Monday, October 31, 2016

TALE BETWEEN HIS LEGS

He stored his memories her memories in a pot in the cabinet in the loft that had become overrun with ants and crickets and not the kind that spoke or played fiddles just the ones that now stopped removing their dead what was the point at this point? Fortitude was a word that they almost spelled with their piles of filth they made out of their bodies climbing over each other as they gently ran out of room as they gently overran the unvacuumed loft as they gently made their entrances over and over again like shit gently leaving a crack.

She stored her memories his memories in a loaf of bread that had gone bad dreams and promises had deteriorated in the one day at a time advice of others who had moved away without giving without getting the fly-swatter dropping the tray in the desert left a bone on the clipboard no one to find it amusing whether there was someone or not reading the answers mesmerized by the clenched jaw and how it reminded her of the dent in the world moving away was less and less possible every year as the dent took its toll on the bridge tilting in her attention away from numbers and what they represent to others not her not her.

Crap came up again
Blended to the music
silent for the whispered hum
tired of weddings
tired of parties
tired of selling
being sold to at the openings
of doors and closing
of thoughts of black trees
have you seen them
next to that house 
the one where something
went wrong
or the other thing 
depending on how
you avoid looking at it
nests of wipers
ass-wipers penetrating dialogue
just between acquaintances
bumping into each other
never thought of that
what she wanted
she never thought of that
no one ever asked her
before
triple take 
slowed down
into a story
that drags into 
the roots of those
weeds that won't die

"I shook out my skirt and guess what came out of it this time?" she asked.
"A banana peel?" he answered trying not to pick his nose as he peeled some crust from the edge of his right nostril feeling the red stinging skin surface exposed and the tangled string of snot that begin to pull from inside his brain.
"In addition to that you aberration," she posed and she posed like someone who had given up caring many spoiled leftovers ago.
"Can you narrow it down a bit by category?" he asked clearing the phlegm into an interlude that reminded him of a wash he had wandered into ages back when he was less ill and less connected, "Ah the contagions of being more connected!" he blurted out suddenly.
"It's your grimy wash fixation emerging yet again," she said distracted.
"ToupĂ©e, my pet tarantula!" ejaculated he who had had no reason nor anything resembling any reason since the weekends preceding the massive barren dunes overwhelming all the housing associations. 
"Is my wig slipping off again?" she asked putting her hand to her head and contemplating the rubbing of her belly. 
"I'm rather fond of the purple one," he mused fondly reminiscing when he told himself that fiction about her being all those fictions.

She stored her memories his memories in a loaf of bread that had gone bad dreams and promises had deteriorated in the one day at a time advice of others who had moved away without giving without getting the fly-swatter dropping the tray in the desert left a bone on the clipboard no one to find it amusing whether there was someone or not reading the answers mesmerized by the clenched jaw and how it reminded her of the dent in the world moving away was less and less possible every year as the dent took its toll on the bridge tilting in her attention away from numbers and what they represent to others not her not her.


- Max Stoltenberg


Tuesday, October 18, 2016

MASK CONFUSION

The face outside the library was the kind that is abstractly unwelcoming nothing of the sort that could be called or referred to as kind only of a category that keeps you biting your nails and peeling your skin away to the superficial layer clinging to the poles in the ground arched back filling with the wind underneath as the dying trees around are quiet with the arid pause that the abyss over everything below refuses to let its filthy paw off the button. The shoes left behind on the hardening feet petrified with steps in a direction that led to helping no one but a scarecrow arching its back over the wind underneath as the dying trees were quiet in the arid pause maintained by the abyss above and its contemptuous and smothering hand. 

When I'm nodding off into the in-between words mouth bent in on itself or the stomach ceiling mind perhaps it is called by the castle wall castle he dropped out the back of his expression his nerves caught in the zipper plastic lips that won't fit around the moldy bread looks like someone put their cigarettes out in it or exhaled their polluted lungs into what was left of that loaf rolled over onto a flattened child covered in two-dimensional bugs sitting beneath the window without glass turn your sweaty head and notice all the piles of books crumpled in front of the library out on the side actually on her side actually as her arm swells as the rest of her body shrivels up due to overdue fees with no one to collect so they say so they thought to say until they showed up on their doorstep laying there dead legs gone pants off no pants must be with the legs might there be kids swinging them legs around pants flapping like a smelly flag.

"It's an empty snow globe is what it is."
"You're still going to have to talk to her."
"That's what happens to snow globes in the desert."
"That's what happens to snow globes in the desert when you throw them against a boulder."
"She's going to spit in my face."
"You think?"
"When I go and talk to her. That's what she's going to do and so I'm putting it off or see if I can starve myself to death."
"You've been doing that. It's just taking longer than you expected than she expected and spit in your face is what will happen next from her to you."
"You need to have a heart attack right now or within the next 6 seconds."
"Why 6? Why couldn't you just pick 5 seconds or 3 seconds maybe better?"
"Right now then heart attack in your chest erupting with death."
"We're dormant my dear fragile shithead."
"It could be her mouth has gotten too dry."
"She's been clearing her throat all morning. I've heard it. Pretty fucking obvious. She's been sick. It'll be mostly phlegm from her to you."
"From her to me."

Cut too many blinds
posted a secret in the tissues
red with dark bleeding
noticeable frankness
this time
for children of stuffed animals
of spilled drinks of allergic reactions
to horns wet with notes
incorrectly scored
dreamed about her
and now she decided
to leave


- Max Stoltenberg

Saturday, October 1, 2016

WHAT KIND OF FISH IS THAT?

Are you going to reply and waste your breath or hold it as your mind squints for what to say what to avoid pleasures are elusive distractions at this point this bloody point sleeping in a puddle of your woeful tangled dreams faces without mouths or eyes that swallow you and slide you out through the bottom of the toilet back into your bed sleeping in a puddle of your inadequate reaching for something to die at the hands of your breath or hold it as your mind squints for what to say what to avoid punishments so accessible staring focused at this point this bloody point. Leave the message delete the message leave it and try just try to leave them pushed to the side as you look ahead and ejaculate through their eyes that spit you out up through the elevator stumbling out onto the puddle of coffee on your desk stroked by notes spread out so you can keep both your hands on the feet of a job blown up into lists falling as the dark rain of the shit-storm around you around and around the calendar's shaft flipping pages flipping you off to the coffin's putting a lid on it.

"Are you going to say anything?"
"About what?"
"You weren't going to say anything. You were going to pretend or wait for me to do something about it."
"It? Now they're an it?"
"Don't give me your feigned advocacy. You don't give a shit is what it is."
"I give a lot less of a shit is what it is. You'd rather argue than doing something yourself."
"You're the one not doing something. And you just admitted to why. Waiting for me to do something because I give a shit. Waiting waiting for me."
"Making me wait while you'd rather argue. You'd rather argue while you make we wait for you to do something something about the elephant in the room."
"So now it's an elephant?"
"Back to an it again?"
"Yes, an it in the room."
"Who said it's a room?"
"You did."
"I was mistaken."
"You were mistaken?"
"Mistaken about this mistaken about that mistaken about coming here mistaken about leaving there."
"Leaving where?"
"The hole that leads back up into the nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The nothing but quivering worry." 
"How long have they been slumped over like that?"
"I don't know. Since their last words I guess."
"And what do you suppose they were?"
"She was saying she had a surprise for when she got home."
"Home? That was no home for her. What did she say?"
"She said I have a surprise for you."
"That's it?"
"She said I have a surprise for you asshole."
"That's it?"
"That's it."

Helmets of hair
Helmets of stickers
Hashtags caught in the crosshairs
And now for something 
across the water 
to the drummer
under the branches
pages read through waste
floating over the top
over the top
they were


- Max Stoltenberg