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A mouth collapsed
across the desk dirtied
by silence and loud looks
perhaps to lift one's punctured head
up into the flames of the Sun
clouds are sticky notes
floating reminders of useless barriers
to which a dark hat
surrounding thoughts relentless
spinning until the gravity
brings them back to the center
of horror
those nightmares again
porcelain mountaintop
articles of holes dumping
forgotten mottos
known all too well and cut
into eyebrows painted
with self-consciousness
recognition of what is
over my head is up here
stop staring at my eyes
her our what is
over my head is up here
- Max Stoltenberg
The woman behind the counter argument she was having an argument with the man over how they remembered or failed to remember things, events, each other, they never forgot each other's faults no matter how hard they tried. The night before it had been the photographs in several plastic drawers and how they whispered to both of them is that how it sounded the silence narrowed into either whispers of regret or tinnitus. Bold face typed lies stuck to the inside of your jaw post-nasal dripping into eating our own thoughts the words of our own thoughts cognitive snot.
Green I want to go somewhere green and take a breath that doesn't feel like choking on half a dune more than half more than half our lives choking coughing below the line you and your counter your counter argument a command of language I can only read in a faked deeper voice disposing of phrases and turns of phrase you startle as I miss another turn distracted by that time when you found the foot of a bird and told me about how huge your backyard seemed to you when you were young and how you rode on our tricycle around the neighborhood where you lived where you wandered off where your tricycle stopped in the crack of the sidewalk of your conscience of your desire to get up and wander and wander you delightful blue-eyed dream that woke up in my forgetfulness.
"Where are you going?"
"Outside."
"Did the bins blow over again?"
"It looks like they did, but it's hard to see."
"Why don't you wait if it's hard to see?"
"I was going to invite you to go with me."
"Or did you just think of me because I reminded you?"
"You remind me of a lot of things."
"You're too generous."
"Not enough in my usual estimation. Speaking of, I found a receipt in one of your back pockets."
"A receipt? That must be an old one. Brings me back to when we could do that."
"Do what? Buy stuff?"
"That, too, but I meant when we could actually worry about you know subtraction."
"It was always subtraction wasn't it?"
"Mostly. When are you going?"
"I'm debating."
"Are they at it again?"
"Like nihilistic cats."
"Let me know when they've exhausted each other."
"If I think of it."
Destiny flattens the pillow
deflating vision into darkness
empty fruit
hollowed out
and full of ants
musical leaking
running along the familiar paths
worn out by the same old
same old
branching out associations
like her hair growing back
from the fallout
machines crushing her body
that's all they do
- Max Stoltenberg
The math was overly haunted with multiplication and division and wrapped in burritos of noncommutative geometry stuffed with pads of steel trying to make it last as it sent its needles into her thumbs quite by deliberated tantalizing gum drooping from under the table his pants were open not that open for developments of a parenthetical kind following on the heels of their yelling all the carrying on loud parental escalation and even at the mall a word if you will now around the corner behind the what's the name for it her everyone including me have continued to underestimate her with our impatience along the way of this overlong monotonous excuse for a chapter that should close including other branches and when we stroll by if we feel like it and see their shopfront sign shrink more and more lines contemptuously peeled off.
He opened the front door and stepped out onto the sidewalk pathetically attempting to ignore his place of work's mutilated legend and removing his hat addressed the crowd that was not there that had dispersed in sporadic installments of passersby avoiding and eluding.
"I will speak in a manner possibly not familiar to some, but I would hope more in tune with those who do appreciate the esoteric references of a worker drone and a failed candidate for interim assistant manager perhaps in the tone of my mother now dead not just dead expired for close to a decade as she used to say, just because you set the kitchen tablecloth on fire doesn't qualify you to set the world ablaze with your passion. Twice I have had to emerge almost twice only once I have had to emerge from my routinely criticized weekly newsletters foisted upon me by those who deny their right to an imagination although their insults betray a taste for the unoriginal. I can tell by the looks on your faces if your heads were turned this way if any of you were actually walking down this street or anywhere in the proximity of this septic tank of a county that invoking one's familial and wounded tongue just makes it unintelligibly swollen in this mouth of the unexpelled. I have given up on stories. I was born with a brain that probably will never make it to the end of recounting and recalling to others without distracting myself before getting there. My eyes still look out the window waiting for trees to pass by but delayed by neverending stretches of waste voided by people who can't cook or make things last can never give up on hostile attachments stained humans perfumed with forgiveness that we pretend doesn't reek with memory categorized into top 10 lists moments drowned out by commentary that has been charred with another layer of analysis. What it has been about men women and children unaccompanied by description only differentiated by medication united by common pharmacies locations engraved with impoverishment. It would be better that I not return resign instead of someone else another piece of shit dislodged from between those on the floor above, but I shall slink back before the heat reminds me of my lack of composition. I can be found in Cubicle 8 toward the back adjacent to the dead cockroach which has not been disposed of yet. My colleagues prefer to compare themselves to others who have eluded being sentenced to this employ while I have chosen to contrast myself with the vermin and decaying elements that crawl and lie stalled about."
Almost an even set of years
under the stairs of abuse
darkness envelops her breath
wrapping anxious arms
about her bosom
the timer has gone off
and the blame runs out
into the muffled night
jets circle the inmates
housed in the neighborhood
of numbers defined
but not linking as cleanly
as understandably
as once supposed
teeth have fallen
out and into
the vanishing puddle
- Max Stoltenberg
Notorious for putting on the kind of smile that would take down a plane of reality at a distance of up to one solar system stepping up the blood feathers were drenched and the perch was inverted without a washer to do the past week's load of dirty laundry. He took him to the window and had him look at the crowd that had dispersed. His new partner had denied there ever was a crowd. So, he shared with him what the next door neighbor had told him about the table the kids had dragged out of the house and how it only had 3 legs and one of them stood by that corner because that was their job their assigned task their reason for being a part of the little band of kids to begin with and while they stood there they thought of being outside and their pants had been too small for so long was this growing up and when whatever you were involved with didn't have enough legs to stand on you were the leg? Was that it? Hard to pay attention to what else was going on and the crowd that was alleged to have gathered to see not much of a crowd if there ever was one.
I'm repeating myself less
sometimes
but he keeps listening
to amuse me or himself
or hear it again
really repeating myself less
sometimes
the words are roped
or coiled in the garage
tried to consolidate the boxes
accidentally broke the one
that holds them all together
my brain is running out
the sides of my neck
that's where I feel the most
pressure
escaping
- Max Stoltenberg
Unnurtured unrecognized
Spaghetti on the tree
with damaged gifts underneath
floating boats in circles
maelstroms of habit
nerdy requests swatted away
elevator never comes
prematurely closing for the night
the day's illnesses wrapped
in leftover present paper
the present usually gets papered over and
sent to the lavatory
without a roll
so many parts to play
juggled along with melons
and bowling shoes
forgot to spray those
that bug that knocked
at the door the other door
had to have been just shy
of 4 feet tall
broke the lock
twisting it so hard
both sides
not going anywhere
- Max Stoltenberg
Listening to the sound of the air conditioner kicking on and off so frequently a part had probably failed within it just like some part had failed within the head that was listening were the senses deceiving themselves no they were usually very reliable it was just everything else. A fondness for cliffs that shrank into garbage heaps imagining a looking over the great landfill the Earth made holes in it and then tried to fill them back up and smooth them over so no one will notice until the inevitable collapse just like the head that was listening to the air conditioner fancy that conditioning the air with all that mucus flying out in the middle of a conversation plugging up ears as if underwater in the air conditioned so well so frequently sitting up in bed stretching to loosen the muscles used less to lift the chin and remind it of the longest act of drowning.
"We'll clean that up later."
"I think they are going to notice."
"Maybe or we can rely on them becoming too desensitized."
"That's the problem we're relying too much on that."
"And not ourselves is what you're zeroing in on."
"I was going to say that the only thing we can rely on about ourselves is that we're unreliable."
"It's more a matter of threat level."
"They don't bother with updates anymore. When was the last time you recall them updating us on threat levels? We just go by how much of the building is left," said Percy.
"I never knew that."
"That all the even numbered floors are gone?"
"No, that your name was Percy."
"It's not. Someone's just fucking around."
"I could do with a bit more of that. It's been years."
"You don't know what those are anymore."
"You want me to say it's been months?"
"More like years."
"See."
"But, you don't know what they are anymore."
"I don't?"
"How many days in a year?"
"I could tell you more accurately in weeks."
"I want to know in days and you don't know is the truth of it."
"For me the days fit into the weeks, but after that it's weeks and months jostling into each other trying to squeeze their corpulent asses through the doors to ride those oncoming years barrelling down the tunnel."
"I think the part of your mind that produces your metaphors has received the most blunt trauma of late."
"Of late."
"We'll clean that up later."
"Until they remind us."
"Again."
"With their threats."
"Yes, with their threats."
- Max Stoltenberg
And you didn't even get to it.
And
And you
and
wait for the next meteor the size of a hill of toilets not a large hill maybe the size of a small building or a medium sized building just partially demolished equivalent to the size of that hill of toilets full of tremendous shits
and
and you
you drove me to the airport where I thought about when I drove you to the airport and I went back to behind where the school used to be and worked on the corner of my right thumb and stare off into space and not wonder why there is more of it or less of it or remember the last time we waited for the next meteor and worked on the corner of my right thumb and noticed that the corner kept getting deeper and further away from my memory looking down on that pit we used to sit around and talk until you fell in since then working on the corner of my right thumb each scrape each dig alternating guilt and pleasure blending into a synthesis of a medium sized building partially demolished where something use to be after something before that used to be.
- Max Stoltenberg
