skip to main |
skip to sidebar
It was hanging out
Smearing between two sides of the issue
Not that it would issue
forth or down
He was distracted by the high-pitched squealing alarm his world was a chamber of notifications that wouldn't leave him alone. Echoing words from the past reminders of failure and no response he rarely had a response to the dismissive statements made by the hosts and the guests their generosity was hollowed out emptiness pushed out what he had taken from it if anything.
Had the van returned the dogs barked but they could be doing that to each other barking at vans they thought the others were barking at filling the narrow margins with shit opinions that had nowhere to go. How long did he have to wait that time the dog found something in the corner the deep hole that exposed a nail from the house being built next door or the one of his own that was losing theirs it would only be a matter of time pieces of time fractions of moments slipping off and between the fingers that picked at themselves removing rings of connection and instructions replaced and ignored.
He overheard their conversation on the other side of the wall something about a transaction and misunderstanding. A high pitched voice wanted to vent and tell a story of others not listening to their advice medical and otherwise. It was interspersed with a low toned humming responding out of obligation and a growing groaning attempt to encourage a conclusion.
- Max Stoltenberg
It could have must have been a candle the lump on the table now mostly stuck under my thumbnail a racing thought in my chance to be an erasure suddenly he took her for an assumption cursed chap though he was.
though he was
It could have must have been a candle the lump on the head rubbed by this hand her hand she put it behind her put him in her thoughts because it was expected of her in an analogy that they had another website for with photos categorized by that particular position making organs stiffen, but hold back their utterances at the last moment at the first one once they convened for a meaningless gathering after he tumbled in his fashion watching him spin around in the window what the fuck had happened to outside?
though she was
To the breeze that once made her easier to remember tilting his head back and snuffing the pen extinguishing the voice knocking ashes off that meal a supper under the roof that bulged down with contempt strung along with bulbs cloudy from forgetfulness stapled together with swathes of distraction measly misspelled expressions wheezed into a cardboard toilet paper roll stemming from an earful of regret over lips never seen again image but a conjured failure categorized by that particular position making organs stiffen, but hold back their utterances at the last moment at the first one once they convened for a meaningless gathering after he tumbled in his fashion watching him spin around in the window what the fuck has happened to outside?
- Max Stoltenberg
She stressed to him the lack of importance they both held together she more so than he. He felt his objections filling up his throat not very high not high enough to reach the fill line of his caring to speak. He stared off into the half of the wasteland she was walking away from wandering into her loneliness her isolation.
She didn't know exactly how long it had been that she had been walking wandering scraping her boots with more holes than the last time she had poked her fingers through them. Each of the holes she had imagined a passage into another time another neighborhood that she imagined was a empty as the previous previous that expression was closing in on how little meaning she felt for what was on both sides of her cavities.
Her phone was lost for who knows how much time she relied on it to tell her until the battery ran out and she no longer had any where to plug anything into anything reminding her to get up. She got up all right and he was the reason his arguments his lack thereof his look of almost saying almost thinking even he was such an even man even now evening out the darkness. She was done. She had said that. And now her loneliness welcomed her back or reminded her it was with her all along. Nothing to tell her the time beyond that and it was there was still day the Sun and its merciless frying of your comfort of what to do next. It was like the flames from millions of miles away were telling her to let that go as well. She came to a patch of cement cracked. Maybe it had been a square of a path that surrounded a pool or a park or a house filled with rooms filled with the familiar obstinate misunderstanding.
- Max Stoltenberg
A desire for it and there it went into the elevator shaft along with the ups and downs of uncourageous distortions of the world an aftertaste of misunderstandings and knowledge of nothing useful arguments that have been run over time after time in the middle of the road a favorite of the taller turning their tall backs on the shorter pauses in their day as they got shorter with me as we do that with each other to roll over and pretend to sleep worrying about what the morning dawn will send piercing through our blinds and our eyes forced shut through the night the darkness of the universe so much space invaded by so much light fuck the fire.
The crushed fauna did it look like it ever had a tail to tell it which way it could have gone to survive another tire another invention putting a spin on the air for movement for purpose surrounded by nothing so much nothing invaded by so much light fuck the fire.
"Must I go on?"
"It's up to you?"
"You don't sound sure."
"As sure as you or perhaps less."
"That is the closest thing you've said to anything resembling any transparency a glass room with walls to walk into and hurt your pride your something never quite approaching that. I've had so many people say to me: you know, to be honest with you. Let's me know that whatever they are going to say will remain in the light until the end of this sentence until it disappears into where it belongs where they belong where we all belong."
"And where is that?"
"In what we're surrounded by."
"Sales displays?"
"Behind those."
"You mean the overstock rooms?"
"Yes, the overstock rooms. We'll go with that."
- Max Stoltenberg
The ground falls to the tray melding with the deceased ways of troping and mellowing out for more uptight renditions of nauseating soliloquies pent up and squelched by cattle cubed and hammered into submissive prepositions where she took off her hairband and played with it while watching the children run off into the wash funny how dry those things are what a dry sense of humor the cracks in the desert are surrounded by piracy from above and below stretching your expressions until they come apart in all their horror and superficial ordering from the menu of repetitive lines of code.
I want her
to stop
Got no one with that didn't see it coming just stings saw it come and drip and pour like an old filthy bathtub that wants to vomit but can't but does it ever so slowly and painfully just stings.
"I want her," she said to the stuffed fish.
"To stop?" he asked looking at the tan spot by its gill knit shut.
"Among other things," she said looking past him to the china closet filled instead with papers riddled with algebra.
"Among other things?" he asked feeling like he had to shit but knew who wouldn't be able to again.
"That's what I want her for," she said thinking of the feathers that stuck to the carpet under the bed under the ceiling under the sky under the universe.
"My time here," he began squinting at her hair limp with sweat.
"Among other things?" she offered tilting her chin down to the broken vacuum cleaner under the table.
"Among other things," he trailed off in a haze of certain exhaustion.
Her notes
mixed with knuckles
expelling anxious misgivings
palms turned up then down
pretending to force stale air
to the rest of the room
the message will get across
eventually after they've left
and forgotten
all we've tried to erase
no longer scrawling it in the dirt
behind the heel prints
- Max Stoltenberg
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
