THROUGH THIN AND THIN

Towards the door
Knob now in the shoe
Cracking balls
of feet


Losing interest
in
what was 
an it
of some
sort


Dead roaches fill pockets
Falling out along with 
pens


Don't think this will be
Of any use to anyone


Walking down hallways
Of whatever building
happens to be the compensating
chewing of the tongue
at the time
for squinting


Is this what is wanted?
Nothing is wanted
until another sign
is pinned into the skin
wear that
wear this


until the smell 
gets a room
of lonely small
shrinking back
sneezing forwards


these lines
dusty lines
thin and thin hairs
only triggered 
by the desperate fingers
of the expiring wind




- Max Stoltenberg

IN OTHER WORDS

In other words it's as before undoing what has been done so that it needs to be done again in other words repeated so as to put another nature over the last one and call it something else while it has an odor that questions work and home in other words something else has landed on the desk in other words fallen out of someone else's back door onto the desk in other words on the bed been in the pillow digging deep into the right ear left ear in other words in other directions in other words didn't read the directions on the other hand in other words the same hand the one that does the job when bathrooms are somewhere else in the same location a few more times will do it until the cat and its contortions bring with them images of vomited fur balls in other words amputated hands just the hand the same hand the one that does the job when bathrooms are somewhere else in the same location shower curtain fantasy theater closed due to complications in other words deleting all those items deleted before in other words it's as before undoing what has been done so that it needs to be done again in other words repeated so as to put another nature over the last one and call it something else while it has an odor that questions work and home in other words something else has landed on the desk in other words fallen out of someone's else back door on the bed been in the pillow digging deep into the right ear left ear in other words in other directions in other words or the same words digging for clues digging for what was buried digging in the sand at the beach until the sand becomes darker is that where she was is that where she was seen walking by like a brush stroke in a painting one brush stroke that somehow set things right for getting off course in other words it was off course from that point on in other words more off course than the deflection that curved sharper with every breath in other words the texture of the brush stroke in other words the dress she wore in other words the way the waves of the brush stroke rose and fell along her body and collapsed the most deeply into her eyes where it could all end and just ended up collected in a sink drain in other words green and orange in other words peas and carrots in other words little cubes in other words of existence in organic living spaces hewn into tiny little spaces in other words where a face once thought beautiful was soft and blurry and awkward with self-conscious in other words not one's own words from mouths that obscured eyes where everything could descend where it could all end and just collected in a sink drain lying there as a face once beautiful changed into someone else's telephone poles in other words tall thin towers dug deep into the corners of eyes blinking with mucus for suppuration that goes unanswered in other words back on track to follow along the cracks in the mind knocking on the forehead with a fist emptied of questions no point just knocking on the forehead to check on the growing number of cracks in the mind knocking sometimes on the skull above the left ear in other words right ear in other directions without directions dosages too large in words too small to read knocking on the skull checking on the growing number of cracks in the mind in other words checking if anyone is still home or work in other words an odor no longer making one question when fists have been emptied of them as they knock in other words repeating things as to put another nature over the last one and call it something else in other words it needs to be done again things need to be done again in other words it's as before undoing things that have been done.




- Max Stoltenberg

BETWEEN OUTBURSTS

Waiting is all the more awkward as the flushing of the throat runs on and on and beyond into the wall of the winter coat of the next person here for the moment the  occasion lifting curtains and silhouettes revealing the yanking of the chain.  Continues on the flushing with its inconclusive gurgling prolonging the oppressiveness of sound.  Still photography is plastered with the gore of animation slogging through a mud of humiliation. Another star is witnessed re-entering the atmosphere as their shields heat up as they crash down among the winter coats as a spotlight remains focused on the leaky plumbing of their latest utterance.  


Weeds shit wind winter wind against the winter coat of the next person here for the moment the occasion lifting curtains and silhouettes revealing the yanking of the chain.  Of the chain yanked while waiting waiting while in line waiting in line.  Line up crash down another star is witnessed re-entering the atmosphere as their shields heat up as they crash down among the winter coats embedded among the bricks of the wall between winter coats as a spotlight remains focused on the leaky plumbing of their latest utterance leaky plumbing dripping slower continues on the flushing of the throat yanking of the chain lifting curtains and silhouettes yanking of the chain.  Of the chain yanked while waiting waiting while in line waiting in line. Line up crash down another star is witnessed re-entering the atmosphere as their shields heat up heat weeds shit summer heat hot wind blowing hot dirt blowing against the dark summer window screens where eyes that cannot be seen look out upon the lifting of curtains and silhouettes revealing the yanking of the chain. Of the chain yanked while waiting waiting while in line waiting in line.  Lining up crashing down among the dark window screens embedded among the bricks of the wall between dark window screens where eyes that cannot be seen look out upon the lifting of curtains and silhouettes revealing the yanking of the chain.  Of the chain yanked while waiting waiting while in line waiting in line.  Lining up crashing down in a shower of little stars that stab or shoot back in eyes that can no longer remain squeezed so tightly closed forced open weeds shit summer heat all still there as the flushing continues gurgling inconclusive in what does not come together nor what does not come apart only to leak and slog embedded among the bricks of the wall in winter and summer embedded among the bricks of the wall.




- Max Stoltenberg

SCRAWLING WITH BONES

They had been boning up for this for up to several what were they called units of time sometime prior to the current how do you say of can't remember while they had been having been less broken up (except for the routine fracture worming its way) over more things distressing and read and skipped over and only then having stood out to them long after the countdown was started and even over skipped over.  Their crisis of so much unfinished business was a footnote of an overarching arch that had dislodged hefty chunks onto their heads or heads when they remembered to wear hats (did it matter?) or tales they thought they were in while they formed and reformed their little ensemble on and off and on again onto the path of re-careering themselves and one another through the conduits of one another's connections through the alternate feed of one another's self-employment through the upwards and downwards of one another's thumbs through the revisions of one another's preferences and profiles through the symptomatic deletions of one another's one anothers.


They had been boning up for this for up to several what were they called units of time sometime prior to the current how do you say of can't remember while they had been having been less broken up (except for the routine fracture worming its way) over more things distressing and read and skipped over all the little detailed pulverizing happening on the microscopic level while the macroscopic wiped the usual crust from the eyes that tired of the latest drift of land making space for more others to tumble into the bottom of their final frontier.


Qualmberger: Where do you suppose the last turn will take us?
Dearthton: Based on the navigational patterns of the depreciating minds steering our typical discourse, not to a very useful point.
Nadirloop: I most certainly do concur with that, but I think Qualmberger is asking about a geographical turn rather than a topical one.
Dearthton: But we were not discussing anything in the proximity of geography.
Qualmberger: And since no one has mentioned it for many portions of an age, I have yet to be able to locate any of our inscriptions.  
Nadirloop: Is that due primarily to inability or illegibility?
Vexedmoore: I would invite us to consider that no one has taken into account the possibility of reference to a turn of  a topographical nature.
Nadirloop: I most certainly do concur with that, but I think it had more to do with what I thought of as an insightful retort the other day and can't for the life of me recall what it was.
Qualmberger: How many times have we told you to write things down?
Dearthton: I confess that I have conformed to holding the fire hose of that message for many a defensive reaction as well as a thoroughly shred pair of trousers and I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to writing things down that the more one expresses oneself the more one's words work their way down the page down the ladder down the sewer down to a deeper burial.
Vexedmoore: Could be worse.  One could end up prey to a brain-eating amoeba.
Nadirloop: My sister's mother died of a brain-eating amoeba.
Dearthton: And she was very obsessive-compulsive about making lists.
Qualmberger: Why do you say your sister's mother when you could just as easily say mother.
Vexedmoore: His sister could have a different mother.
Nadirloop: No. I insist on doing that to create a resentful distance.
Qualmberger: My difficulty finding any of our inscriptions is probably a result of failing eyesight as well as an unsteady hand.
Dearthton: Are you talking about the graffiti we've made on these pieces of wood that give their weakening support to our shaky ranks?
Vexedmoore: Our rank asses you mean.
Dearthton: I'll be the first to admit that if one follows the trail of the smoking gun it leads right back to my fuming butthole.  At our decrepit age we can have our marring of nature just as much if not more than that petulant lot of whipper-snappers.  The old invented graffiti before the young of today were soiling ourselves.  Must you really have to keep bringing up some existential investigation of "inscriptions"?
Nadirloop: Existential?
Dearthton: That's not the word I was looking for.  What is it when you're trying to do something and it comes out meaning something worse?
Vexedmoore: I don't think that's what you're getting at.
Dearthton: Of course not.  That's exactly what I'm getting at.  What I'm saying is an example of a case in point.  Like this morning, I was trying to set up my dog's new bag of food and I was trying to pour the old bag into the new one and there were pockets of little old dried kibbles stuck up in the nooks and crannies of the old bag and as I tried to work them out they kept dropping at unexpected intervals onto unwanted coordinates such as any other part of the garage outside the new bag of dog food or into just about every opening in my head: my eyes, my ears, my nostrils, and one even landed in my mouth.  With all this technology one would think that after putting people in their proper place we could put things in theirs.  It was like I was cleaning out some orifice of some larger thing with a big grin on its face the face of my misfortune like I was getting hit with its uneaten food or the lint from its bellybutton or if it seemed wasted and insulting enough as embodied in the piece that landed in my mouth yet another remark expelled from its crapper hole.  I spit it out though into the new bag.  Putting things where they belong after the fact after the aftermath with my face all hot with anger and my hands shaking.  The steadiest hands have been reserved for the best shell games.
Vexedmoore: I most certainly do concur with that, but I still don't think that's what you mean at all.  You're talking about when someone is trying to make something sound better than it really is.
Nadirloop: Oh, yes.  What is the word for that?
Qualmberger: Is someone listening to a composition for large orchestra with a great deal of passages for doubled sections of trombones?
Vexedmoore: None of us has a portable working sound system anymore.  Can't even remember the last time one of us shared a poignant sequence.
Dearthton: What are all these bones lying around our bench?
Nadirloop: People bring them to the park to play fetch.
Vexedmoore: In fact, none of us has a sound portable working system anymore.
Dearthton: I think what you think you're hearing Qualmberger is not the pronouncements of orchestral instruments upon digesting a composer's notes, but denouncements from archaic sphincters exhausted from cheese, white bread, bananas, celery, broccoli, and cream of wheat.
Qualmberger: I think that you think I am thinking that the contra-bass quality of the trombone is even vaguely comparable to the sonorities of the irresolute flatulence of our languid quartet.
Vexedmoore: In further fact, none of us has anymore an imperturbable demeanor for working with an unsound system anymore.
Dearthton: These are not dog bones.  
Nadirloop: There seems to be no end to exhausting how we continue to share in one another's exhaust.
Qualmberger: I think that you think that what we all think about all day long is thinking about the end.
Vexedmoore: None of us have an end of perturbation nor medication for making an end of it let alone a go of it.
Dearthton: This looks like a thigh bone.
Nadirloop: Well, don't look at me.  It's not one of mine.  I have all my original bones.  Not a single buckle or break clean or otherwise.
Vexedmoore: Qualmberger should be one to talk when he's been wearing headphones all this time.  
Qualmberger: (holding up the cable) Look here, see?  It doesn't go anywhere.
Nadirloop: Then why are you wearing them?
Qualmberger: My ears are cold and I turned my closet and trunk in the bedroom inside out looking for my earmuffs.
Vexedmoore: When did you manage to come up with 2 months' down and 3 months' security?
Qualmberger: All right, I turned my refrigerator box upside down trying to find my old pair of earmuffs.  Are you happy?
Dearthton: Haven't been for in can't remember.
Vexedmoore: On behalf of the rest of us, I most certainly do concur with that, but why bother keeping all that cabling attached?
Nadirloop: Must be one of those sets that comes with the 20-footers.  Seems excessive.  I'd continually knock over coffee cups and get it tangled in the phone and the blender if I wandered around with them on.  Of course, it's not an issue in a refrigerator box.  Silver lining in the dampened cardboard if you know what I mean.  I'll be damned if I can remember that word for trying to put a more polished spin on something.
Qualmberger: I thought the cord might come in handy when I really felt like offing myself.
Dearthton: You're too feeble to climb up any of the trees in the park.
Qualmberger: That doesn't seem to blossom into anything practical.  By the time I make it to the park I'm overcome with that sort of anesthetized sensation and I mostly don't give a shit about anything.  One gets fed up with waiting for the coughing up enough blood thing to carry you.
Vexedmoore: Mostly don't give a shit, eh?  Is there any part of you that feels more miserable and despairing?
Qualmberger: There is, but I usually experience that as a sinking feeling in my feet concentrated in the ankles.
Nadirloop: And then how does it manifest itself?
Qualmberger: Then the physiology of the sinking sensation ends up discharging through the holes in my socks.
Dearthton: Should I dare ask if you have another pair?
Qualmberger: You already did and I've haven't been able to change this pair for in can't remember.
Vexedmoore: Maybe you can switch the socks or rearrange the front parts of them in your boots so the holes don't line up with your ankles.
Qualmberger: Look, I appreciate what you're all trying to do, but I thought maybe when this thing starts up again you could all help me tie the cord to the back and if the cable is durable enough and holds out it might break my neck.
Nadirloop: What starts again?
Qualmberger: The truck.
Vexedmoore: What truck?
Qualmberger: The truck our park bench is in the back of with all the bones piled around our rotted feet?
Nadirloop: I must conclude that I most certainly do concur with that now that you bring it up, but won't a 20 foot headphone cord get caught in something else possibly botching a well thought out plan?
Vexedmoore: After all those turns and mixed signals we've been going nowhere.  Any clues to what place this is?
Qualmberger: Look around for a street, landmark or something.
Dearthton: There's a stop sign.  Now we're getting somewhere.
Vexedmoore: (holding up another bone) This looks like one of those smaller pieces in the middle of the foot.  What are they called?  The lateral cuneiform, I think.  If these bones are human like Dearthton suggests.  
Dearthton: Reminds me of when I broke my left foot kicking my last lawn mower.  Haven't got an original bone in my body.
Nadirloop: Reminds me of that word I can't think of.  On the tip of my tongue.  The one where you try to make something distasteful seem more agreeable.
Qualmberger: Fucking euphemism.


While they had been having been less broken up (except for the routine fracture worming its way) over more things distressing and read and skipped over all the little detailed pulverizing happening on the microscopic level while the macroscopic wiped the usual crust from the eyes that tired of the latest drift of land making space for more others to tumble into the bottom of their final frontier.  Sometimes wheels that turned stopped many times as it turned out turning out what has never ceased to be turned out and thrown out to search many times for wheels that turned and ended up stopping always for turning out one anothers without a turn or one anothers given another turn at being turned out or taken out many times added to many times times many times multiplied by nothing for it had been having been less broken up (except for the routine fracture worming its way) over more things distressing and read and skipped over all the little detailed pulverizing happening all the time sometimes many times times many times multiplied by nothing for it had been having been less broken up (except for the routine fracture worming its way).  Worming its way.  Its way.




- Max Stoltenberg

POPCORN CEILING

Is it? Has it? So it has. It has what with it what is unnecessary and with this and there it went away to the hemispherical unconscious to render the goat illiterate for another duration of the pulse of the colon pulsing from within the digital display of the time in the dark kitchen of the rusted trailer. Maintaining. Maintaining. Maintaining.

Maintaining. Maintaining. Maintaining. Maintaining what was it? Is it? Has it? Underneath or all around underneath like pounding out the ground like playdough spreading it out flatter and wider all around underneath like pounding out the ground pounding with all the pounding of the eardrums sliding an eye to one side to see if the cellphone lights up with a call lights cellphone lights muted by the pounding of the ground pounding with all the pounding of the eardrum skins stretched across peripheral vision to gag the incoming.

What’s the gag? Is it quite that much of a stretch of the eardrum skins stretched across peripheral vision to gag the incoming? Incoming outgoing exercising social skills chocolate-layered and frosted with friendliness to practice in circles that get around and go around and around the circles in circles and end up in cul-de-sacs of respiratory infections breathing in each other’s germs of belonging and affirmation painted into the make-up of sandwich board people. Bored people trying to fill their sacs with loose change of leftover sock puppets turned inside out. Dependency gasps as it misses a breath or more or more and more and more and more as it is maintaining maintaining maintaining maintaining with the popcorn ceiling leveled at its guests leveled at its guests be here be here as the now has it underneath all around underneath like pounding out the ground like playdough spreading it out flatter and wider all around underneath like pounding out the ground pounding with all the pounding of the eardrums sliding an eye to one side to see if the cellphone lights up with a call lights cellphone lights muted by the pounding of the ground pounding with all pounding of the eardrum skins stretched across peripheral vision to gag the incoming.

The celery has been shortened at the top or bottom depending on which end is up depending on which end is down depending on who is depending on who depending on which end is next to be tried on for size connected by the lubricated short cut dug through the tunnel right down the middle from end to end. The lettuce fell to the floor not realizing someone had ripped the bag open already not realizing that the someone who had ripped the bag open already had not realized that they were that someone who had already ripped the bag open already not realizing that the lettuce had gone bad already not realizing that the lettuce that had gone bad already had been eaten after the lettuce had gone bad already not realizing that they had spent most of another night already tossing and turning while trying to rip their thoughts out of another bag of already fermenting lines of thought concerning concerns they had about connecting reasons for circles that remained welcoming and impervious within gestures of each other’s gestures of each other’s comments of each other’s inflections of each other’s reading of the situation within the situation each was situated within and had been situated within already for another sleepless night beneath the popcorn ceiling.

- Max Stoltenberg

DARK LAKE

This is the last sentence before the next one.  And this is the next sentence after the last one.  Both could and probably do claim to be the other and the other claims to be the other.  And this is the next sentence and its claims are dehydrated by exhaustion and narrowed and thinned by claims and eyes that hover over to see if they try to accelerate around the corner mountain of mattresses with identically scribbled notes on every individually discolored layer coughing upward coughing downward with a distant throat clearing the only clearing around the corner mountain of mattresses with identically scribbled notes on every individually discolored layer coughing upward coughing downward with a distant throat clearing the only clearing around the table were the cups emptied by mouths that sat back on their beanbags.


Beanbags the beanbags have been taken away maybe one or two were leaking beans at the most didn't amount to too many beans they fell off the wagon the station wagon behind the station where gas was pumped into the already foul air by a rather large man wearing a long vermilion trenchcoat given to him by his rather vengeful father who abhorred his girth although the rather large issue of the father was rather dead set on convincing himself that his rather fuckheaded father was envious of his nob although this could not be contradicted by everyone who avoided him or maintained rather great distance from him.  The rather large man was waiting a rather long time for the next train at the rather rundown station where the waiting room reeked of urine and wet magazines with dampened perfume samples.  


The rather large man stood outside the waiting room turning his head to see the overgrown train tracks and then turning his head back to examine the broken window of the waiting room.  He noticed the fractured pieces jutting up from inside the bottom of the sill had collected a mound of dead flies.  A rank breeze would rock the shards and the dead flies would be blown about to flick against the shards like a stubborn build up of morbid plaque.  The rather large man continued to stand outside the waiting room occupying himself with turning his head in a pattern he did not care to maintain a consistently timed manner between the train tracks and the broken window of the waiting room.  He kept this up for many turnings of his head tending to linger on the dead flies contemplating the lack of variation in the intensity of the wind as well as feeling rather confident that he could expel the balance of gas from his vehemently digested lunch before the arrival of the train.


It was rather frustrating when the turning of the head from overgrown train tracks to dead flies passed by a building with an enormous hole in the roof that divided the pendulum swinging over the dark lake beneath the storm abbreviating their last meeting.  Rather frustrating when images punctuated with gaping holes and dark lakes lancinating the growth of something so that as it leaked odd shaped beans not amounting to too much spilled in the form of either something that happened or happened only in a dream a dream of someone some other that would escape sharing all the waiting all the turning all the different turning and changing of direction all the words the other would never hear by the dark lake beneath the storm abbreviating their last meeting the last meeting with the other.  Both could and probably do claim to be the other and the other claims to be the other.  And this is the next sentence and its claims are dehydrated by exhaustion and narrowed and thinned by claims and eyes that hover over to see if they try to accelerate around the corner mountain of mattresses with identically scribbled notes on every individually discolored layer coughing upward coughing downward with a distant throat clearing the only clearing around the corner mountain of mattresses with identically scribbled notes on every individually discolored layer coughing upward coughing downward with a distant throat clearing the only clearing around.




- Max Stoltenberg

STEEL WOOL ROMP

That key was missing for about since the other four keys previously spent on doors to rooms with no room at all until the next key was taken or given confused about since the other four or was it three no it was definitely five or about confused that that key was found missing again reappeared on the lost and found list flossing the teeth of the shredder that was the key principle with no room at all until the next key was taken or given confused about since the other two or was it originally three or four and ended up being definitely five or none whatsoever is what's left of what previously was spent on doors opening as others close into each other for each the other others onto no room at all until the next key there was always a next key copied and recopied to straighten out the bending bent so often in  locks spent on doors stinking of ass more than possible anything possible in the handing out of keys the backing up of keys the backing up against doors that open as others close onto no room at all.


Tools.  Plenty of tools for digging for screwing for screwing in blind spots hot spots off camera on camera.  Plenty of tools for digging for screwing screwing blind hot off on opposite same same old young same old same old.  Tools.  Plenty of tools for digging for screwing for tossing for tightening for loosening for cutting for getting until forgotten and bumped into again for collision sake out into the open bumping into again for the sake of another collision for the sake of nothing different only the ordinary bumping into the forgotten and familiar smacking into the face same old same old smacking of the face into the bumped into stuff.  Tools for cutting through the fence the last of several the last barrier of this prison the next prison in a line of the residential block prison block same color scheme same number scheme same scheme same old cutting out onto some room for only a short extending into a desk in the way the way the desk in the way crawling under the desk and clocking the top of the head into a clock an old forgotten clock remembered with a clocking to the top of the head off the top of the head it eludes a space only space blanks strung together thinking and thunking between under and soon over more junk more junk to come a lot out there in the junkyard outside to return to which direction?  Others say they know only know each object as it is encountered with a bang and a thunk and a smack to the face the nose wiping blood with the sleeve snagging on eyelids and lids of containers falling between abandoned vehicles climbing through backseats stinking of ass and other orifices and artifices of exchange wiping wet and crusty with pants thighs shrug inside withdrawing into numbed forgetting of the briefly thawed faked loves and frozen made up faces of years ago years years plenty of tools tools for escaping for escaping out into the junkyard just outside along the residential prison block blocked hole blocked by neglected fishing boats with holes of their own holes of their own getaways ended too soon only to extend the stench of fish that have gotten away to linger in the nostrils tumbling over furniture deteriorated but enough remaining to hamper escaping out into the junkyard just outside along the residential prison block blocked hole blocked by neglected fishing boats with holes of their own holes of their own getaways ended too soon only to extend the stench of fish that have gotten away to linger in the nostrils tumbling over furniture out into the junkyard just outside along the residential prison block blocked hole blocked on both sides pushing against each other pushing pushing to get in pushing to get out pushing pushing pushing get out get in get out in out in out out out in in in out push out push out push out push push push hold it hold it hold it hold hold hold hold wait wait hold scream scream scream let it out keep it in let it out keep it in voice screaming voice holding holding pushing pushing fists gripping gripping smacking into junk more junk blocking blocking the hole blocked on both sides pushing against each other.




- Max Stoltenberg