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Crappy buffering eyes glaze over as you stare at the line thickening and narrowing on the frozen image of the kitchen where some of it may have gotten on the dining room table with the warped leaves that can never be pushed close enough together why reminisce about her now you can only see your rotting toenails through the gap pantry chicken noodle how do you know what you're saying hasn't been ripped off from someone else who ripped it off from someone else who ripped it off the back collar of a sweater unraveling arguments nobody too many just grunt their agreement and if that wasn't enough try to the salsa on second thought slid in their somewhere between left the door open and where's the fly swatter don't try it could have sworn there was a dark mass could have sworn.
"What are you doing now?"
"I'm almost done."
"With what?"
"It doesn't matter."
"You've been almost done for half an hour now."
"It hasn't been that long."
"Touched down on an alien surface. I'm rubbing the window to get a better look."
"Now is not the time to shit I mean shift into another of your space adventures."
"You're right. It's past time to shit. I think I've come upon some abandoned village."
"Do they have a snack machine?"
"Don't be impertinent."
"Don't be presumptuous of their lack of development."
"Look who's talking."
"I've been on the other side of this door long enough for you to forget how I even look."
"I gave it my best shot."
"Just open the door."
"Wouldn't you like that?"
"Stop standing -"
"Sitting."
"Stop sitting in the way of my movements."
"It must be frustrating to have to acknowledge other people's compositions."
"Only when they're slow and long."
"Time."
"You certainly have wasted mine."
"I was going to say something, but the formulation of it crumbled apart in my head."
"Will you flush already?"
"Already he says. You haven't been listening obviously. I don't want there to be an overflowing."
"Save it for your therapist."
"You mean the corpse I stumbled over in those ruins I explored several seasons ago?"
"Seasons? When was the last time we had a season?"
"When I stumbled over the corpse that looked like the voice who asked me questions as I lay there in the dimly lit room. Now it lays there in those ruins."
How can I reply to your reply
To a request to return everything
They just weren't interested enough
Now that there are no other children
Except the ones in their ears
Watching and watching
Listening and listening
Dulled by the rainbow
Brick by brick by brick
Painted with burnt flesh
Leaking into a can
filled with ashes
- Max Stoltenberg
The road zigs and zags thinking about remote toothbrush policies while laying on one's side gripping the coffee table going for a ride that goes nowhere much past the spot stuck in your mind your pencil your penciled in appointment with discouragement an apprentice for the heart-puncture expert made that made that a priority for bone pain supplements for a sink a sinking feeling in the ankles how low can you go toward the commercial between episodes of depressed assignments handing in footnotes or footing the handwritten notes a small stack of coins sliding around in your night-table drawer open and shut until silent caught in a mass of wires put them in there sometime ago.
The road zigs and zags thinking about remote nausea becoming more local and pushing up against the diaphragm a hoax a breaking of bread tissue falling into the aisle on the plane a string probably hanging down from your nose and it would suffice for another moment in one's life not even a string of snot, but a string that got stuck in your snot the rest of everything else's contempt for your existence.
"Mental."
"Fundamental."
"I don't think any amount contributed will make a difference."
"Has anyone come up?"
"Has anyone come down?"
"We've been here."
"In this stairwell."
"For perhaps an hour?"
"For perhaps more like a day?"
"For perhaps an hour past a day?"
"I've passed just past a day in here with you?"
"You've passed more than just that."
"I've neglected to tell you about the two procedures when I had trouble doing that."
"Neglected?"
"I overlook things."
"For worse or even worse than that."
"Your complaint went by the wayside."
"What complaint?"
"The moment I met you."
"Turn it down."
"Turn down what?"
"What you're thinking about me."
"You know I try."
"You do. I wish you would turn down the endearing shit. Gets on my nerves."
Forensics for a season
a lapsed animal's cavity
of your choice
polyvalent window dressing
to occupy the empty peel
on the floor thought it moved
as the room gets darker
can't locate anything
talk about it
amongst yourselves
with your mouths shut
as the room
fills with the insects
of your thoughts
an apprentice for the heart-puncture expert made that made that a priority for bone pain supplements for a sink a sinking feeling in the ankles how low can you go toward the commercial between episodes of depressed assignments handing in footnotes or footing the handwritten notes a small stack of coins sliding around in your night-table drawer open and shut until silent caught in a mass of wires put them in there sometime ago.
- Max Stoltenberg
Needling me needling you
Bridled conversations
lost on capsized pantries
weevils in the cereal
nonsense between your punctuation
depressing expectations
fan doesn't work
stop flicking the fucking switch
sure, don't listen to me
when have you ever started?
there's a pallbearer
an undertaker for your grandmother's
hand more purple splotches
like thin islands
above dormant vents
things sentences unfinished
no one stops me
no one stops me
- Max Stoltenberg
Inside an eyeglass case the coffin for the day dark with diseases and tripping over cadavers honey on genitals mixed with wasted time staring at images of curves sliced into many moments lost an ass of our times making hollow promises and that is what makes them so inviting until the shit down below has made its way up to the third floor we are moving into the attic surrounded by bad ideas discarded and less uneventful passages that provided friction over more sensitive patches wired for silence hushed by driving into the sunlight when you and your car have truly confirmed being under a magnifying glass.
She said, "He came."
The other she said, "I didn't want to know that."
She said, "Crashing down."
The other she said, "And you were just going to keep this to yourself?"
She said, "Until you asked that question."
The other she said, "I think what you mean is the question you asked yourself."
She said, "Isn't this supposed to be about what I say it means to me?"
The other she said, "You dreamed about going to the desert because you went to the desert."
She said, "It was a swamp."
The other she said, "I thought it was a desert."
She said, "Then it dries out and becomes a desert."
The other she said, "Everything in your life dries out."
She said, "I mean it was a desert, but it still looked swamp-like. I don't know what I mean."
Time for picking up the backyard
what the dog left behind
the birds, the bugs
and their shit
like out of place punctuation
not so out of place
hemming and neglecting
a life half-done
almost completely over
much more to go
balloon air escaping
much slower than expected
obligatory speech
the thoughts in your head
leaking out until
the skull and the grave
catch up with each other
- Max Stoltenberg
It's cool I mean it's hot it's neat I mean it's dirty bathtub on the runway bloody feet pumping the brakes and tipping over the empty china closet that's what was back there awakened somewhat call it tomorrow the moment if it pleases you if it drops you down into a more natural tone of doubt spitting out crickets crossing the street slowly in the heat the kind that makes the top of your head itch a neurotic static like that and not like that more like the muttering of dislike under his tooth beneath his regret and right eye.
"What would you prefer to kill me with?"
"You're putting me on the spot again."
"I have reason to believe you'll hit your mark."
"Or you."
"Or me."
"Do you imagine the same thing is taking place on the cellular level?"
"Two cracked and peeling doormats miniaturized and injected into some poor bastard's arm and wading up to their testicles through some mitochondrial jelly sent there by some administrative assistant whose name eludes me."
"Unfortunately, not enough words elude you."
"Unfortunate for you."
"Unfortunate for me. A wasted lamp wearing a head for a hat."
"Skirtless infiltrator that I am."
"Pass the stencil."
"All I have is my finger."
"You did shuffle along as you drew your line in the desert the other day."
"The other day."
"I wandered accompanied as a pest unhinged death-rolling about in a bed of twine."
"Here we go."
"You mean I mean here I go. Don't give me that here we go nonsense!"
"It's your nonsense. Have at it and flail to your cholesterol's overweaning fucking pride."
"Fucking pride. I attempted it in an alley once no twice maybe even a fifth occasion, but the emaciated thing felt like it was going to crack in half or even more invisible to the eye subdivisions. Crumbs if you will."
"I have no will. An imbalanced vat of soup scum. I remember when I was in school and had tried to eat a cup of soup my stepmother had put in my lunch. There was some mass I felt and choked it down to get it over with. That's how I've always been. Never one to spit anything out always swallow to get it over with. Not even a choking more like it's some manner of centipede propelling itself down the slimy dull red gullet. And then the waiting for the acids to simmer and burn as this mass grows demonic wire brushes abrading its way to my sphincter, but postponing its exit like mucus in the back of a nostril. A comparison that comes close would be the only one in my life I ever tried to kiss a year or two prior on the bus and our mouths failed about each other like orifices forced open beyond their capacity fissuring with the thwarted attempts at escape of our miserable parasites."
Love no drainage
from the amputated memories
our images just valves
blocked with blood clots
nurturing our darkness
chafing it under the blankets
stained with sweat and despair
coupled like conjoined roaches
brought together by a coercive faith
what cut you out from the beginning
somewhere along the way
the brittle lip of sarcasm
coalescing into beads of resentment
as the beginning stretches
across the insatiable chasm
- Max Stoltenberg
Half-assed he looked for the fish food that should have been next to the jar empty from years of forgetting to refill the beans marbles jellybeans jolly-ranchers allergy medicine more like a sixteenth of an ass past tense he had pulled a muscle from avoiding exertion no pants fit right just to rub it in kneading the fleshy memories in his body of how often he fucked up his re-entry into any social group society of the Earth's atmosphere a turbid cloud adorning his sardonic baggage obscuring his confusion. The worst years of their lives scorched by proverbs combined with oracular ventings penetrating clouds of compact slipped discs scratched over mountains of salt rather small mountains with their faces shaved and bolted together pins using people of common interests an affinity of insecurities.
"As a wise person once said, Make sure you leave it in park."
"Which reminds me of a quote I once heard."
"I don't want to hear it."
"How unlike you."
"You and your sarcasm can drive into a brick wall and then have your vehicle put in a car crusher."
"I wasn't being sarcastic. It struck me as uncharacteristic of you wanting to hear any quote not from your own dank cellar."
"I said I don't want to hear it."
"Your don't sounded like do."
"I'll wager that never worked on your mother."
"My father never appreciated my poor hearing."
"Until his own began to wither, eh?"
"It did work on my mother, though."
I wanted to be your book
So I could be in your hands
You push through being tired
Keeping your last light on for me
Until I see your red eyes
reading me
close me fold me
shut me down
turn out the last light
all the pushing you have done
exhaustion is the gravity of the void
"Are you dense?"
"I've put on quite a bit."
"And not in the way of knowledge."
"There has been some."
"An announcement a selfish meandering looking at the blinds and stopping her from opening them when she wants to see the lightning outside ignoring the flashes inside your sockets the madness the madness games."
"Just because it's alphabetical doesn't mean that's how I want to look for what I don't have or sit next to those who take what I thought was mine."
Repetition and the past will always be the most popular fads for going out of style like a ferris-wheel spinning off the dock into the ocean and the tide goes out. Talking to each other while applying hand-gel is singing extremely slowly to deny we are in a soap opera. Afraid of catching something while wading through this immense toilet swimming in each other's waste as fish in a tank a very dry tank putting on airs wrapped around a bulging globe of anxiety cellophaned in breathing exercises.
- Max Stoltenberg
Listening to the absence of rain
Ignoring the hot wind
Unsuccessful a middle name
shared by many
Potatoes muddy to the touch
Trying to apply so little pressure
to so much absurd vanity
do away with mirrors
and then
each other
another apocalypse come and gone
is that what that was
was it
put it down
to excessive time
for plans dented with human thought
- Max Stoltenberg
And then it struck 14 was that the number the next number from the way her hair fell or shined not from the light but from the dark the dark things time and others had done snails stay in until it's wet again and we stay in until it's dry again when we know how much we need water tastes less bland when you get older or really close to death and then you wake the fuck up the next day with a dry mouth and a wet pillow. He went about his business under the auspices of someone else's chummy volunteering you to life's dead ends that make the back of your head collide with the foot of your eyes like the sound of a chair dragged across tile. Walking on eggshell white noise perhaps it was bound to re-emerge and the little thin man in the light brown shoes bringing persuasion into it again like it's some kind of way to grab one's attention one's side one's way of looking at things and finding a part of you was next door all along and coming back coming in between knees all caps has become your type of defense your method of argument now when auditioning for a more laid-back approach is something you can take off your list was it ever there to begin with with the wrong person you know the one inside of you go back go back to the corner and wait for the car with the windows rolled down and the faces and their big eyes that shout at you as you shake and twist yourself into a shape that acts like nothing startled you until when they want you to act like you weren't expecting anything lowered that bar many ages ago not that long, but you know or are very good at acting like you didn't know or just that kind of whatever leaving the front door far behind and the expanse of nothing the clutter from ear to ear.
- Max Stoltenberg
Making for the distraction almost there stuck to concentration on the dark spot on the carpet that time you watched the man put his foot in it the one wearing the blue dark blue shirt like the shirt you have you wore when it was you who stepped into it. The chase to get the bus before the light changes as the dark clouds break up and the Sun on her face those eyes blinking as she finds it harder for herself to breathe. The building is paying no attention even though he wants it to look at him and know about his reservations regarding missing dinner for as long as he was in the barren expanse that grew between work and the place where he was evicted no he just forgot where he lived and the time expected to clock in got a little longer that day.
to the tollbooth
close your mouth
the doubts still banging on the door
inside your head
close that as well
long time ago it was
needle threaded and the street
is slanting towards my anxiety
over the limit
burning in my stomach
blankets sticking to human food
left over night
going bad
and still chewed on
sheltered by their intestines
passing through never passing
just passing through
- Max Stoltenberg
She held the crumpled up water bottle caked with dirt and other decay like the steering wheel of a car she might never have had who knew who asked who cared? Who bothered? Many bothered bothered her, but not about anything pertaining to her travels and her many imprisonments her pauses her stucknesses the reasoning of those who bothered her those who never bothered about anything else pertaining to her only to their appetite for appetites.
Where did she imagine she was going or doing or where she thought she was? A ruined village that was more underneath the Earth or elsewhere she was reaching somewhere the point where she wouldn't have to know if she was going again. Skin had its way for others to have theirs and with it being broken so many times you'd think it would reach that point but it always knows when the rest of it all slithers nearby around the cracked toilet of someone's mind.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"I thought you've been sick for some time."
"I have just I'm going to be really sick."
"Then say really sick why don't you? I mean really."
"Do you? Really? Seeing to it that you overuse terms doesn't make you the measure of sincerity."
"Bend over."
"I was thinking about that not that vomiting."
"I was recommending it for both."
"I could turn around and throw up on you and watch if any industrial acid burns a crater into your crotch."
"Zombie fantasy #116?"
"#86. I'm still counting on my next diabetic seizure to take me out before I get into the triple digits, but with this heat, I think I'm too late for that."
Fracture and terse
menagerie of affairs
cognitive extinctions
within the enclosures of your skull
citations slice the tongue
taste is lost in a red sea
of forgetfulness and monotony
from study to anecdote
alternating opportunism
clothes become coffins
in the unpaved morgue
- Max Stoltenberg
Abnormal neck pulsing between breaths all through the breath really surreally so informal taking your time and pissing it away not as how should we say it put it? not as streamlined as before along the lines of flaccid arcs dripping down into the holes spluttering against the plastic before leaking into the holes wandering to the edge in a stream of consciousness along the lines of flaccid arcs dripping down sweat burning a head one is beginning at the nearly finished to believe has never been clear a dream given up on broken promises disillusioned so that's what was in my eye all this pissed away time.
"You should do a better job of checking your sources."
"I'd say I'd keep that in mind, but that's all my brain's been clogged with."
"You'd think you'd learn by now, but you even make matters worse by deleting your posts."
"I'm getting it. I'm just deleting myself."
"Nothing to be spun."
"My spectacles are cleaner than I thought. There's a smear in the air."
"A proctologist and a fan walked into a bar."
"I've heard this one, no wait the proctologist walked in with a follower or the appliance?"
"They were wearing appliances."
"You sure it wasn't an orthodontist?"
"I'm certain. The fixtures were in their other hole."
"Walking arm in arm?"
"Brazen as the day is skid-marked."
"I've heard that one."
"Relentless bastard."
"A blender and a surgeon were riding one of those bicycles with the extra seats."
"Are you referring to spawning families with additional women or the fish?"
"Did you think I said sturgeon? Your ears must be filled after that last dust storm we had."
"A moment of weakness when that last one whirled through here. I considered asking for wishes. I forget how many one gets like it really matters. Weakness it was. Did look like quite a dervish escaping the desert although it just faded blended into this infernal nether just imagined what it might be like to see something anything escaping."
"We've discussed this imagining business."
"Business there was a lot of that getting stuck in my eye."
Two minds of two
associations on both sides
separated by an axis
a fence threaded with razors
chills and scorching
stumbling under the bright sun
clearing one's throat
and swallowing nonsense
chunks clumping
into another illness
feel it coming on
the aches of thoughts
repeating like poison
laced with spoon-fed phrases
- Max Stoltenberg
And after that overly long and unnecessary introduction more like preheating for the customary 6 or so minutes, you think that it might be strange or appropriate to mention or keep to oneself much in the manner of pushing your own face inside out recalling when you were little and would play with your socks and roll them into a fabric donut stop scratching my head making it burn feel like sharp bugs and their hypodermic legs strolling through the thoughts the contemplations that draw blood and try in vain to put it back dried out brush forcing itself upon a wall sucking up to indecision and retractions.
He went into the field where the field used to be to meet with the administrative assistant who was so good at alphabetizing and reversing the direction of time in regards to emails and still managed to get the edges of her nails catching on sweater sleeves fuck hate when that happens and seek absolution in watching slower and slower slow motion videos of water balloons colored liquid holding it together as membranes fail so quickly in the smallest spans returning from the room with the shredder before anyone notices the extra folders missing waited too long to put it down and now it's gone don't think much of it dehydrated conversation burning lips on windows that close doors on the field that used to be.
the sky has been dark
where did the day go
way up into the ass
of the universe
calling it that hasn't helped
where we end
trying to extend it
by some jerking it off
making whatever longer
where we end
is nothing
nothing but our carbon monoxide
- Max Stoltenberg
Distractions and unanswered questions
Asking crushed under the chin
of the lowering face of anger
Mesmerized by pupils
disengaged and slamming fists
upon reveries and investigating
Curiosity deflated
bones to branches
muscles to weeds
the backyard of forgetfulness
She went to the sink as her phone rang and rang towards no response. Sneezing and peeing a little. Something fell down the stairs. She imagined what it might be as a voice mail kicked in. Not available after the beep a box of buttons that said something about providing everyone in the office with instructions involving fucking themselves. Applying pressure with her thumb looking at the drain and wondering about a world down there bereft of light not much darker than her own. Pushing apart a couple of slats in the window blinds coming back to this seeing the children being lined up in the desert under a sky filled with hot air balloons fragile substitutes for the spots on the glass.
"Are you done with that?"
"I've been done with it.
"Then why do you still have it?"
"It's got it's teeth in my wrist."
"So much for being conscious."
"Eyes open eyes closed it's a chore."
"You're just saying that."
"You said it."
"I just did."
"We are being annoying."
"What else is new?"
"What is banging around in the dryer?"
"Whatever was banging around before it was put in the wash."
"Too true."
"Too true is whatever we deny today that seeps back in tomorrow."
"Did you bury the cat?"
"Didn't find much left of it."
"There you go procrastinating again."
"Me? I'm the one remember who found a whisker."
"That's just an expression."
"Paw. I meant paw. Remember when I got dragged by the neighbors and their shopping cart?"
"They weren't neighbors. You said you didn't recognize any of them."
"I didn't, but I did say my memory could be on the fritz again."
"On the fritz."
"And I mentioned when they were done with me and dumped me in that storm drain that I spotted the paw? And the following day I asked you about the funeral? Do you recall what you said?"
"Something about more blood in my stools I imagine."
"There was that, yes, but I asked when we were going to dispose of bury the paw and you said you needed several weeks to work on a eulogy. It's been a tad beyond the several weeks."
"On the fritz, eh?"
"On the fritz."
"Are you done with that?"
- Max Stoltenberg
Pencil prick
bleeding inferno and what not
yet
development imposition
a churning in the chest
right behind the nipple
the right nipple
wrong body
water pneumonia
testing for belonging
in the stuck position
here to stay
the bacon is off
something in the room
is dead
has been for a while
days weeks
nights of in and out
of holes
falling back pulling muscles
bleeding inferno and what not
is shit out
into existence
to play
the role of an interruption
- Max Stoltenberg
Do you think it's because of what you said what you said was the cause and it all stopped right there came to a halt nothing more to trickle out of the spigot hammered into the back of the head just above the where they asked if you wanted it cut square just above the horizon where disasters emerged from where promises delay until they are forgotten remember? what the fuck do you know? get out the chicken the pieces are small but who liked who wanted them that way
that way
It's what it said on the phone and he messed with her ruined conversations drove them into walls cornered the expressions until they didn't want to turn around why should they? why should they take the stairs down and leave the roof alone when it could be the reason for faces that stare out at the windows darkened darkening the questions out of the dead eyes burned with endings changed for a lie where everyone lives and run into each other bump into each other step over each other interrupt each other punctuate the moments that got away from them hurt each other cut each other drop each other from ledges into the previously rewound.
Unnecessary turnarounds
reasoning drowned out
by screeching tires
looping into insomnia
dreams nightmares
stuck in classrooms
on the way to classrooms
unnecessary turnarounds
another test mentioned
in the same insecure breath
with being with someone
gone debated aging
and climbing out of dumpsters
lifted over your head
dangling like aloneness
at the top of the ferris-wheel
seeking justice
as the buried
before and after the rotting
denies between blinks
- Max Stoltenberg
Vestigial forearms crossed over a lap draped in inadequacy spending the rest of a life making a slowly deflating brain more comfortable before the top of his thoughts collapse and stick to the bottom and step away from that back wall you can let it fall in or out we could make a bet or see who else might be interested in making a bet kicking into a pool maybe if they think it will fall in or fall out kicking into a pool? what is the matter with you? I'll just keep my hand on this wall until one of the roaches crawls over it and tickles me in my sleep sleep? you're telling me you sleep standing up? a little bit a little bit? don't nod off for long triangles triangles? scalene mostly never an equilateral an isosceles once in a while scarcely clear abundantly opaque stop muttering I am not muttering that's what you were doing a third of a fraction of his former divided subject see my finger what am I looking at? my finger I know that what on your finger am I looking at the surface the surface really this cellophane raincoat that vainly covers the poisoned blood traveling through the tubes below tubes I suppose you get that from around the corner where they call them tubes caves is what we refer to them as on our side of desert tunnels I think is what you were going for I don't whip up much for going for anything these days despite all your confessions despite all your apologies despite all your redemptive actions you can't unchoke me.
- Max Stoltenberg
The vibration went through the house through the walls doubling every anxious thought splitting them into more jagged contemplations underlined in red a dim red soup left out too long formed a film of a woman sitting in front of a clouded window forgetting what she was looking for on her side of the eyes in her sad head a sad head for figures slumping to the floor in exhaustion in resignation from the positions she held took before and might take again or be scolded into consolidating into a coffin that's a position the only position she'd be into after her mother's legs opened and crossed again into a brooding compliance.
"Decaying rooms go in and out of my memory."
"No matter what you say, you can't dissuade me from my upward spiral."
"You had to forego the elevator?"
"Their dragging things out has always rubbed off on me."
"Did that say 14th floor?"
"I don't know. Why don't you go back and check?"
"Would you prefer that? Besides not using the elevator?"
"And deny us some useless banter? Why would I want to miss out on that?"
"Exactly. This building has 19 floors right?"
"I never wanted to go all the way to the top. I thought I made that obvious."
"Then why go this far?"
"Overestimating myself. Is this my exit?"
"You're asking me?"
"You wanted to come along."
"I did."
"Stop pretending like I have more of one thing than the other like you know the real me or whatever the fuck it is."
"It's still hot out."
"It stays this hot all night."
"I know that. Just because I haven't been stranded out here as long as you."
"Now which side of the building to use?"
"While you think about that, I'll tell you about what pieces I've been working on."
3 Duets for Harp and Table Saw
10 Pieces for Toy Piano 6-Hand Dog and a Half
7 Fragments for Backgammon Dice, Hamster, and Water Balloon
Overcast overshadowed
Overtime overshot
Bending one's desire
in your hands
who's?
Mentioned at the end
Quarreling misunderstandings
Losing hair
What's left doesn't listen
to your comb
who's?
Overcast overshadowed
Overtime overshot
Puzzles in boxes in bookcases
Questions in silences in closets
- Max Stoltenberg
Has anyone conducted a note of alarm I have what the have nots have not had the conduct the plain bloody facing it my words not my words overdue to be returned and the zipper resealed over my mouth that would be better it has always been better I cannot brush it it will only go in one direction towards the end and this is running out of chunks of waste never desert always have that made a big fucking hole in the universe in my head and the desert is still there going in and going out and collecting collecting dust collecting for some cause some expired beauty that looks so stretched and tired holding its eyes open so wide enough for the vast emptiness to slide out onto the stage the edge of the stage and tumble into the darkness to be pissed on by the front row. Deserted airships floating inside that lump in the throat it is the lump pregnant with deserted airships colliding into nothing to say nothing to offer.
This life is running out was from the first moment you lifted your head from the blanket and looked at the light like urine streaming into a room people in stiff white clothes mumbling except for when they shouted I'll just put my head back down don't speak up putting it back down until my chin submerges into her menstrual revision of me circling the stairs of the apartments where I guess we thought we lived or was told moving my arms use these things that shake and are useless circling the stairs under all this water looking up into the sky filled with endless wave upon wave of flooding smothering me my world won't be breathing for much longer too long hold it hold it and death no circling the stairs shit stop it about the drown in my own overlooking my own underwhelming utterances I'll just put my head back down won't speak up putting it back down until my chin submerges into her menstrual revision of me thought we lived or was told moving my arms use these things useless things that shake and are circling the stairs under.
She will call and she will ask what I asked and I will go over it many times before she will call and she will ask what I asked what I repeated and angered the lot cast beneath and behind rear windshield between two excuses the same pattern of humiliation nothing new beneath and behind prescribed for mites replacing the secretions of hesitation.
"Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"You looked up at the moment I noticed it."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You didn't see something fly like a dark bug into the blinds it's probably in there."
"I am not disturbing the blinds and have whatever it is or isn't fly into my mouth or into my body by some means."
"By some means?"
"I also hate bending or breaking the blinds."
"I hate the way my fat ass stomach just bunches up and folds my damn arteries like a bloody hose throbbing. Why can't stomachs be like pillows that lose their fluffiness and get flat?"
"Instead they're more like all kinds of fucked up shapes from my body derailing through some nightmare."
"You said you don't want something that isn't to fly into your mouth. How could it do that if it isn't?"
"Just an expression that fell out of my butthole."
"Tell me the one about the lawyer."
"The lawyer?"
"And what fell out his butthole."
"It was an accountant and the tube in his ear."
"You mean his eustachian tubes?"
"No someone jammed a tube in his ear over some tax audit that ensued from his filing and what came out."
"Brain leakage I reckon."
"This is the one with the thought balloon remember? You thought it was funny and asked me to retell it a while ago. When we still had water and electricity."
"And food."
"And food or that wasn't you it was the woman."
"In the glasses and the purple and black patterned blouse who went over the wheel."
"Over the wheel. Right. That's how they said she went. Over the wheel."
"When there was still a they."
We were flushed out
from the ocean
to the rim where the land
collects all the shit
on the coast
yanking each other's chains
shoring up this waste
until it collapses back
into the stained pool
we were flushed out
from the ocean
to the rim where the land
eyes fooled by the sight of heat
we were flushed out
from the ocean
the tank quiets
the Earth's crust has formed
memories of dried waste
what disillusionment smells like
- Max Stoltenberg
Crappy buffering eyes glaze over as you stare at the line thickening and narrowing on the frozen image of the kitchen where some of it may have gotten on the dining room table with the warped leaves that can never be pushed close enough together why reminisce about her now you can only see your rotting toenails through the gap pantry chicken noodle how do you know what you're saying hasn't been ripped off from someone else who ripped it off from someone else who ripped it off the back collar of a sweater unraveling arguments nobody too many just grunt their agreement and if that wasn't enough try to the salsa on second thought slid in their somewhere between left the door open and where's the fly swatter don't try it could have sworn there was a dark mass could have sworn.
