TAKE ME OUT

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


- Max Stoltenberg

NOTHING SAYS

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

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

Fragment of an Idea #178

Sleep Fight:

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

I Am the Decomposer

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


- Max Stoltenberg

TALE BETWEEN HIS LEGS

He stored his memories her memories in a pot in the cabinet in the loft that had become overrun with ants and crickets and not the kind that spoke or played fiddles just the ones that now stopped removing their dead what was the point at this point? Fortitude was a word that they almost spelled with their piles of filth they made out of their bodies climbing over each other as they gently ran out of room as they gently overran the unvacuumed loft as they gently made their entrances over and over again like shit gently leaving a crack.

She stored her memories his memories in a loaf of bread that had gone bad dreams and promises had deteriorated in the one day at a time advice of others who had moved away without giving without getting the fly-swatter dropping the tray in the desert left a bone on the clipboard no one to find it amusing whether there was someone or not reading the answers mesmerized by the clenched jaw and how it reminded her of the dent in the world moving away was less and less possible every year as the dent took its toll on the bridge tilting in her attention away from numbers and what they represent to others not her not her.

Crap came up again
Blended to the music
silent for the whispered hum
tired of weddings
tired of parties
tired of selling
being sold to at the openings
of doors and closing
of thoughts of black trees
have you seen them
next to that house 
the one where something
went wrong
or the other thing 
depending on how
you avoid looking at it
nests of wipers
ass-wipers penetrating dialogue
just between acquaintances
bumping into each other
never thought of that
what she wanted
she never thought of that
no one ever asked her
before
triple take 
slowed down
into a story
that drags into 
the roots of those
weeds that won't die

"I shook out my skirt and guess what came out of it this time?" she asked.
"A banana peel?" he answered trying not to pick his nose as he peeled some crust from the edge of his right nostril feeling the red stinging skin surface exposed and the tangled string of snot that begin to pull from inside his brain.
"In addition to that you aberration," she posed and she posed like someone who had given up caring many spoiled leftovers ago.
"Can you narrow it down a bit by category?" he asked clearing the phlegm into an interlude that reminded him of a wash he had wandered into ages back when he was less ill and less connected, "Ah the contagions of being more connected!" he blurted out suddenly.
"It's your grimy wash fixation emerging yet again," she said distracted.
"Toupée, my pet tarantula!" ejaculated he who had had no reason nor anything resembling any reason since the weekends preceding the massive barren dunes overwhelming all the housing associations. 
"Is my wig slipping off again?" she asked putting her hand to her head and contemplating the rubbing of her belly. 
"I'm rather fond of the purple one," he mused fondly reminiscing when he told himself that fiction about her being all those fictions.

She stored her memories his memories in a loaf of bread that had gone bad dreams and promises had deteriorated in the one day at a time advice of others who had moved away without giving without getting the fly-swatter dropping the tray in the desert left a bone on the clipboard no one to find it amusing whether there was someone or not reading the answers mesmerized by the clenched jaw and how it reminded her of the dent in the world moving away was less and less possible every year as the dent took its toll on the bridge tilting in her attention away from numbers and what they represent to others not her not her.


- Max Stoltenberg

MASK CONFUSION

The face outside the library was the kind that is abstractly unwelcoming nothing of the sort that could be called or referred to as kind only of a category that keeps you biting your nails and peeling your skin away to the superficial layer clinging to the poles in the ground arched back filling with the wind underneath as the dying trees around are quiet with the arid pause that the abyss over everything below refuses to let its filthy paw off the button. The shoes left behind on the hardening feet petrified with steps in a direction that led to helping no one but a scarecrow arching its back over the wind underneath as the dying trees were quiet in the arid pause maintained by the abyss above and its contemptuous and smothering hand. 

When I'm nodding off into the in-between words mouth bent in on itself or the stomach ceiling mind perhaps it is called by the castle wall castle he dropped out the back of his expression his nerves caught in the zipper plastic lips that won't fit around the moldy bread looks like someone put their cigarettes out in it or exhaled their polluted lungs into what was left of that loaf rolled over onto a flattened child covered in two-dimensional bugs sitting beneath the window without glass turn your sweaty head and notice all the piles of books crumpled in front of the library out on the side actually on her side actually as her arm swells as the rest of her body shrivels up due to overdue fees with no one to collect so they say so they thought to say until they showed up on their doorstep laying there dead legs gone pants off no pants must be with the legs might there be kids swinging them legs around pants flapping like a smelly flag.

"It's an empty snow globe is what it is."
"You're still going to have to talk to her."
"That's what happens to snow globes in the desert."
"That's what happens to snow globes in the desert when you throw them against a boulder."
"She's going to spit in my face."
"You think?"
"When I go and talk to her. That's what she's going to do and so I'm putting it off or see if I can starve myself to death."
"You've been doing that. It's just taking longer than you expected than she expected and spit in your face is what will happen next from her to you."
"You need to have a heart attack right now or within the next 6 seconds."
"Why 6? Why couldn't you just pick 5 seconds or 3 seconds maybe better?"
"Right now then heart attack in your chest erupting with death."
"We're dormant my dear fragile shithead."
"It could be her mouth has gotten too dry."
"She's been clearing her throat all morning. I've heard it. Pretty fucking obvious. She's been sick. It'll be mostly phlegm from her to you."
"From her to me."

Cut too many blinds
posted a secret in the tissues
red with dark bleeding
noticeable frankness
this time
for children of stuffed animals
of spilled drinks of allergic reactions
to horns wet with notes
incorrectly scored
dreamed about her
and now she decided
to leave


- Max Stoltenberg

WHAT KIND OF FISH IS THAT?

Are you going to reply and waste your breath or hold it as your mind squints for what to say what to avoid pleasures are elusive distractions at this point this bloody point sleeping in a puddle of your woeful tangled dreams faces without mouths or eyes that swallow you and slide you out through the bottom of the toilet back into your bed sleeping in a puddle of your inadequate reaching for something to die at the hands of your breath or hold it as your mind squints for what to say what to avoid punishments so accessible staring focused at this point this bloody point. Leave the message delete the message leave it and try just try to leave them pushed to the side as you look ahead and ejaculate through their eyes that spit you out up through the elevator stumbling out onto the puddle of coffee on your desk stroked by notes spread out so you can keep both your hands on the feet of a job blown up into lists falling as the dark rain of the shit-storm around you around and around the calendar's shaft flipping pages flipping you off to the coffin's putting a lid on it.

"Are you going to say anything?"
"About what?"
"You weren't going to say anything. You were going to pretend or wait for me to do something about it."
"It? Now they're an it?"
"Don't give me your feigned advocacy. You don't give a shit is what it is."
"I give a lot less of a shit is what it is. You'd rather argue than doing something yourself."
"You're the one not doing something. And you just admitted to why. Waiting for me to do something because I give a shit. Waiting waiting for me."
"Making me wait while you'd rather argue. You'd rather argue while you make we wait for you to do something something about the elephant in the room."
"So now it's an elephant?"
"Back to an it again?"
"Yes, an it in the room."
"Who said it's a room?"
"You did."
"I was mistaken."
"You were mistaken?"
"Mistaken about this mistaken about that mistaken about coming here mistaken about leaving there."
"Leaving where?"
"The hole that leads back up into the nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The nothing but quivering worry." 
"How long have they been slumped over like that?"
"I don't know. Since their last words I guess."
"And what do you suppose they were?"
"She was saying she had a surprise for when she got home."
"Home? That was no home for her. What did she say?"
"She said I have a surprise for you."
"That's it?"
"She said I have a surprise for you asshole."
"That's it?"
"That's it."

Helmets of hair
Helmets of stickers
Hashtags caught in the crosshairs
And now for something 
across the water 
to the drummer
under the branches
pages read through waste
floating over the top
over the top
they were


- Max Stoltenberg

SCAR ICONS

Unreliable medicated gestures
False north tied to 
epoxy wings
flapping about inside 
one's ears
sounds sounds 
unclear for today
tomorrow's portions 
of leftovers
greening and browning 
with webs of discrepancies 
been there before
been here 
not as certain 
as was originally thought 
oars in the soup sloshing onto the crotch
supposing to demolish
distanced by fantasy
talk to the palm and the thumb muscle
flexing in the scraping
of the TV tray abandoned 
by the empty room's forgetfulness
very bad paste stuck to the ceiling
where your stuck out neck
is stuck
dust from the fan 
blanketing the landscape
of your demoralization
what did the dog say?
almost like a profanity 
or an apology that it is
rehearsing for us
more gas escaping
out over its fur 
depending on the chatter
of forced enrollment 
bitter rims of packages
licked with the tongues 
peeking over mouths 
spilling embarrassment
and unbelieved memories
erased in withholding


- Max Stoltenberg

MUTE GLIMPSE

His nose was about to drip and the elbow rode the anatomy about the outskirts of town like he walked like he drifted like him listening or trying not to listen to the thoughts hitting against the passenger side of his head the rear passenger side thudding in the manner of uneaten fruit disposed of so after the fact so after the complaining deficiencies they were called and brought up as pizza crust forming into hot vomit that was just too large a bite. The napkin holder could deny it all they wanted, but there was no countering the reality its role it had to play in the events leading up to her imprisonment her early release that was never put on the table as they whispered and muttered their opinions of her and her family well they were her family self-deprecation disguised as assertiveness and insults saved for the moment that moment of blankness filling the mind as it does where the void of the universe leaks in through the atmosphere and poisons those who must go through life until death put off by turns in circumstances that send them the uneaten fruit against the passenger side of his head the rear passenger side thudding with notes and the taking of notes that seems to make no difference as the napkin holder could deny it all they wanted telling its dreams broken and pulverized to the wrong person nearby nearby that's what they used to get to her the heartless proximity.

"I was thinking, are you hearing what I'm saying?"
"If you got to the point I could tell you you could tell me if I was hearing anything anything at all if there was a point."
"It's just that you don't look like it like you're hearing me."
"Why not? What am I looking like that doesn't look like I'm hearing you besides you're not getting to the point if there is one?"
"Well, to begin with, you look like you're staring off into space."
"I am staring off into space. It's on my screen at the moment."
"Are you looking outside our galaxy again?"
"And what if I was? Are you going to tell me what is so worth hearing?"
"I was thinking about what my boss said the other day or it might have been the person in the next position above or below them."
"Why would I be interested in what you were thinking about? Decisions and action mostly action is what merits my attention that and actual water with not so much urine in it or the other stuff that gets in there or when the smoke from the burning mounds of bodies starts to lose that really putrid edge to it."
"They said something as they were leaving and locked us in the last time about attitudes and I tried not to make it about me, but, and this is where I get to what I was thinking about I mean really thinking about and when what is between my thoughts the sharp daggers that poke holes through the top of my brain and I notice how when I get something done something that has an appearance that might get their approval and I know it's not because I did anything with my musings or thought differently or more in line or applied any of their nauseating rhetoric it was because I let it go my voice that silence disguised as what might have another sit down next to you when they wondered why you were alone it was a muffling a reticence masquerading as a human with its face to the wall knitting together some bloodless clump of decades together that can be erased in seconds a browning banana peel the limb that once reached for the trap its teeth chattering our name connected with a device not recognized."

Bedtime pressed into milk
past its expiration
who is drumming?
setting on fire those
who stood one behind the other
going back to the start
start over
bare feet naked
and stepping to the rhythm
of the racing heart
fell out the window
of the plane
asleep and the powerful
clouds and the powerful
ripped the sleep
out of my eyes
kept them closed
nothing between them
remained
but returned to annoy


- Max Stoltenberg