TAKE ME OUT

Take take me take me out take me out of this take me out of this game take me out of this trap take me out of this pit take me out of this cubicle filled with desert take me out of this not because I fucked up take me out not because I care take me out not because I'm nearer the end take me out because I don't make a difference take me out because I don't give a shit take me out because I'm closer to the middle take me out and put me in the corner take me out I'm not getting it take me out I got it take me out I knew all along take me out as a little boy take me out to a field and shoot me in the head take me and bash my brains in with a long rifle take me out and let me fall to the bottom of the fields take me out where the hard ground meets the pain bursting around my insides take me out as the sound of the shot twists into my closing lids take me out the plastic ones don't fit take me out never did take me out after they warp take me out too late after returning take me out what journey take me out itinerary stuck as a plug into the leaking crack of a tire take me out.


- Max Stoltenberg

NOTHING SAYS

She signed her name and looked at it for as long as she could until they took the paper away and promised to get them a copy as they stood up and put down their reading glasses and left her alone in the office staring at a desk bare and empty after the paper had been taken away and they shut the door behind them behind her and she listened for their footsteps fading into some copier room somewhere in the suite sticky with expectations and bursting with silent gaps inflated into erect vegetables slumping in the corners of his associations ready to be fired at her just poised for interruption to prevent her from speaking her what was it again? Questions disguised as window cleaner you know to make the world a spotless puzzle until the edges of the pieces begin to wear away into what the wall has become where the commode lid rubs against the back of your mind. 

Get up get up fight sleep sleep fight with the conversation with yourself that used to be with someone else who had the last word which reverberates along the banks of your wheezing sickness called a job employed to listen to people trying to look better or worse than they really are flat-lining skeletons coated with shit and pushed about by gas the existence that got away from the void.

Fragment of an Idea #178

Sleep Fight:

A series of 5 or 2 minute-long vignettes of combinations of professions paired off and tied to mattresses of varying degrees of discomfort and are threatened with their choice of a six-figure penalty to the wallet, a three-pronged spear to the chest, or a double-sided steel brush to the face to fight in their sleep. Proposed matches for the first season would be between "You'll never amount to anything" vs. "Everything that craps out of your mouth depresses me"; "Take this expression and simplify it to the sharpest point that will cause you the most harm" vs. "Say not what I throw away, but do what comes out of my ass"; and "You'll have to start completely over" vs. "Go to the end of the line." Have a feeling it will be renewed for another season. 

I Am the Decomposer

took away the lines
for notes to drop
to the basement of her 
sourness brought on
by his selfishness
took away the words
left out the voice
to go up or down
forgot the beginning and the end
neglected the middle
I am the decomposer
chipping away at empty
fictions on the rack
her feet fall off the bottom
toes the diving boards
into bloody pools
of repressed abortions
for those to ooze with life
and fuck it all up
yellow teeth
gnawing on conjunctions
and the tangles and knots
remaining in the folds
of the ambivalent


- Max Stoltenberg