Monday, May 30, 2016

FORGET THE DRAFT

Left it beginning behind the couch in front of the screen in the screen digging at it with these nails wrong nails and the toolbox grinning and bearing it alone in the garage where I am when I get lost in responsibility or pretending to be responsible and its supplies of phrases and bending of the knees and walking they call it moving they call it showing up for shit they call it shit they call it happening they vomit it out of their brains the backs of their brains in the form of growing hair and lengthening fashion that spreads its shapely deformities all over the world seeping into the cracks of the likes of us clicking and licking each other's clicks and licks and rummaging about in photoshopped stains and haphazard exchanges within one's one's whatever the hell this is superstitions stuck between your moments of contributing whatever the hell this is and picking at it with wooden sticks until the gums of your reflections bleed with sighs of disbelief at all the things your mind keeps crashing into hitting itself against the wall of nightmarish fantasy naked and spit upon lubed for repetition even though you left it beginning behind the couch.

"Put it down."
"I can't think of another insult."
"That's not what I meant and yes you could. I meant physically."
"As if my insults my the put downs the metaphors had nothing to do with the physical world this narrow entrapment of being here fuck."
"I'll put it down before you spill it."
"Don't touch it don't touch me and there's nothing left to spill sucked it all back into its solid dry orifice with the slurp of absorption."
"Least favorite number."
"The process has done another number on you has it?"
"No what's your least favorite number?"
"87."
"What don't you like about 87?"
"I just don't like it."
"My daughter fairly loathed multiples of 25."
"I didn't know you had a daughter."
"25, 50, 75, 100, she especially didn't like 125 and she would get quite cross if you asked her about it to explain it I mean."

(They sat in a row as if on a plane indicated by backpacks for falling down and paper bags for throwing up. In a row they sat as if in a desert which they were the three of them as if one of them died which they had).

"I'm still waiting."
"For me to move them?"
"To start soaking their sleeping bag with blood or something as they rot."
"They were really to themselves rather tight lipped so much so I don't think we're going to see much of anything."
"I've stopped breathing."
"What? You, too? Is it contagious?"
"Not permanently. I think I've been putting forth an effort to time my inhales."
"I'll just go on feigning to relate to anything you continue to relate to me."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I value my insomnia."

Swords in my stomach
twisting and nagging
turning me over in my bed
yanking on the sheets of mediocrity
searching for faces, clothing
when there was a time
for waiting in line
before we got out
to what lied dead
to what lied to us
in the desert
however you say
however they said it
purchased it before
a place to call our own 
grave


- Max Stoltenberg

Sunday, May 15, 2016

CORRIDOR INCINERATOR

Person thing that you passed by and pretended to ignore that is what they told you after you sat in the lobby that smelled of waiting and boredom reeking with being put off for more important more strident complaints don't say another word answer me and remember to be specific and really try this time not to repeat yourself or had all those extra things in on the tail dragging behind you leaving such a putrid brownish mess where you've been and once you've read over it make damn sure to erase almost all of it and speak to someone before you decide to quit I mean are you sure are you really certain and you and I both know how ambivalent you not only can be but how your mind just drops down the elevator shafts of both arms split into a collapse of binocular fashion vision depleted of any effort you worthless scum of the planet as it floats out there here bastard to come back another day to be obliterated or not by some meteor some object of interest filed aside swiftly with an ignorance you cannot seem to muster for any other more useful occasion playing and losing at pretend succeeding in only deceiving yourself sometimes you fall into the front row seat and look up blinking the stage-lights out of your skull cracking with a desire for stars but pay attention better attention to this direction rubbing your nose against the wall making a line of blood as you pass the person thing that you pass and pretend to ignore poorly.

What was I thinking when it crossed my mind the lives and the confusion word games and detours slicing my face in two with the sharp edges of its signs I have half a mind I mean half of that even it's what I started with only recall back to the crib filled with dead birds dropping out of the ceiling or through the window clouded with dry smoke and regret before I had done much stalling still stalling and who the fuck cares what was I thinking when it got knocked over by my reach fingers conspiring against the muscles tied together with string knotted into loops little people better off never coming out from the blankets of their nightmares the one where the apartment complex was underwater and little arms tried to make their way up into dry smoke that led up into a narrow throat getting stuck under a filthy staircase and its peeling paint of hopelessness floating up instead.


- Max Stoltenberg

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

SILENT LETTERS

Dear F,

Last August was it? or July? or April was it? A couple of years give or take a life yours or mine can really fly with a motorcycle down that road now we're going down that one I guess, but before I do go down again this time which would be the let me think and I remember how you have always told me that was a dangerous thing to do. Imagine a thing doing that what was from before or after we tried that had too many of those chips and besides all the time in the bathroom there was all the coughing and choking and cutting my right hand on the razor wire that brochure had blown into the fence not out of my hands mind you from some other hands cut one of them on the razor wire trying to pluck out that brochure with the picture of hair green or yellow with that body growing out from under it with that sneer registering for not for it was registering that look of confusion you know the one where nothing registers no not a one signed up or showed up just an empty hallway not even a hallway just the desert that same blank stare of the planet indifferent towards you or whatever the hell we think we're doing. So let that be a lesson or one of those unteachable moments of which I have made sure to be a part of most of my life and see your way clear to return it when you're done with it done as in after the first 5 minutes after I gave it to you just leave it out behind your house far behind your house where the tracks are just leave it on one of the rails and if there is still a train that runs somewhere and makes its way out by you and the wind continues to never pick up again it'll just get cut in half or close to half.

signed

H


Dear H,

I am beginning to realize again or keep realizing just less often even with not as much to drink that the only difference between you and me is that pronouns tend to pop up in the oddest places in what shits out of your mind and the damned grammatical particles tend to fall between the cracks in my mostly gas induced utterances come to think of it I do do a little of both which would mean that this only difference has suddenly dropped out the window and landed on who the hell knows what, but whatever the fuck you think you've gifted me with or tried to rid yourself of more likely I haven't the faintest only that I almost fainted last week or only a few hours ago it's hard to tell where I begin and where the mess on my desk ends or where to begin in ending this or ending it all all I do know is that I keep seeing wrists sinking in the water and then it gets harder to seem them through the clouds coming out of them colored with the soggiest of yarn. I thought there was a question in there somewhere and then the only one was that are you sure you want to quit and now it's like you wish that question never even was there you could just press delete or why did there have to be a button fans just swish the invisible around in the stinking mouth of it is what it is.


signed

f