however long nodding off tormented her into thinking pretending she was away from the front, but she had slipped into the back where it was even more of the nonsense dripping through the ceiling over her pillow and into her ears slapping punctuating the irritants stuck between the lips chafed with his guff monster tilting the highway not very super twisting wringing out the cars straining out the have-nots.

They haven't been watching this this has not been watching them for wherever they are parades in traffic jams where the mezzanine spills out onto the courtroom floor black robes wigs and masks piled up for burning and no one has a match as they watch each other avoiding each other's eyes each other's whites of their eyes flashing along the wet curbs of the evening abbreviated by the tangles of extension cords and surge protectors asleep at the dead hamster wheel.


- Max Stoltenberg