Wednesday, June 29, 2016

FROM HER TO PEDALS

The dryer is vibrating into the ceiling making the sides of the jaw ache abnormal imbalanced unnoticed discrepancies scratching the insides of your stomach like a basketball of a sticky note drenched in bloody cheese curds adhering to the bottom of your brain forget about clearing your throat or anything else to catch your breath when everything else catches in your in-betweens. Came upon this and shame dries the offshoots your wasted existence hands left and right stretched out and making fists one open one closed one smacking into the other doesn't matter which why should it? and there continues or ends or begins the next spill the next sticky spill to clean up with a tissue or toilet paper looking at a menu if that is what it is going back over it the dream after all these decades and seeing the coloring book nothing has been touched by a crayon as of yet the diseased outlines faded copied stuck together pages pulled apart and letters words are missing and you look up at the mirror in the hotel room was it is that how was it how looking up at the mirror or right into it and seeing yourself missing like the words in the coloring book laying on the bed and mother is over in the corner what did she do because that is where your reflection ended up.

It is cloudy today and the heat still violates the holes that land nowhere but on your person who showed up late forgot again a rough couple of days sticky spills you know and worms slithering out of your thoughts about the air and how filled with disregard it is how that is how it is.

Permanent links to loosening knots tangles leaving out of disinterest or a brain just going bad in the box for too long forgotten it had been pushed further and further to the back of the box. Index finger about to tap a shoulder and wasn't sure if my mouth was covered when she turned around and looked like she had noticed me not for me mind you just in case I was talking to myself and I was how that is how it was with me just didn't know if she caught me talking with myself is that who I was speaking with this time this space of a few or several certainly several minutes vaccinated against anything novel or shorter than that and that how that is how it is.

Napkin dispensers litter the landscape if that is how they refer to it as a landscape a desert landscape scraped together or apart apart more like nothing to like about it a desert is a planet with shitloads of miles of mastectomies all quilted together accented with mountainous scars and she she had to do all the changing after performing and trying so hard not to smash the camera into a million pieces and grind them into his eyes of vileness is that how what is that what it takes to shut up the silence leaking into your head pressed up next to the rest of the void of the universe.

And she picked up the lollipop from the ground and looked at the ant that was barely moving stuck to the cracked candy tiny insect body bent as it was how as it was overhearing the older girls and the dresses and the purses and the lips dry with irritation sighing the is what it is knowing or pretending not to know how much the is is made of what it isn't. Douche-bags not far around the corner lurking in the light the stage light evaporating the latest question precipitating in a puff of complacency staring at the empty mirror hesitant to peek in the corner where is that where mother what did she do because that is where your reflection ended up. 


- Max Stoltenberg

Sunday, June 19, 2016

DIDN'T KNOW THE LIZARD HAD SHAT

She walked away from the car and contemplated the morning and evening only to come around to the afternoon when feeling a rock had gotten into her sandal she stood on one leg not for long as she lost her balance and thought of the mop next to the vacuum cleaner next to the chopstick one of the chopsticks that had fallen onto the floor next to the birthday card from last year the one she had told herself she would get rid of during that really shitty week quite more than all the other shitty weeks. 

She walked away from the wash and distracted herself from the thought of the noise the thought of the silence only to come around to the afternoon when noticing an anonymous message had gotten into her stream running down this leg of her journey looping around the wreath she swatted at covered in gnats someone had told her not to do that trying to remember when that was when someone had told her not to not to think so much about the noise about the silence and when she had first told herself not to think so much about what someone had told her not to do that trying to remember passwords or names or numbers or addresses as she walked away from the wash from the wreath of wire not covered in anything and distracted herself from the thought of the noise the thought of the silence the thought having to do with what she would be covered in eventually.

depressing hands it to her
changing shifts of repeating grunts
aging into sheets of spilled coffee
walking the dead dog 
over to the cliff
of his presumptions
her expectations always 
ended there
orange excuses for solutions
stirred into routines
accumulating into a pile
of fans clogged with thick
dust
where he returned his efforts
and she walked away
again
leaving the blame
where it belonged
and its smell tried to follow
vines of sarcasm knifing
memories and connections
puncturing her future


- Max Stoltenberg

Saturday, June 11, 2016

NO LONGER INTERESTED

Went down the stairs and to the sliding doors pulled the stick out of the track and put it on the bench where this ass would sit gradually slid the glass door with hand prints that catch the stare of the Sun until it blinks again with pollution walked without shoes over the rocks in the backyard this one had bigger ones sharper ones than the previous house that burned the smolder is still in my head moving from the middle further back with every scrape of forgetting stub one of the toes of the right foot beginning to climb the back wall could have gone out the front door wanted to do this way don't know if wanted is the word have always liked to do away with words haven't talked in days or weeks and yet there is still all the thinking envious of the cat read the eyes the whiskers of indifference muffled silence not bringing anything she said I left my notepad somewhere stopped showing up for sitting planes circle in the water within me as it evaporates as it all evaporates disrupting nothing for changing nothing heels dig in to the back of your neck digging in for another mesmerizing rehearsal of routine checks that bounce off the chest lungs fill with disgust no that's not it nothing is it not even despair watching people avoid death by watching it all day dragging their folding chairs closer to the precipice of involvement in the whatever of picking up an empty cup sticky bottle cracked plate greasy napkin and leaving them in the next room over the wall snapping your finger at the hot air what a what mismatch an asking myself what I could have done differently and yet and yet doing it in yet another different wrong way under the same heading that keeps all the weight of the abyss of the universe from crashing down on your sweating head taking nothing with you as you jump down to the sidewalk on the other side of the backyard wall back on the street as the cells of the neighborhood pass by behind you as you drift off into the point that never vanishes the walls the houses the landscaping the drains that pretend not to imitate each other or maybe they are so proudly so pathetically feet burn as the sidewalk turns to crickets turns to dirt and weeds stretching for miles between addresses clearing the throat no heads to look with misunderstanding with eagerness to stick their interpretation into your eye sockets until your head leaks with ribbed ego condoms sticking out of your passages tickled by the deadness of outside where you and everyone else took it out on that until it ceased to look back with anything only walking on the bottom of the dry tub of existence looking for the next hole to drop down and land you never keep falling just roll over and onto the floor of some department called the following day when you went down the stairs Went down the stairs and to the sliding doors pulled the stick out of the track and put it on the bench where this ass would sit slid the glass with hand prints that catch the stare of the Sun until it blinks again with pollution walked without shoes over the rocks in the backyard this one had bigger ones sharper ones than the previous house that burned the smolder is still in my head moving from the middle further back with every scrape of forgetting stub one of the toes of the right foot beginning to climb the back wall could have gone out the front door wanted to do this way don't know if wanted is the word have always liked to do away with words haven't talked in days or weeks and yet there is still all the thinking envious of the cat read the eyes the whiskers of indifference muffled silence not bringing anything she said I left my notepad somewhere stopped showing up for sitting planes circle in the water within me as it evaporates as it all evaporates disrupting nothing for changing nothing heels dig in to the back of your neck digging in for another mesmerizing rehearsal of routine checks that bounce off the chest lungs fill with disgust no that's not it nothing is it not even despair watching people avoid death by watching it all day dragging their folding chairs closer to the precipice of involvement in the whatever of picking up an empty cup sticky bottle cracked plate greasy napkin and leaving them in the next room over the wall snapping your finger at the hot air what a what mismatch an asking myself what I could have done differently and yet and yet doing it in yet another different wrong way under the same heading that keeps all the weight of the abyss of the universe from crashing down on your sweating head taking nothing with you as you jump down to the sidewalk on the other side of the backyard wall back on the street as the cells of the neighborhood pass by behind you as you drift off into the point that never vanishes the walls the houses the landscaping the drains that pretend not to imitate each other or maybe they are so proudly so pathetically feet burn as the sidewalk turns to crickets turns to dirt and weeds stretching for miles.


- Max Stoltenberg