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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
The icons were missing
Desperate for warmth
entering into it the wet fur
posing as a cavernous lesson
for tucking oneself in
for the evening out of experience
blah blah blahing studded aftertaste
long in the abstract
short in the specific
widening in the excuses
thinning in the reason
shaved for emptiness
close to the sand trap
inspiration turns to cursing
swearing up and down
and in and out
sweating with nothing tagged
barcodes deciphered into DNA
cramps blustering into soliloquies
wind passes through the branches
of flesh gathered into curved air
around corners rounded off
into blurred vision
transcending grammar as looks
as looks multiply into mathematical
hatred for this observer's points
numbed with lightheaded
avoidance of bent people above below
between the shits you take
that is how your life my life
is broken up into units of
defecation punctuated
with the expelled unsaid
made with a lonely tongue
drying out under clouds
thickening with disgust
He picks it up
paper wrinkled from neglect
forgotten scribbling hazards
of the mind's sharp turns
rollercoaster ramblings hunting
for the bark worse that the night
darkening every day with its fists
tumbling into broken necks
stomachs burn with menus
seeing the table underneath
chalk tablets stencils pierce
the sky's belly as the back aches
with weariness routine allegations
of the exercises in disillusioned
frustration building up
meditative congestion in
the here and now of pretending
to forgive acting like it means
something anything
wasted another smile
to cover a hole where the elephant in the room
recycled nature in murkier shades
of the broken down
- Max Stoltenberg
Ripped shirt
business like any other
tie in the trash
morbid fecal cattiness
tepid drumstick chipping
away at the smile
drying up stomachs
of care dripping with nausea
nasty naughty download
fingers tripping over ideas
trampling distraction
into the landscape
conveyed into the vanishing point
of the horizon's laminator
fuck tomorrow
tomorrow fucks everything back
fuck
Toppled blocks of care
folded napkins
opened by gusts of death
gnawing at profiles
echoed back between
tongues hesitant now
hesitant still
boom and freeze
stick it to me
handling the chuckle
before it deems the needle
for drawing for taking
for withdrawing
for not exchanging
anything but the cause anything but the door
towards an analysis
of progress hurtling us
forward to the place
we want identify hide
that stuck menu
plastered with the clearing of our throats
- Max Stoltenberg
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
