DIRTY GLASSES

It's not in sight it's not in the cards it's not in the bedroom it's not in the estimation it's not in the sprucing up a bit it's not in the spilling of the tea into an ear head shakes the whole body up the wall up the walls and all that sort of textbook flowchart behind the handling of the fan making the unsneezed sneeze all that he has to hold on to towards an abrupt stopping of a nap with your head in the bookcase bottom shelf meanderings there's another word for it but not going to even try to look it up why even look into it around corners or into corners it's not in sight it's not in the cards it's not in the bedroom it's not in the estimation it's not in the sprucing up a bit it's not in the spilling of the tea into an ear head shakes the whole body up the wall up the walls and looking up towards the ceiling rotting as it does down upon the floor sending its notes and waving of the hand twisting the wrist to the strings and brass and winds it's not in the mountains keeping back the somewhere else from the yearning that is here and going out like a match that lit nothing very little going out like nothing very little lit by a match going out can't don't want to lift these thoughts out from under the fist around the mouth to break what send it from some we from someone else send it from the ceiling rotting as it does down upon the floor sending its notes and waving of the hand twisting the wrist to the strings and brass and winds it's not in the mountains keeping back the somewhere else from the yearning that is here and going out like a match like the toilet paper that won't be pulled out from between that which separates one's ass from one's foolishness whatever back to the match which has to do with the mountains and the mountains keeping back the somewhere else from the yearning that is here and going out like an old bulb in the bathroom and the toilet paper back to the toilet paper and the crack and the foolish pulling off of the slowing grinding slowing pain in the left cheek of the face sky and the grumbling in the sky vibrates the tables the chairs the pictures on the walls not there anymore try to remember that the next time there is a use for images all that is left is the tongue retracting from saying what has already been said.

What is that rock for?
Setting the table.
We don't have a table.
I'm making this the table.
We don't even have a this.
Back to that again.
It needs something else.
Like what possibly?
I need to go look for some.  I'll be back in a few days.  Make that several days.
Remember the last time you went off exploring.
No I don't.
That's my point.  I had to rebuild you from scratch.
I wish you had let me figure it out on my own instead of imposing your affairs into the whole chain of paper clips hooked together and calling it me.  I don't see how I'll ever be able to trace my steps back through your meddling to the previous me before that.
The problem is I've had to restart you several times.
So there's no telling how far back it goes.
It is all I have to say.
I might have run out on my own years ago but you had to keep making up stories.
Had to do something with that vague state you get into.

Mention it to the folded arms
Waste the breath and it
Beaten into blood
Her hands painfully lower 
herself into a fountain dry 
far from the center of the world
off and guessing has been

less insistent
eventually fallen behind
the back of the drawer of her underwear
socks with color untangled
by closed eyes
and folded arms
mention it to the folded arms
Waste the breath and it
Beaten into blood
Her hands painfully lower
herself into a fountain dry
far from the center

Off you go then.
What if I stay after all?
Stay?
Yes, if I stay instead of going then I can watch you to make sure you don't start meddling when you feel the need to start me again or rebuild me as you put it and you put it and that's the problem.
That's true.  All right then.  Stay.
Maybe you're trying to trick me into staying so you can engage me in conversation and exert your influence and the stories.
That's true.  All right then.  Go.
Maybe I have a better chance if I stick to my original plan of setting the table and looking for something else to set it with and exploring.  I enjoy exploring.  That's what I tell myself or was it you who said I was a curious sort.
No that wasn't me.  It isn't always me.  Sometimes it's you and when you said that I don't think that's how you meant it.  I am a curious sort is what you said about yourself.  Nothing to do with your going off exploring nothing to do with another table setting.
Another table setting that's when I was about to be off.  Sometimes I could manage to elude you for days at least I think that's what I could manage at times or a couple of times or one time perhaps.
Perhaps.  Or perhaps not.  The thing is the truth is a thing.  You are so fucking slow and you make it so easy to catch up to you.  Sometimes I even toy with you the very idea and spot you a few hours or a few days and I then somehow close the gap you bump into me and I see the fear in your face and how you try to force that terror-cracked face of yours into a smile and the ridiculous exchange ensues and you are so desperate for a bowl of fragments to call you.
You tell me all about the things I tell myself and then I just tell myself that's what I tell myself that I am letting you smear what you scratch off your skin into the stories you smudge on the tops of my cheeks under my eyes under my very nose just to amuse you.  I set the table and I know that when you mock every setting of the table more people end up in the ground entombed beneath where they tried to convince themselves to explore where they used to tell themselves what a curious sort they were.

It's not in sight it's not in the cards it's not in the bedroom it's not in the estimation it's not in the sprucing up a bit it's not in the spilling of the tea into an ear head shakes the whole body up the wall up the walls and all that sort of textbook flowchart behind the handling of the fan making the unsneezed sneeze all that he has to hold on to towards an abrupt stopping of a nap with your head in the bookcase bottom shelf meanderings there's another word for it but not going to even try to look it up why even look into it around corners or into corners it's not in sight it's not in the cards it's not in the bedroom it's not in the estimation it's not in the sprucing up a bit it's not in the spilling of the tea into an ear head shakes the whole body up the wall up the walls and looking up towards the ceiling rotting as it does down upon the floor sending its notes and waving of the hand twisting the wrist to the strings and brass and winds it's not in the mountains keeping back the somewhere else from the yearning that is here and going out like a match that lit nothing very little going out like nothing very little lit by a match going out can't don't want to lift these thoughts out from under the fist around the mouth.


- Max Stoltenberg

CLOSET ENTRANCE

Pressed the button and nothing happened the door did not open of course it did not open since it remained closed nothing happened after the button was pressed.  Wait a couple of moments more than a couple of moments shipped in smaller dimensions the packaging is made so thin and what they use as stuffing to protect to buffer doesn't help much to limit the damage the shapes that's how things are shaping up into all kinds of geometrical patterns that fit crowd to fit into the cluttered disappointment of backyards where there are the frequent exposed views of a flash in the pan.  Trying to ignore the stiffness in the neck as it makes its adjustments re-calibrations at another awkward angle to catch a glimpse into the window of someone sitting to look at a computer screen a blank computer screen.  A face injected with emptiness stares at the expressionless monitor tapping keys vehemently on the keyboard perhaps after silently measuring out machine sliced moments and what could they possibly consist of for the one who measured and struggle to feel the bits crumbling up shaping up dissolving into tinier tinier bits evaporating into the most insignificant particles between the walls of their fingerprints.  Somehow the button was pushed and there was an opening but not of a door more like a stopper and whatever got one to this point drained out from the upper to the lower and out through the feet somewhere in the feet the heel maybe the heel that's what it feels like drained so low can't tell anymore.

Walk take a walk
Into the desert

What are you doing?  Working.  Working on what?  Working on instructions.  Instructions for what?  Directions not instructions.  Directions to where?  Not directions as in getting to a location.  Then it would be instructions.  They can be directions as in taking medication.  What medications are we talking about?  It has nothing to do with medications.  Are these medications anti-psychotic medications?  The instructions directions are for folding chairs.  Are these anti-psychotic medications for really fucked up people?  And it's not what you think and you might think it's about the difficulties involved in unfolding the chairs.  You want to call it what you want to call it in terms of the problem the real problem being that it's about people having a problem with having a problem is that it? Or is it that it's about people having a problem with people having a problem with having a problem is that it?  You might have thought that's what I was going to continue to think and not update my thinking about what you were thinking and you could possibly possibly probably definitely maybe be thinking that the real actual forgot to wipe dilemma is a lack of appreciation of the complexity of keeping the folding chair open and preventing it from collapsing when all along it's an issue of closing the folding chair the teleological folding if you will because it's not about having something cheap to sit on but to be able to store many chairs against a wall that happens to be available and carrying 2 or 3 at a time and calculate the appropriate angle to stand them without the sliding down out of position into a humiliating clamor.  Who has the problem now?  Me?  You?  That fly you and I have been swatting at unsuccessfully?  Was it me who let it in?  Was it you?  Was it someone else and how did they get in here without our knowledge to let the fly in?  Is it your assumptions that are the problem?  Maybe maybe not or maybe it is you are your assumptions and you as a person wishing at your foul well full of bio-hazard putting all your ostrich eggs in one baby carriage looking to the day that never arrives where we can be normal when it's that we are normal and that's the problem.

Walk walk with me
Into the dunes
Into the next wave of emptiness
and wonder 
and wonder why
we've been plagued with strength
that endures for nothing

What are you doing?  Medicating.  For anxiety?  Not medicating.  What do you call it when you've given up on all the massaging and the stroking because not a thing is coming off the way you want it?  Masturbation?  I said given up.  That would be called giving up.  And that's it is it?  Just as clear as that?  The thing is giving up is so muddy in its conception in its execution that's exactly what you step down into when you step out step off and leave and move on to something else and the next step is into the mud stuck in the clarity of the uncertainty and the only certainty is that if you change your mind you are changing it to go back on your resolve and having had enough so you can go back to that step up to just above not having anything but uncertainty.  Are you sure about that?  About what?  About uncertainty?  No, are you sure you're not taking anything for your anxiety especially about the shitty electrical work you did for the store downtown that sells nothing but beer steins?  I'm not an electrician you flat diet soda.  That explains the shitty electrical work.  If you want to talk about insisting on things being the case, I once worked with this asshole actually I worked with him twice I don't know how that happened I just know that for some absurd reason periods of my life get episodes re-ordered because of their popularity for amusing others and I end up repeating the same crap and playing the same sidekick again but can't seem to disconnect from the approval numbers.  Anyway, this guy I worked with had the thickest darkest eyebrows I've ever seen and they were shaped by his ire from within and the hot wind from outside that swirled around us and between us and among us and it was as if his unwieldy mess of human fur string and eyebrow cabling was deliberately arranged into a display that advertised like a haughty awning above a foreboding kitchen below to enter it despite its disgusting appearance and reprehensible history.

Walk walk off
Let me walk you off
Let me let you walk me off
into the dry space
gutted for homes to be nailed
to the corroded scalp of the world
Remove me 
Drag me off
Use my body as an eraser 
to rub out my name
to delete my birth my afterbirth
to obliterate my age 
that stretches on


- Max Stoltenberg

A PRETEXT TO A SYNDROME

Inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted to select to use to inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips not cancelled just went about something else the usual shit until the trip was too late to get into the only getting into was reserved with all of its reservations was reserved for the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted.

They it was just her her it was just him it was just her and him separated by the singular they they preferred to associate with when they in darker times past darker than the current dark times where nothing was current only overdue refraining from associating with all the routine going over it haven't we we've been over this associating with interpretations reloaded for aiming at someone's spot where it really hurt or they thought they could take it take it for what for a spell into the alley or behind the building to get it out of their system look at the filth on the ground that came out of one end or another so much for ends reloaded for aiming aiming at the spot gets bigger gets smaller skin for a spell into the alley or behind the building to get it out of their system a brief silence in the choking and then the choking continues the tortured music the empty metallic applause of the present always continuing a wheel a steering wheel disobedient to crashing off the road a tree gone by blurred away into disobedience to crashing cemented into the straight and narrow present always continuing with the present the now the pill of their cure the plural they preferred to associate with over the alley in the building back in the building a room they it was just her her it was just him it was just her and him separated by the singular they they preferred to associate with when they in darker times past darker than the current dark times where nothing was current only overdue refraining from associating with all the routine going over it haven't we we've been over this associating with interpretations reloaded for aiming at someone's spot where it really hurt or they thought they could take it take it for what for a spell into the alley or behind the building to get it out of their system look at the filth on the ground.

"What are you looking at?"
"Nothing."
"What are you thinking of?"
"Of?"
"Or about?"
"I can't decide if it's an of or an about."
"Does it make a difference?"
"To some."
"And what about you?"
"I haven't decided."
"Are we going to go over the whole thing?"
"I think we go over it without realizing it and more quickly than we think."
"There should never have been racetracks in the first place."
"You say that now but they keep you alive."
"That's my point."
"You have them inside of you keeping you going.  You have them in your blood your circulation."
"Bloody piss poor circulation is what I have."
"That's what sabotages your miserable facial gestures.  Fucking surreal they are."
"Don't you think I know.  Do you see me looking at myself in the mirror?"
"No, I just see you and the sagging and the chasms and abysses that form around the sockets of your eyes."
"Saggings, chasms, abysses."
"Maybe we didn't follow the instructions."
"Sockets, eyes."
"Maybe it's because we followed the instructions."
"What are you getting at?"
"Maybe we missed a step or took steps and overlapped onto somebody's toes we did."
"Took steps?"
"Overlapping."
"Is this about getting out of line?"
"No. Just making ourselves redundant again."
"Are you going on about solidarity?"
"Solidarity?  There's a word for solidarity . . . #2."
"My deficiencies might be external but yours are certainly internal."
"Don't forget about your piss poor circulation."
"Remind me why don't you?  That would be both wouldn't it?  Fucked up on either side of the wall of our being."
"No wonder they assigned us to this building."
"Makes me think about the woman who found a height and she loosened her scarf."
"Because her blouse was next."
"It was so she could reach with the fingers of her right hand to scratch an itch on the left side of her neck."
"Why didn't she use her left hand?"
"She liked to use her right hand.  Plus she was carrying a napsack."
"What was in the napsack?"
"A collection of letters including one that some would say didn't belong and that's exactly why she made sure to put it in with the others."
"Why would some say it didn't belong?"
"It wasn't about catching up on the year that had just passed the year before the previous one and it wasn't about laying things to rest or reminiscing about days when there were people who could recall or think they could recall people who speculated about things that used to be sprinkled over places that had forgotten them.  It happened to be from a colleague who used to ask her what the latest bag of parts had been sent down to them would say to them and how it would say it to them and what it would do to them with its parts once they had been arranged in the order they could make of the tiny pictures on the folded paper inside the bag of parts that had been sent down to them from the building on the other side of the desert."
"What did she write to her?"
"She never read it before she took off all her clothes was disappointed by a short breeze that wouldn't return and she jumped."
"The blouse probably was next."
"I'll make you next you scum-clot.  Actually I do think about me and her and being next and then I think where am I going to find a height nowadays?"
"I know the options are getting more limited when it comes to refusing to go on.  There's this dream I have once every few months or years and I'm not even in it I'm watching some schmuck trying to run away from one of the latest monstrous graders they've just come out with for the next whatever they're calling them now and he finds himself running along a road that turns into a traffic jam that turns into a crowded lobby that turns into these hurdles one after another."
"On a racetrack?"
"And he just keeps knocking them over and stumbling and falling down."
"A racetrack that loops around into a meaningless looping around?"
"And he keeps smashing into them each and every one of them and falling down getting bloodier and getting up and smashing into the next one."
"I told you there should never have been racetracks in the first place."
"The only thing I like about it prefer about it is they the singular they."
"They make the print on these folded papers smaller each whatever they're calling it now."

Inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted to select to use to inform her misinform her write it on the fridge scratch it out on the back of her shoulder trying to light a used match we've been over this and the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips not cancelled just went about something else the usual shit until the trip was too late to get into the only getting into was reserved with all of its reservations was reserved for the caves of disguise raise the torn banners of paintings dug into rock the foundations of cancelled trips teeth can't seem to get any closer together and yet they peel off thoughts from the back of the mind where the things have collected the things you wanted or thought you wanted.


- Max Stoltenberg

RICE CLUMPS

A day ahead a day behind what are we watching when is this happening not what we're watching what we're doing what are we doing chew a little more before choking say about 2 or 3 make it 2 why bother with 1 pull the hedges closer in bend them to cover all the places we ran through in our hurry such a hurry to be grown up what are we doing chew a little more before choking say about 2 or 3 make it 2 why bother with 1 pull the hedges closer in bend them to cover all the places we ran through in our hurry such a hurry to be grown up what are we doing when is this happening a day ahead a day behind what are we watching?

"Yeah?"
"What are you saying yeah to?"
"It's kind of like that."
"It's kind of like what?"
"That's not what I meant to say."
"What did you mean to say?"
"I thought it was something else I was reacting to."
"Squirrel?"
"No, bug.  It always comes down to some form of bug."
"Then what were you initially reacting to?"
"I forgot."
"Never mind."
"That's right continue doing what comes naturally to you."
"Especially when you are such an exemplar of the alternative."
"Just one of those dead end positions with extra adhesive for clinging to the underbelly of my repertoire."
"Someone had some time to think up a response."
"It only became clear what to say once I blew the dust off of our conversation."

Put it back put it back to that part where they're trying their efforts their energy and remind yourself of what that was like before the shrugging of shoulders and that hazy light and the look on her face looking out the window at that hazy light showering her with anticipation of rain that only trickles or doesn't come at all and she observes from a growing distance all their trying their efforts their energy and her headache grows with every thought of her opportunities to teach and her cautioning and her timing and her tone and how it all gets shrugged away into screams that manage to echo on the surface skin deep that'll never happen again after the last time it happened before the shrugging of shoulders that seem to have always been there back there put back there put it back put it back to that part if you want if you want to pretend that it wasn't always put back there.

"I spend more of my time lately watching the dogs meandering about.  I see them their mouths and it looks like they're munching on something and I ask myself did I actually have something left that I took my eyes off of for them to scoop up something I didn't know I still had or thought I put it somewhere they couldn't get it or I'm just being self-absorbed they could have grabbed somebody else's shit and I think about going over to them and reminding them and I remember that they end up calling me something and to never mind that's where that comes from so you know and I think maybe I'm not so self-absorbed it's about the few puzzles I managed to save and I'm not sure if I have that one last one if I still have it not so sure it didn't have that many pieces lots of dogs though."
"I was going to take another crack at it."
"At the pile of crap in the living room?"
"You mean the stack of bodies?"
"No not that one.  That's why we stopped calling it the living room."
"At least I did."
"You want to take a crack at the pile of crap in the bedroom?"
"And I thought I was the only one who had trouble with terminology."
"It's just that the list gets so large it begins to eat into the main bulk of the front part."
"The front part?"
"You know the beginning."
"The beginning?"
"Why stop there?  Those lists take the middle and the ending as well.  Might as well they make lists of endings.  Endings after endings."
"Since you put it that way that's what I was going to take a crack at.  I thought what about it's about a prison and among the population they discover one of them plays a musical instrument."
"That's what they have bands for."
"That's not what I meant to say.  It's about a prison and among the population they discover one of them builds things."
"That's what they have construction crews for."
"That's not what I meant to say.  It's about a prison and among the population they discover one of them uses anesthesia."
"That's what they have hospitals for."
"That's not what I meant to say."


- Max Stoltenberg

BLEAK CORTEX

Back to the mirror 
Back away from the mirror
Back into the mirror
Back against the mirror
Against the wall
Between the wall and the mirror
Between the mirror and the backing 
on the back of the mirror

Inactive record
Mirror on mirror
glass grey licking
regressing into holes
in the faces in the background

ground interlude 
stay down
get up
put together a response
hang it up
nearest hole
is furthest from the mind

Have you heard?  Have you heard the one about the realtor who showed the couple a home and took a call on her cellphone and stepped outside leaving the two to look around until it was around time for the sun to go down the light to disappear the electricity was turned off a foreclosed space have you heard the realtor?  are they close by or far away?  have you heard?  have you heard the one about the young woman who went into the kitchen another end of a day left out too long to cook another cut to dress up and take a chance let simmer to stand to cool into a dim upset in the failing light have you heard?  Have you heard the one about the realtor who showed the couple she showed them?

"That's probably why it disappeared."
"The light or her?"
"That's probably why it dropped off the listing for a while until they did what they had to and put it back on."
"Until they did something or didn't do something."
"Did you have time to get around to the shopping today?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I just do.  Or need I say your time and how it gets eaten by the piranhas of responsibility are important to me?"
"The needless to say with their expressions that sink below the surface and rear their sagging heads again because they did what they had to do to cram them into whatever latest purpose they came up with."
"Did you get my zinc oxide?"
"You mean your Boudreaux's butt paste?"
"Yes, that, my degraded seamstress."
"No, I did not."
"No?  Why not?"
"Did you write it down on the fridge?"
"Thought I did.  Guess not."
"Degraded seamstress?"
"Fuck!  What was that I bumped into?"
"Don't expect it to be the power button of some abandoned entertainment center with tenebrous music refilling the room."
"I don't.  Circumstances always manage to be a little more than what I've lowered them to so it can blandly slink along the middle of the road and not tumble off into wrapping things up into a dark extinction." 

Take it and stick it into the stomach stir it until the clouds settle into the branches of the trees leaves are pushed down towards the Earth below emptiness bulges out as streets tighten their grip stabbing with glass windows shattering into eyes filling with notes intercepted and passed from sneer to sneer hammered into capital letters and thrown over the fence to be whipped by the violence of traffic. If if you can if you still can take it and stick it into the stomach stir it until the clouds settle into the branches of the trees leaves are pushed down towards the Earth below.

"Did you take your pm dosage?"
"Not yet.  I left my water in the car."
"I just don't want you to miss another pill.  That'll make 4 out of 7 this week."
"4 out of 7.  Enough to win a playoff and keep a depression on medium flame."
"Remember that time you were telling me that scary story when we were around that fire?"
"I didn't get to finish telling it because that was the last occasion you let me fix dinner."
"We never did redo the left side of the house."
"That's what we've been trying to move out of you know.  I still see smoke curling about."
"You do not.  Those are just little dust storms."
"What are those things scattered on the floor?"
"Charred contact paper probably."
"Not at our house - in this room.  I keep kicking them around with my shoes.  And what room is this?"
"Are you not wearing socks with your shoes?  You know how they cut the backs of your heels."
"I ran out of socks.  I haven't taken the bag down to the laundromat."
"I think this is or was either the game room or some unfinished art room."
"Someone's projecting their procrastination."
"Where is she?  Does she sound nearby to you or has she wandered off into the backyard or maybe across the street to talk to the neighbors to warn them about us?"
"Will you stop?  Just quiet down so we can listen for someone talking on their cellphone."
"For all this time?  For hours?"
"She is a talker.  Now listen for someone talking to someone else."
"It'll probably turn out to be someone talking to someone else next door or maybe it'll just be the sound of me talking to you because there is no one next door anymore or across the street or just me talking to myself because you've gotten sick of me and left me in this room alone all alone."
"I would never leave you.  I couldn't find my way out."
"That's the best reason you've got?"
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too."
"And I'm still sorry."
"What is love?"
"I know I haven't said it since no that was when I thought of saying it and only thought it.  That was when you walked into the sliding door and you thought it was open."
"Bent the frames of my glasses.  What is love?"
"Love is two tongues reaching for each other in the dark."
"You never got to finish that scary story."
"Scary story?  It was some true crime I read."
"Did you ever sell that?"
"Never could."
"That's too bad."
"Tossed it in the blue bin next to the bookcase."


- Max Stoltenberg

HALF TO DEATH

Half the distance
Half the baking instructions
Half the moon
Turning the other cheek
As the world rotates again
Comes around to another day
of the same shit pouched between
your ass and gum

Half to death
Who said it was helpful 
Who cut the plug 
Allowing the airs out of her face
Half the marked up way to the halfway point
Dismissal adjourned
Until enough talking past each other
Misery scuffs company floors
Hallways and their fading light bulbs
Where the dragging of feet
Crushed under the pressure
a proactive initiation for bloody toes

Brain blinking stars fall
by your eyes thoughts burn out
with dying sparks plunging
half the distance to the ground
covered in the same shit
comes around to another day
as the world rotates again
landing on the next losing slice of the wheel

Pulling up pants half way
to the mid-section
never recovering 
guts retreating into caves of wasted nerves
Unable to obscure the exposed half-life
decaying adventures
breaking up into jobs
fractals of meaningless vision
lulled into expectations
vainly scattering bacteria


- Max Stoltenberg

SHIRT ON THE BARBEQUE

Sky the double-edged razor 
hugs faces with stubble raising questions
uprooting space with nicks and cuts 
heat insults the back of the neck
clouds manufacture stillness
stranded under feet 
odor for a towel undone
into holes looking upon nowhere

Backs of office chairs
reclining nooses stand up straight
across a thunderous sweeping off the table
amusing for no one
but parts of bodies that fall away
delaying for what now
it'll swing they will swing
until they fall away
and until then


Nurse recites something she saw in real life deader than a phony connection dial again wrong number no it was the right number and now you hung up and calling back has been put on the back-burner until the back-burner has been hooked up behind the building where they the ones who came by and carrying something blunt broke the glass and had to insist on carrying on something blunt broke the glass and had to insist they just might get out they just might get in they just might get by the ones who came by and carrying something blunt broke the glass and had to insist that the nurse recite something she saw in real life deader than a phony connection dial again wrong number no it was the right number and now you hung up and calling back has been put on the back-burner until the back-burner has been put on the back-burner hooked up behind the building where they the ones who came by and carrying something blunt broke the glass and had to insist on carrying on something blunt broke the glass and had to insist they just might get out they just might get in they just might get by the ones who came by and carrying something blunt broke the glass and had to insist that the nurse recite something she saw in real life deader than a phony connection.

"Why does it look like that?"
"What did you do to it?"
"You mean how did it get like this?"
"What happened?"
"I was in with the assistant maintenance coordinator and he dropped his nail-gun on my right foot."
"I thought you were asking me about your nose."
"I'm getting to that."
"Oh, does it come next after the nail-gun to the foot?"
"Actually, it comes before."
"Before?"
"I start with the most recent incident and work my way back."
"Use whatever works."
"That's the thing, though.  It doesn't always work."
"I heard there was a sandwich on the roof."
"And this would be a demonstration of which one of your vast array of quirks?"
"This is me hopping off the boardwalk of a conversation when the other person is experiencing a breakdown in their approach."
"Seems more like a breakdown in my withdrawal."
"And how did it get like that?"
"What kind of sandwich was it?"

Let sleeping bags lie
have the whispering from inside them
tell all they want
that another told them all they wanted
and the wind molds 
what cracks them up
into bits of wet sadness
only shadow cast on the dry ground

"And how did your breakdown in your withdrawal get like that?"
"It must have been when I was taking a piss and thought about what she was thinking and my insecurities that used to provide a nice attenuated echo to her chamber-like ensemble of brooding had deformed into an extra layer of her chafing one of her rear speakers that could no longer be rearranged or rewired but had to be disposed of."
"Is that before or after she dumped you?"
"I don't remember.  All I can bring to mind is that while I was thinking this I had pissed on a great deal of the toilet seat and any potential for internalizing anything was lost in cleaning my own mess.  I stopped standing up after that."
"I still thought you were asking me about your nose."
"Tell me a story."
"Did I tell you the one about the magician who tried to resist the temptation to reveal the secrets of his tricks and archived them?"
"Is this the one where the magician gave up magic and became an archivist?"
"You have heard that one.  Then I don't have any new ones unless you want to hear one I haven't told in a while."
"Start with a more recent one and work your way back."
"It can only get better."
"Not always."
"They still haven't refilled the breath tape and trail mix machine."

Let sleeping bags lie
have the whispering from inside them
tell all they want
that another told them all they wanted
and the wind molds 
what cracks them up
into bits of wet sadness
only shadow cast on the dry ground


- Max Stoltenberg