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Up the stairs
to the top of the building
thoughts don't go this high
and where they stay
hang out and scheme against
going back down
returning to the exit
leaving the entrance back
where it rejects belonging
cliffhangers are for those
who gulp their breath
into bar-stools knocked over
into next chapters
next diversions from guessing
the next cuts into the bark
into the chalk coughing
with teeth spat into wine
nor shall you afix the lines
those little lines
different thicknesses
like peering at them
through a round glass
rounded into a parking lot
lost on the way to rows
rows of students
bored to missions
templates put together
for them rearranged
into pieces of cereal
flakes I believe
I believe flakes
into dandruff falling
snowing onto the hills
of nothing much
What the slope represents is the change collecting in your end-table the number of cars that fit into that plastic box where in the dark corner are two voices arguing over the price of their decision they are trying to make separately individually another one obtained a grade another on top of the other one if it can even fit on top or more so underneath less assholes what the fuck does the slope indicate anyway the number of cars that fit into that plastic box say it again and disturb the villa emptied hollowed out and nothing green remains nothing brown just off-white a peeling of spackle didn't get very far just far enough to wheeze into another debate between cells between poles of life and you know that feeling that feeling of suicide when your life feels like a cold burger or more like you are sitting in your own worn out pants full of your own shit and you don't even look up why bother noticing again that same noticing of the box you are in that is inside out.
- Max Stoltenberg
He didn't go and he wandered off into his routine a chosen reject deemed from before under the watchful spill of stars obscured by polluted dawn where she'd like to go outside the box he held down with his bloody hands stinking of where he felt himself behind his phone turned about to look at his tunneled vision bored into obliviousness. He was born into oblivion's vomit cast out into the world of rectangular glances through porridge and smoked cigars falling out of your bearded lady's discomfort tuned to a station wagon's rear smelling of napkins getting up to scarf and squatting down to digest fuming speech into the ears of question marks erased by opinionated plates smashed against kitchen floors over heads splitting into couches wet from the tongues of dogs.
Where she ran off from was made out of cardboard these days and days to come to come not if exhaustion had anything to not say about it withheld words sinking into pillows held up along the sides of brains that run on full tanks of worry knocking and chalking it up to technology the technology that uses people has always used people to drown in their own waste.
The drawing blew over
the concrete wall
stained with what
the notes disappeared from
the dirt backyard
littered with when
the scribbling faded into
the narrow alley
clogged with why
- Max Stoltenberg
And then they separated for good for worse for themselves for each other's other standing by the counter waiting for that fly to land far enough away to hit it with the swatter without letting it know they were each of them was swatting at the fly that had landed on all those piles that surrounded what was left of their neighborhood draped in dry avoidant eyes that looked at dimmer displays while the student attempted to swallow and didn't answer the question was never very good at answering questions or posing them never was and don't think that will ever get much of even a little better ask away and they or each of them or only one of them or neither of them will tell you withhold or still won't know how to consider a casual walking by a lumbering by as you get a sense of your internal organs stealing the sheets from each other.
Existence is a bad idea way past its expiration date. And the bugs all along were not the nuisances swatting at each other with our dots and dashes and blanks. Imagine nothing. The apartment reeked of the future tense sniffing for an earlier smearing of the interior design fiasco. Stretch these hands and wait and wait for no one to show up only look over your shoulder yeah right wigs are strewn all over the road between closed stores smashed windows hidden behind trees emaciated by time by each of them playing around them. Grinding grinding grinding grinding grinding.
- Max Stoltenberg
It starts with a title
It starts with a label
It starts with a question
It starts with a guess
It starts with a pun
It starts with a refrigerator magnet
It starts with a sliding ass to the floor
It starts with a blinking and twitching
It starts with a spill
It starts with an empty bin
It starts with a missing limb
It starts with a typo
It starts with a pause
It starts with a pass
It starts with an excuse
It starts with a cause
It starts with a just because I said so
It starts with and I didn't want to come today
It starts with a skipped line
It starts with not looking more carefully at my baggage that you took that you took for your own and you had to drag it across the carpet across the metal of the mechanical sidewalk that ends at the missing tile in the ceiling opening onto a dark upper level where you will step very carefully not at all until you keep walking carefully around each other napkins there are napkins in my mouth who put them there who put them in my soupy next steps step very carefully not at all until you keep walking carefully around each other and put your lips on the refrigerator door and can't open the brown lettuce been there behind the magnet of the shape your state of mind is in until it tears itself away from that battery and starts over again and it starts
it starts with a familiar mistake
it starts with a pain in your fingers
it starts with that blankness working its way up into your aorta
it starts it starts it starts
it starts
They are watching this this is watching for where they are several weeks ago deflating the time bomb next to the oven stepped into it stuck to the bottom of this shoe-string budget not moving a muscle except when it escapes him and orbits around her navel a stagnant pool of excess trappings squeezed out of the peroxide analysis and she stares at you and stares at you and then asks no more questions marching up the stairs to the next expectation in getaway hideaway from no one because they are watching this this is watching for where they are several ago deflating the time bomb next to the reminder that clicks something in your jaw most of your jaw away from what you've neglected to do or think about unless you are attempting to fall asleep tried that one again.
She went to the store and couldn't find anything that had a color dark enough for her to find the abyss she rolled over into the other night and it led to the nightmare about the houses and the meteors and it went on for however long nodding off tormented her into thinking pretending she was away from the front, but she had slipped into the back where it was even more of the nonsense dripping through the ceiling over her pillow and into her ears slapping punctuating the irritants stuck between the lips chafed with his guff monster tilting the highway not very super twisting wringing out the cars straining out the have-nots.
They haven't been watching this this has not been watching them for wherever they are parades in traffic jams where the mezzanine spills out onto the courtroom floor black robes wigs and masks piled up for burning and no one has a match as they watch each other avoiding each other's eyes each other's whites of their eyes flashing along the wet curbs of the evening abbreviated by the tangles of extension cords and surge protectors asleep at the dead hamster wheel.
- Max Stoltenberg
The darkness is calling me nagging me to come over and sit down squat by its bowl of nightmares and vomit my heart into it and listen to the crushing sound of valves smashed into each other and say what words they are what drenched images they are could have are not without light without purpose without me within me like knives left in organs ready to fly into oncoming droning inhumanity it's part of its nature born with it between dark red thighs sweating with effort wasted on suffering this life of torture expectations dancing in the middle of brandished weapons and smirks today tomorrow the same number decreasing value what the fuck does it matter stupidity is in abundance set on fire by pompous righteousness glistening along oil slicked hairy testicles bloody embers sticking to the scrotum of the straight and narrow minded. Dirtbags in the wind scum in the dust slapping dried out faces that happen that happen to be in our way as we were on our way to expire in the desert but no we go past our date way past our date clumping together into larger chunks in the weeds rolling about in the razor wire uncoiling itself from the staves of the music spread across the nothingness called civilization this was it and still is what it is what a thing what a thing to spit into someone's misunderstanding that shrivels up into even harsher sores skin surface that doesn't bother to hide the pitfalls anymore just the advertisement to move out here crash land here just a resident permanent resident of the outside.
"Why are you waving at it?"
"It waved at me."
"It's just a shape a fucked up shape animated programmed to do that."
"I know. It just makes me well less sad a little less sad than she did well he did he made me sadder than she did in the end."
"End? Did you say end?"
"I did so kill me and make an end of me."
"I forgot what I was going to say."
"You mean you forgot what they were going to say. Your words my words our words they don't belong to us."
"You're full of shit."
"I am because they're full of shit been that way since before they were taught how to teach me to make stuff up. Made the whole thing up. We're not getting anywhere."
"I already told you there is no end."
"I can smell it even out here. There's no escaping it."
"What? I know it's me decaying sorry it's taking so long."
"Not just that. There's no escaping that smell of their attempts to erase all the things they keep repeating in their vain attempts to mix it up a bit try to find new expressions new phrases new metaphors and stories scraped up from the fractured pots cracks worming their way through everything trying to erase all the things they keep repeating to convince us to keep going along with their offers erasing and wiping and sprays and sanitizer can't get it out of my nose even out here outside in the open nothing filling up more and more crowded with all their erasing."
Told the dark
to shut up
and it got even quieter
and the silence
is what peeled the side
of my mind away
exposing all the lack of effort
on my part that's what it's about
what it's been about all this time
this wasted time
hardened with the crust
of my hands the only efforts
my hands have ever really made
wrapping them around the thick
headstone of my stubbornness
not budging for any love
that asks where I've been
what I've done
on the stairs leading down
to the pit covered in the thinning
reddened skin bleeding with
the friction of re-entering the Earth's
atmosphere from the void
that is the rest of everything else
separated by the cold
that locks the heat in
melting our vision
polluted by the spaces
between what holds us together
clinging with the static
of our anxiety
bed-ridden to be reawakened
back into the drudge
- Max Stoltenberg
If I recall and if I cannot it would be a pressed point ironed on a board flung across the room in the same complex where they cut back on those on those if I recall and if I cannot it would be a pressed point ironed out on what she would say was her last chance for him which was over much sooner much earlier than he was willing to admit he already knew realized in his sleep that interrupted overwrote his plans his agenda his itinerary for the bacon sneezing up that ass far up between fire escapes overlooking that thin parking lot in the back where the tumbleweeds had their meetup to discuss phrases that dissolved in their mouths and not on their steno pads where they could take it out on each other trying to make it work if you will and you will cover the planet in the shroud of your hypocrisy bent on orbiting around my looping thoughts just to make sure they don't wander too far from the passenger seat made for passenger seat polishing this ass this wrinkled expanding rumpled ass excusing itself for another thumbing your nose at images from one to the other and returning to face the next line of discourse the next corner to turn and if I recall and if I cannot I cannot and that is that so they they never show up not here somewhere away from the drain clogged with whatever smells like that the hushing through the glass of the window this cold ear sticking for the winter to the dead inside my bandana stinking of whatever has that drain stagnating like a gut underneath that heart ready to stuff that gasoline drenched scarf down your throat and light up your dark places with incendiary remarks and that is going to leave it as is. Can't cannot block that call from the man standing on the roof of that car red looks like some burgundy remember drinking that bottle of that stuff we got at that party well it wasn't quite a party some going away for someone we hardly not because we weren't long enough and we're there long enough we just didn't acknowledge her enough and now we admit in this empty room all empty except for the screws laying on their sides that we actually don't give didn't give a shit and we keep telling them our cover story that we already gave at the office not anywhere anyone would remember but in a better spot maybe like the one over there where people forget what happens because they don't give much of a shit to look over that way there over there where people forget what happens. And we lie lay somewhere between the cats that the world is made for and the feral cats that the indignant that the world is not made for anything resembling the leaning more towards where the red needle leans against the unhelpful rocking in the gutter spitting out the last pieces of vomited samples and we lie lay somewhere between the cats that the world is made for because it is not made for us or maybe it is has been all along bought and paid for waiting for us to fuck up and house us again and again returning thinner and thinner grayer and grayer until we lie lay somewhere our sweating heads dripping with madness.
- Max Stoltenberg
