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And the next day is a forklift carrying all the shit from before and after lunch over there at the end of that aisle to turn around and get tomorrow. Who was that? He walked down there to see if she could tell him what happened next and knew that he was getting it third-hand from the guy who mentioned to her in passing in passing away on the floor of the aisle where the spill of the spill of olives had taken place happened next and knew. He filled in the bubbles with his pen his crayon and was glad he had sharpened it sharpened it poorly he did most things just about everything everything poorly and put the crayon down and took a crap in his pants it was a theme the tune his ass made as it expelled its notes into his boxers and then his pants down the backs of his shins is that what they were called he didn't like names remembering names filling in blanks filling in around his body his ass filling in the blanks of his pants his ass was not pumping out blanks this time filling in around his body his ass his body was just his ass of himself the discourse of excretion was quieter more muffled when the hole produced more solid matter and when the matter was absent the hole was filled with the response of the other expressing a disapproving or as some prefer approving flapping or as some might prefer ruffling of the lips disapprovingly as one as the other might prefer as it goes down in the annals of the discourse of the excretion.
He was about to play a card and two of them fell onto the table as he tried to quickly scoop them up and pushed them further across closer to his opponent as he received them from his opponent from across the table and bent their edges a little more tightly inward towards himself as he tensed to fold the memory of their existence into let's act like you never saw that.
let's act like you never knew me so when I erase myself I will never know as I dwell on it brood about it about how it will do what it will do to you and them let's not invite them ever and they will call and we will send them a note forward them a note cut and paste paragraphs 5 of them to finish the bridge as I roll around from side to side in my bed in my sleep until I fall off into the end of my dreaming and waking up with the next day is a forklift.
we thought you had emptied out the print queue and the spitting started up again the spitting up had not emptied out we thought you and I let's act like when we hit delete it actually does something to undo something let's act like we never did anything and we know we all know all of us that make up the we and all that we have made up acting like we haven't done anything like acting all the times we never acted
we started getting closer more intimate we used to call it by kidding each other remember that's how we went about doing it we started getting closer like that
- Max Stoltenberg
Over the hump over the breast the bed the blankets and the rest of the room seemed pulled together way too tightly around her scar shit on the bathroom sink counter fell in a noisy dance on the tile floor as well as the shit in the bathroom and the shit in the bedroom seemed pulled together way too tightly around her scar events details of events fell in a noisy dance if at all if they made any noise at all then or now or whenever they never occurred pretended to occur without him without her she tilted the screen of her laptop down to forget about the desert sun's lack of manners and tilted it back to look over at her dog chewing out the face of a stuffed elephant trunk hanging by a thread we've all been there heard someone say that and I knew better than to repeat things like that spoken to me during a fire drill still have trouble hearing so many phrases that are undeserving of being heard ever again not good for the skull not good for the skull.
Oh his aching mind not that it mattered happened to stand next to the kitchen mirror he was in the middle of moving that mirror and happened to leave it there never finished much of anything and then it would all end up in corners of himself pulled muscles sore ribs gums bleeding nose running from the law that was ever so impatient with people like me like himself who got worried under the helicopters watching over their excuses and memes that got somewhat better with time like an extracted colon punctuating what they saw clouded with smirks and just when you thought it couldn't get any more familiar it had offer him another diet that extend the waste after shrinking it a bit a tiny bit. Oh his aching mind not that it mattered happened to stand next to the kitchen mirror he was in the middle of moving that mirror and happened to leave it there never finished much of anything and then it would all end up in corners of himself pulled muscles sore ribs gums bleeding nose running between the disappearing spaces of alibis disbelief suspending accumulations into paragraphs of inadequate nonsense.
"What did you do?"
"It probably won't work."
"Tell me."
"I don't want to disappoint you anymore than I already have or maybe I do especially after you drank the other half of the black cherry meant for me. You thought I forgot."
"You're making it up and trying to change the subject and make me forget about what I asked you."
"What did you ask me? Don't answer that. Never mind. I don't care."
"Yes, you do enough to want to get back at me for a soda even though you're making it up."
"I'm not. They skipped our room. It might have actually worked."
"What might have?"
"Nothing. Tell me what you were going to tell me."
"I wasn't going to tell you anything."
"Yes, you were."
"No, I wasn't."
"Admit it."
"I have nothing to admit because there wasn't anything I was going to tell you and now I've lost what little interest I had in ever telling you anything ever again."
"You started to say something about the animals."
"Here we go again. I thought I told you I gave up on children's stories a long time ago."
"I know. I know you did. I mean before we were interrupted by them going up and down the halls you were saying something about the animals and there not being any left."
"That's not what I said. I was observing how I haven't heard any lately."
"What? You haven't heard any pigs lately?"
"Easy. Lower your voice. They could come back."
"I didn't call them that. Not now. I've thought it referred to them as that many times before we were interrupted by the swine."
"Birds I was talking about not hearing any birds. We had a tree outside our house and I used to hate the racket they made outside my bedroom window. Now I hear nothing. Nothing but planes."
"Candice told me that last week. Then she got suspended is what I heard."
"She's not coming back."
"What happened?"
"She shot herself."
"Oh crap. That's horrible."
"With her boyfriend's gun."
"That doesn't sound right."
"You would say that."
"Yes, I would say that."
"By the way what Candice told you Melanie told her. Everyone has a story with a tree full of noisy birds outside their window once upon a time and now they can't stand the nothing the nothing but planes inside their heads pounding with nothing that belongs to them just borrowing expressions."
"I would say that it doesn't sound right."
"You changed the number on the door."
"How did you know?"
"Cause I changed it back. I know you're the type that could never go sleep because they never wanted the weekend to end and I'm the type who just wanted to get it over with."
Jury still out
For the remainder
of the torment
Nix the ideas
milieu after mileu
grungy sporadic knuckle cracking
terms of gory figures
subtracted from one another
divided and reunited
in graves of disfavor
blame sticking to the stains
in the seat of your pants
skirts dragging you down
into compliant energy
coffee has colored your sleep
your dreams where you
have to hold your urine
your shit together
until it paints your world
with another coat
to warm your decay
- Max Stoltenberg
He always considered today just yesterday in remission a pain to shoot through his mind putting an imaginary gun to his head his eyes widening as they split his view from over his own back to watch the bullet passing like a subway car plowing through forgotten memories waking up briefly just before they were obliterated his ideas always culminated into a cul-de-sac of mediocrity and repetition tripping over the wire recharging his phone pulling it off the table and smacking against the tile floor cracking the screen apps shrugging along the fracture. Recidivism blues totaling up to peroxide poured into your lap. Where are the shorts? Where are the boxers? There they are on either side of the flesh tower with its smoke stack billowing out colors of pain scrubbing bubbles of abrasive lacerating cleanser driving driving when I'm driving if not in this parking lot of a shit-hole inching along a slowly vomited exaggeration a pogrom of another aspect of myself another swathe of the dream the nightmare is peeled off and flung to curl up in the corner until the dog will carry it between its morsels of conjunctivitis and then ejected out its ass in the backyard among the other searing rocks covered in noxious dark pudding.
"Then I told him my name."
"And then did he hit you?"
"No, he hit me before that."
"That's because you didn't tell him your name."
"It's not that easy to remember to say to remember anything to say anything when you get hit."
"You need to pull yourself up."
"I do when no one is around but that's rare nowadays and the meat gets rare or raw that's what I meant it used to get like that during a period not a period what word am I looking for?"
"Your name you told him your name after he hit the snot out of you."
"I remained pretty congested actually never could clear that up allergic to the desert and all the stuff that pretends to grow in it and the trash."
"Eventually you got to some rank and serial number eventually something toward the prelude to the conclusion eventually?"
"Model number I think it was."
"Serial number you mean."
"He didn't want or whoever he answered to didn't seem particularly interested in anything identifying me."
"That's weird."
"It's not weird at all really more a come to expect it as the way things will be from now on or how they've always been."
"It's still weird."
"Spoken like someone whose favorite words are: weird, really, and seriously."
"I wish I could have had both of them removed."
"Why on Earth?"
"Well, for starters this looks like all we've got and on the other hand I wouldn't have to wear a fucking bra."
"You're book-ending with on the one hand and starters?"
"You're missing the point."
"I am missing the point both of them. Interval that's what I wanted to substitute for period. My find and replace is rather languid."
"How many times did he hit you?"
"I didn't count. I was kind of focusing on getting up off the ground so he wouldn't kick me."
"Model number of what?"
"I don't know. Something I thought I had. He didn't believe me. I didn't believe me. My head doesn't feel like it can hold a conversation anymore even though it manages to fill in what the other person is saying that's why I think I just stopped going so I wouldn't have to carry on with anyone else just know that I would fill in what they would say in here this skull that feels like one of those brittle boats that someone steps into and both their feet go right through the bottom. I think I will just you will just pull the trigger and off I go again you go again I go have been going on can't sleep my head doesn't feel like it can hold a conversation anymore even though it manages to fill in what the other person is saying."
And that's when he decided she needed to make up her mind about the emergency brake whether he was the one who left it up as he tore the sleeve of his sweater reaching over to rub the knuckles of his right hand against her smooth face that wasn't that smooth wasn't that young wasn't that open wasn't even there wasn't that even wasn't that it wasn't that. And so he put it down where she could find it and maybe get it done she had put it off for so long and with a good half-assed reason only a run-over owl could fabricate. They wasted the rest of their time arguing about destiny and fate and paralysis.
Tomorrow had a pass
On clouded judgment
extra spaces filled with
obscurantist gestures
floating nightgowns upset
with windy sighs
more frequent now
than an 8th grade math teacher
looking looking
where she wishes
she wishes where
she could not be
could not
a tub sculpted by discouragement
forced into lips
wrapped about a cactus
stitched shut
spineless worms
slither to the gym
strutting across cremations
spackled with semen
smirking at the thick window
of his ignorance
where the silent windy sighs
fall to the latest hang-up
- Max Stoltenberg
Leave me out of it like I have to say it it happens when I don't ask for it while the clouds thick with classroom ridicule can't install updates installing updates configuring it out for they were looking and sneezing in a hurry to avoid wiping themselves dripping with clouds leaking thick remains as another hem legs turn the corner out of watching after the backs of knees is that what they are after hardly worth the effort of having eyes having anything else above the nails of your toes. What are they after these days? These days after what they have been after all that they have been after these days knowing what it takes to take away what little is left to go enough of a dusty way between a couple of dead trees separated by a neighborhood or two someone is annoying over there whispering about relationships formed out of people looking up at those awkward moments catching someone else's eyes looking up or over into that awkward moment made out of someone else's eyes that look as if you just exited the foulest stall. I've told him once actually I didn't tell him what I saw the other night or some time in between me and her the one with the dress that the rough bench couldn't let go but the rest of the crowd could not plenty of ifs, ands, ors, and buts in their short sentences long on ire and wide on bumping in to her her ideas of the sky when it still had space for sounds from mouths before they became twisted into pretense and sham eventfulness.
"A $1.37 for your thoughts. I know I know it sounds steep but I get tired of the change sliding around in my night stand and it's not enough for a chocolate bar that'll melt before I get it in my mouth in this oven of a place I can't get out of or enough for a soda and the cost has gone up if you haven't noticed and I know you have noticed so fuck that I want to get rid of the change or I'll put the coins on your eyelids if my all ready shitty mood gets any worse."
"I was just looking at the ceiling at the ceiling tiles."
"I can see that. What were you thinking and I thought I told you to keep your eyes closed."
"My eyes burn if I keep them closed."
"How do you sleep?"
"Not very well. Plus I don't have to do anything."
"I am the one with the hair-cutting equipment."
"Isn't it over there by your mirror? I did ask for a shampoo? My head's in the sink right? This is the sink?"
"What makes you say that? How do you wake? With a stare? With a case on your mind with a staircase in your head? I'm hearing I'm hearing right now or was it sooner earlier than now when the world when the world was I have to close my eyes but I don't want you to slip out of my sight out of my vision statement don't pause don't slow down at least not too much and just enough to keep going so the end so the ending doesn't come off as a question. What was I saying? It went over my the front of my blouse under this uniform ripped my blouse on my day off got called in Janet was sick again like I was it went right over the front of my uniform over my breast where my breast used to be I have to close my eyes but I don't want you to slip out of my sight I'm hearing I'm hearing right now or was it sooner earlier than now when the world when the world was always an oven."
"I just wanted to know if my head is in the sink the back of my head it is a little wet but that could be due to you cutting me a little too closely as you are wont to do."
"You're the one talking about wanting to do whatever the hell he wants. Looking up at the ceiling your eyes moving in the L-shapes of a knight from one tile to the other. You can reject my stab in the dark all you want but you know and have even admitted it yourself that you've been hit right behind the ear lobe left one I think I know definitely behind the left ear lobe. When I was about 9 years old I was in a chess tournament they had it in the gym which was the cafeteria they had all the tables out and I think my board was even set up near where I had eaten and the stains from my lunch of salami with mustard the yellow splotches were still there and I was thinking all I was thinking about was getting rid of those yellow splotches couldn't get rid of my stupid moves I wanted to get rid of those yellow splotches."
A title credential doesn't
balance out anything
puts you in a tube
sliding down a rectal cavity
out into the world
where it stops
where you stop
until you realize
you have to get up
and run and hide
stand in the shadows
by the window
until the Sun comes out
to play with your competence
want to be back
she does he does
where they can pretend
they didn't fall in
stepped too close to the edge
of the machine's gaping ass
what a premium fracture
right down the middle of each
of your eyes
writing smaller with your looking
averting your cluelessness
from the space filled in
by their existence
again
washcloth too dry
to break up any sign
of my foolish being here
- Max Stoltenberg
Betting on nothing hold the barred degree of lack of excitement nothing on betting she can't hold her denim and it was used by some what do you call them him? them who have all the fucking everyone else the clouds spark in the night and your neighborhood your house seems to become so thin like all the rest of your life has done in your brain in your memory's asphyxiation like stretching the lips of a balloon or the way questions have always done to your own mouth drawn across the classroom and into that white screen where it rolled up over the top of the chalkboard over his balding head sweating with hatred for me and my diminishing friends. Relax they tell her to relax and fuck that and that just doesn't work nothing works working all the time sleep becomes a large flat rock breaking away from the face of a larger rock leaning towards a dam. Nosing towards a hole in the clouds of dust mentioning the contingent and necessary mixing them up as this open mouth fills with miscalculations turning too early again going down that road this road looking at the same unfamiliarity over and over merging into the harsh live stream rippling with static the rats retreating between the alphabetized spinal columns all repeating after me not after me after themselves, "It isn't a problem. It isn't a problem," saying it through the glass filled with scrabble tiles or was it another game repeated after me repeated after them after them damn it after me fuck me. I can tell can't tell what have I been saying all this time? Can't understand a fucking thing they're saying all too well clear as a button down button up shirt with a coffee stain on about the size of a dead baby's footprint what a waste of coffee how can one remember which leg the shit rolled down under the cuff ankle warm in the embarrassed winter.
They had regretted taking the stairs half of them had regretted because she could never count on him to regret anything and that was just the way in the stairwell and very little was well in there depressed by memories a quarter of a dozen an eighth of a half dozen and many others that had struck her like tiny pieces of wall or some minuscule bugs several of them insects and many others that had struck her annoying thoughts that ricocheted inside and outside of her especially against her neck against her she was used to that not going down another flight calling down to him looking at the dark rectangle for a head his head of tangled greasy hair to continue orbiting the drain of the lower tract of their building not their building just a architectural cadaver that hadn't ruptured enough to expel them into the desert's artery gummed up with the excretions of the contemporary plazas of carcinogenic incorporations. She leaned on the rail to apply her brakes always applied too late.
"We should have taken the dumb waiter instead."
"The damn what?"
"I didn't know it was called that. I could have sworn it was what my uncle told me it was."
"It smells like someone's microwaving popcorn."
"Burnt popcorn."
"My uncle didn't have a scrotum."
"I don't want to know how you found that out."
"He told me."
"I thought you were going to offer the usual my uncle took a nap on the rocks by the beach cover story."
"And then he showed me."
"Are you getting any closer to anything remotely like the first floor?"
"They burn popcorn in accounting don't they?"
"I thought it was in training where they had a constant reek of overcooked shit."
"That's the bouquet of singed muscle in training but I thought they were in the other tower."
"No wonder so many of us are out of compliance with the 17th floor bridge being damaged because they didn't want to cough up for maintenance."
"They still expect us to make it across with a third of the floor missing and their obsession with transcendence."
"I'm nodding off up here. Just come back and we'll try stairwell D, C, no D, D."
"Are you sure about that DD?"
"I knew a cashier at one of the gas stations where I used to live who told me about one of his mother's teachers who was known as Mrs. DD. Those were on her headstone, initials, DD was her initials."
"Headstone?"
"When I nod off I start to have the same dream of being in a cemetery where the headstones are close together moving in towards me like the cubicles we have upstairs."
Anxious head on a hot pillow worrying that it went through twice sucking out too much of what is left too soon before it is replenished replenished only with enough to make one sick in the stomach indigestion's heat fountains up into those thoughts that repeat locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked open to what crawls out of the desert like you like me made it across don't know what I was thinking to make it across the desert to here and now I always know what I am thinking over and over indigestion's heat fountains up into those thoughts that repeat locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked forgot to lock locked forgotten to lock locked open to what crawls.
"Are you listening? I was telling you about the cemetery not the cemetery the cashier not the cashier his mother not his mother the headstones are you listening? Are you coming back like I told you? Like I asked you? Always wanting me to be so polite not draw anything towards me except those headstones but that wasn't what I was really wanting want to talk to you about what he wanted to talk to me about probably made it up what he was telling me that day I couldn't print out a receipt and I needed it to keep track make sure there was enough left enough left and there is always enough left and it keeps me so polite when I'm out so as not to draw anything towards me except those headstones and I scream when no one is around and my throat crackles stings as I fear a hand to pull me out of the house out of this box into the desert in the center of the circle of them turning myself around to come back to where they started to come back to the why won't you come back why aren't you listening are you coming back like I told you like I asked you always wanting me to be so polite not draw anything towards me except those headstones but that wasn't what I was really wanting want to talk to you about what he wanted to talk to me about probably made it up what he was telling me that day I couldn't print out a receipt and I needed it to keep track make sure there was enough left enough left and there is always enough left and it keeps me so polite when I'm out so as not to draw anything towards me except those headstones."
- Max Stoltenberg
Crap
looked at them
say that and swell
negatives positively repulsive
my actions are fly paper
on this plane with a search engine
fueled by shit running on full
cats shelved on blackened seats
lots of things sharp things
going through people
eyes pierced with heartburn
grass on fire
they call it grass
dried up wire
threading its way
through dividers for classes
cancelled due to increased
enrollment fantasies
bras with plastic nipples
shaped to punctuate
what goes ahead
doomed ventures
middle initials
smashed between voids
on the couch
faint
faint eyes
smiles disappearing
middle initials
smashed
- Max Stoltenberg
I always thought or so I figured that the upper case managed to erect a false sense of pride in humble middles she outlined her breathing in and out tortured for being in the Sun in the Sun wouldn't that be a return the lady would stare at you in contempt long after you sizzled out of recognition to crinkle back into a bloody twilight marred with with with with I feel I feel or so I figured that the upper case managed to erect a false sense of pride in humble middles she outlined her breathing in and out tortured for being in the Sun in the Sun putting it together putting together the money the money that is a joke in the Sun tortured with residence after abiding in the skipping of time as it glances off the last spill you made I made we made I always thought or so I figured that the that I feel I feel crazy I got that term from work from my friends from my family from people my family hung out with when they used to hang out with people and complain about them the next day or because they couldn't fall asleep on the other side of the wall where I listened not being able to fall asleep.
I lifted the bottle with hardly any resistance due obviously obvious now due to its emptiness obvious now I stop going to him the password the code the answer I've made up to the question by falling down out of her my mother to the ground thunking it out for myself after having before having little to go on so much to go on enough to go on that fit this in front of me within me and now the obvious now that I start to see not see so clearly as I start to slip out of the car of attention to this these events these introductions to people who smile their smiles overrun their boundaries and spill and unravel the wool over the eyes mention that to the inspector and she just might see to it that you'll need to come back and wait in that line over there pointing at it with this finger with this finger I thee could never put all the books back and they're watching me to confirm that I have been copying someone else's lack and the article mentioned you not in a very good light but it did mention you the kind that comes through like a wet sack forced through a hole in the overcast.
It's another day, but have you seen or spoken with the counter and what remains of her family what a way to treat someone who counts life seems to be about getting rid of where it wants to add itself who has a voice for sitting with three different pants and trying to hide their penchant for unzipping and pretending to listen and we have always said a buttload is a lot and meanwhile back to me laughing at what I thought you said and you didn't mean it didn't mean haven't meant anything and neither have I we pretend to both have known that pretend it isn't true or I say that when I haven't been paying attention so much for another day.
"What is this?"
"Your receipt a receipt."
"What am I going to use a receipt for?"
"When things get back to where they can get back to something sort of organized but not as much as they were when we complained about things being too organized."
"So you finally admit it."
"Admit what?"
"After forgetting and neglecting and forgetting to give me a receipt you give me one when it no longer means anything."
"I've given you a receipt for every little transaction between us down to exchanging looks."
"After I've had to remind you most times."
"Even when many looks were vegetative scans of my surroundings. I am surrounded by meaninglessness as my mind freezes under the harsh sun of the desert. Scratching my skull has proven futile."
"Is that another bunch of dried blood in your hair?"
"Probably and it's too late to write any of this down and so I'm saying it over and over again until I get sick of my own voice the repetitions and hearing it and now I know you have woven me into stitching of forgetting and neglecting and forgetting where neglect is the middle child."
"You also admit that you would prefer things to not get as far back as certain groups would promote certain points along the space-time continuum."
"What certain groups?"
"And why do ask that question?"
"Because I want to know."
"Sorry, I'm not going down that road along the space-time continuum."
"You do that thing my therapist used to do where I would ask him a question and he would ask me why I asked the question to get to what was underneath my question underneath my skirt is more like what he was interested in."
"Whatever happened to your therapist?"
"I think I heard he always wanted to get out of the desert."
"And did he?"
"I think I heard he spent all of his money so he could get to some island that sank into the ocean well it didn't sink the ocean climbed on its shoulders and pushed it down until it drowned like a bully at the community pool."
"More like a criminal, bullies don't follow through."
"The bullies I had growing up followed through."
"Then your bullies were criminals."
"None of them as far as I know ever got their comeuppance because no one ever followed through and I suppose that's criminal as well whether there's follow through or no follow through it's criminal."
as I start to slip out of the car of attention to this these events these introductions to people who smile their smiles overrun their boundaries and spill and unravel the wool over the eyes mention that to the inspector and she just might see to it that you'll need to come back and wait in that line over there pointing at it with this finger with this finger I thee could never put all the books back and they're watching me to confirm that I have been copying someone else's lack and the article mentioned you not in a very good light but it did mention you the kind that comes through like a wet sack forced through a hole in the overcast.
It's another day, but have you seen or spoken with the counter and what remains of her family what a way to treat someone who counts life seems to be about getting rid of where it wants to add itself who has a voice for sitting with three different pants and trying to hide their penchant for unzipping and pretending to listen and we have always said a buttload is a lot and meanwhile back to me laughing at what I thought you said and you didn't mean it didn't mean haven't meant anything and neither have I we pretend to both have known that pretend it isn't true or I say that when I haven't been paying attention so much for another day.
The tape the tape is wrapped around the box the tape is wrapped around the box filled with the dog's ashes as the bottom line fades in and out and the icons pop in and out of existence or above and below the surface where they sink or hang in there ready to answer anyone who asks who cares to ask who acts like they give a shit learning anything so they can sprinkle meaning on their food for thought and what it really looks like when it comes out the back of them. He thought they had three rolls of tape one of them is empty two of them are empty he knew they had only one roll of tape turning it around to find where he can separate the adhesion from itself.
Surviving for another semester
of depositing its gravel
in the oven of not very notable
whispered anxieties
rubbed out between fingers
scolded by the night's lack
lack of sleep
dreaming of drills between toes
as they grow together
and they call this
growth
- Max Stoltenberg
