The otherwise of empty steps. Calm predictions on worn shoes. I was walking. So loudly. Until silent came in vogue. The calm conspirators of frivolous demons as the pavement chirps with so much momentum.

The standard. Absolute strangers plot the maze that is my skin. Piling up walls. Diminishing the solution. The molecules. As ambivalent as ever. Takers. In pale restitution. Rebuild. The cracked faces of dolls we've dropped.

Limbless and naked in the arms of their savors. Their Satans. Their drunk gods with white gloves on.

The man. His soft beard teasing the hairs on her vagina. The premise. Skin the comedy. The rest a drama. Sex is Shakespeare. It doesn't rhyme at all, but looking back you'd swear that it did.

Everything wants a name. The dead are no exception.

The oblong path of younger skin imagines us still there. Lithe branches darning holes in the sky. Sharp needles in shaky hands. The minimal. The broader deficit. Of the wait for some reaction. The hopscotch. The stone in her fist. Electing villains. The count. Of steps. Long jumps between now and then. Heavy freighters of touch loosely docking on stubborn clamps/

Gods don their clouds and pretend the rain is our fault. Sleep like bracelets. The machine. The man. Tell em the difference. Touch decides ambivalent heavens. Dreams the charms. Skin the clasp. Woken up by the same men. Hell feels familiar. More comfortable than it should.

The windows. The curtains. The stamina of dead dogs. As we approach each other. The snake with its jaw unhinged. Easy to kill during its feast.

All these poisons insufficient.

I talk to the tortoise. He says I went to fast.

There is nothing else like. The rabbit in the noose. The chair not toppling. Old friends. And new ones. Debating whether I should live. There is no alone quite so stringent as that of not wanting to be.

I got over it.

Pull on that mask. So they won't know you're watching them.

Gather the words. Festering manipulations that fail to infect. I'm too diseased to notice the sickness suggested. Tell them that you love them with a roar. And that you won't with a whisper. Tell them anything they want to hear. They're not listening anymore.

The bad men come dressed like saints. White sleeves and black bow ties. Because they never soil themselves with the misfortunes of others. Good men smell of piss. Because they reach down to pull others from it.

Lies. The sedative. That shuts up all missing limbs. I don't need to walk away. It's just as profound, if not more so, to crawl. But I think you're wrong. It's not hard at all to make friends.

The difficulty lies in keeping them.

My flaw is that I need them to love me.

Flesh like lawyers. Still blaming the victim.

In the habit. The chug of skin that decides how alone this is. The wagging tail. The little mouse. With fingers made of lead. Trying to arrange a lifetime of vertigo.

The sad. The near enough. The poets with their leather hearts. Laughing as we ride bareback. The words that make it easy to remember. The occasions that make it impossible to forget.

I could fuck you, but then I'd have to hate you again. For reminding me I really haven't changed at all.

I would talk to the man, but the boy interferes. It seems he woke up one morning older than he ever thought he'd be. I wasn't the cure, but I seemed like good medicine.

He wanted control. Over something. Someone. But all my knobs were stuck. He couldn't turn me on.

Sad men in their nervous traditions. Lose the ghost and gain the victim. In bouts of empty attics.

The aging portrait not listening. The time machine too stubborn to persuade her.

Pretty mini skirted futures. Chasing Fibonacci. Fawns in the grass. Zippers on the past. Biting down on when. I can add. It's in the subtraction where I fail.

Circles. The spiral in his pants. Add my before to his next. Every step forward is the sum of the falls that preceeded it. Taking it closer. The dandelion in the grass. Consulting with the worm. On where to invade next. The man. The anvil in his underwear. Gravity like any predator. Singles out the weakest.

Everyone eats a lot of shit. Some of us just swallow louder.

I was there. I was then. How. When. And if. I was all of the potential and none of the the ambition. I was everything they wanted and nothing that they could love. Child. Woman. Pussy. Irrelevant.

Just keep counting. It's only numbers. A series of sums. fingers multiplying loose skin. Touch determining gravity makes sense. Falling. Eyes like a coin tossed. Either side could win.

Arguing with the ceiling. Convinced that its calculations are wrong. Now that I know how to count how far away the world is.

It will rain again.

Limping toward her the dog began to bark. Its collar loose. Its tail broken in several places.

Why are you here? What do you want? I'm a cat. What can I do for you, she asked. Prepared to run.

My friends are all rodents.

Injured dogs may be less dangerous, but they're still not to be trusted.

What could you want? I think I know.

I can't heal you. Nor can I make you worse. I am only a trifle of skin in claws twice the size of my own.

The bones you buried are not to be dug up.

I wish you well crippled dog. In digging up the other cats you've killed.

Orange thighs. Carrots to peel. The meat. Sour choices in starvation. The knife. Dull enough. To scrape away the shadows on the walls. Paint on her lips. Turns her words into jests. Long jokes stumble over their clumsy punchlines.

We laugh.

Because it's so unamusing.

We speak because the silence is too lonely to bear.

It mattered to her. She was pressing buttons on the walls. Constructing airplanes from numbers. Dividing people into poetry. Searching for that common tear in the continuum.

Going back. Taking it with her in the forward. The key in the lock. The window in her fist. Breaking. Red blue through the glass. Gravity making art from her wounds. Locks. Tepid lips. Spilling red. Maps drawn in empty underwear. The room vomiting. Knives and fingernails. The colors of the bed.

After all the time machines have left.

Still determined to go back again.

Kill the clock.

Slip on that dirty mask. So they'll recognize me again.

Lie. Say I've always been there. Waiting for the machine to catch up to the man.

The cellar. Cautious toes tempt the steps down. The pull. Loose dresses betray her hips. In little grins pungent with the pageants of lazy gods. The earth. Like a grave. The whisper of touch. Laces tied by nervous fingers. The coax of footprints. The patience of the sand.

The child. The seduction. Every breath is helium. The air too heavy. Time too arrogant. To suspect we could manipulate what it does to us.

I find the beginning. Drag the end to it. I steal the sound of his failing attempts to own her. I listen. And am deafened by the silence.

The cellar. The grim. of cooking witches in candy houses. The woods. The sanctuary. Of victims. As they please the fire.

The accurate. The seldom. The man with his back to the window. The world close enough to grab.

I had a label all ready. I lost it. The insidious metaphor of sex was overwhelming. Men. Penises wagging. Useless flags. Of irrelevant conquests.

I could kill the clown. Say it was the trapeze. Claim to know why things die prematurely. And maybe someone would believe me. When after all that I try to say it didn't matter that I lost.

I had the Hansel and the Gretel. The woods. The ax. The witch. I had all the grim fairy tales to choose from. Still I wanted a bigger wolf to argue with and more pigs in sketchy houses.

You don't throw the penny. It throws you. I don't swim. I float to the surface too soon after having drowned.

Skin transpires between us. It modest explosions. Touch. patents filed too late. Now I must begin again. New designs for those old lies.

The villain in the window. Bad movies on her breath. The war between her legs. Flanked in soldiers unaware of the premise. Just men wanting to kill more than to save the rest.

The ghost in her fingers explaining the math. Multiples of when subtraction still mattered. Fractions of people happening all around her. Pallid incidents of men. Like cancelled checks.

The future. In careful doses.

Clowns without their noses.

Stuffing their tiny feet into those big shoes.

Pulling those windshields from under their fingernails. Teasing the future more than trey should. The ambulance threatening to prove her wrong.

Little battles. Smaller soldiers. More evidence. Silent alarms in the creases of flattered men. I can hear the siren in his touch. Feel the ambulance in his words. Adding parts to the time Building it because the world leaves us too quickly.

Testing the terminal with bits of men. That's the only kind there really are. The robot in her underpants racheting his dick tighter in. She's a window. A fragment of moonlight on the eyelids of the blind. The universe in bitter gulps on lemondade. The sugar teasing from between her tits.

You're never too old to to regret losing someone.

But they might be lost contrary to your remorse.

You're never too old to hate yourself. Or to be hated.

Tiem has its kindness. The give of young skin. The press of memory intent to fulfill the wish.

Of lonely people. Tall windows in blind houses. Arguing with the rooms. Beds that won't listen. Nervous pillows pretend to want that stranger that are left.

The glass. In fractions. Gods that can't see through. All the lies I have to tell to keep heaven close.

Trusting still in the logical manias of discarded skin.

Let me sleep. I don't want to wake up. Knowing what I knew then.

Pretend you can hear her. Nod in sync with the motion of her lips. The impetuous freight she calls words will have to be orgasm enough. For now. Or until then.

Catch the stop signs in her glances. Subtle monsters put on their mittens before pointing her in the right direction.

I think I was always ugly. Just not in the ways I used to think I was. Shoot the lion. Save the cub. There was always a solution. It's just all I could see was the problem.

Skin like battery terminals. Press them to that node. Wake the electric. Set your time machines to auto pilot. Count the persons you almost were.

Follow them. Until you're certain you've been all of those people they say are you.

Escape your skin as you would any Alcatraz. Through the biggest shit holes.

The time machine between her thighs rages. Unfortunate lovers search for their gods. In the glassy eyes of dead poets. Heaven is shaped like a vagina. Purgatory looks like a dick. A leaky faucet dripping with wisdom's it's best not to swallow.

The time machine take her no further than she's ever been. The same stories she heard as child. Monsters she admits. Make the story interesting. If a story is a enough.

It's easy enough to go there. Embrace the physics of the skeleton. Stretches of skin too thin to cover us. We look for people to wear. Or zippers. Teeth at the back of their touch. Bites to blame for all that is missing.

Scratching hard at the freckles on her shins. Reasoning with the time machine. There's nowhere else to go. Except where I've always been. Take me there again. Convince them I never left.

The future between my legs. The past there too. Red. Red catapults. Heave their stones. At busy pigs.

I can show them where the hole is, but it's not something they can fill.

I still wait. For the wolf. To blow my house down.

Purple confessions in the toes of her heels. Undressing a touch at a time until. Everything is far away. The distance measured in people. Not steps.

The colors concede to the darkness.

Beige cancers boiling between her lips. Control assumes her. Press the key. Keep pressing it until there is a response. The virus is only a side effect of all this sickness. The hours are just puppets in the rambling soliloquy of time. I catch the wormhole at its smallest apogee. It takes a picture of us. Before we were the future.

Whoever we were then, we weren't us.

The past such a benign conundrum. Often misused to further the logic of lonely people.

Time holds its breath. For as long as it can.

But I still drown it.

My constant varies. Everything else stays the same.

mellow bunnies on pretty paper drugs. the swamp. too sure of my struggle. death is a greeting card. it matters almost as much as it doesn't. ugly little love songs. dirty crayons coloring in black and white. every word is a colorform. waiting to be shrunk down into nothing.

silly cadavers making ice cream sundaes out of embalming fluid. The morgue is the place I love. Rife with mouths that cannot argue. The logic. The madness. Of waking up every morning is caucus enough to discard them. My eyes are my attorney. My fingers are my jury. Innocent isn't even an option.

But I know that I'm not guilty.

Delirium comes with many insights. anyone know where to find a good monkey replicator? ask me after I've finished translating my vomit. Primates on the patio leave behind just enough shit for me to determine I don't want to go there.

Fragile masks embark upon her face. In nervous sprints. In calm marathons. The decapitated devil collects his horns. Grinning all the while. The child chases her nightmare too long after waking. It's the weakness of touch to want more. It's the wisdom of skin wait for it to come to us.

The clown. The ghost. The skeleton. Characters in a satire called the self. Laughing at everything. Disappearing too soon. Emerging from moist grave desperate for fresh skin.

The porcupine in her eye beginning to make sense. As all those needles found their target.

Seeing she soon discovered was merely a consequence of blindness.

Corpulent cockroaches in the corners of her breath. All her poisons only make them stronger.

Cadavers on the walls. Smelling softly of desperate men. Open sores in his timelines where vagrant hours fester. Shadows on the bed. Fingers striking ambivalent keys. Her breathing. Just another songs he can't quite play.

The fat of words in her throat. Rain paused on the glass. The storm awaits her next command. The shrug of the pillow against her head. Alone at last. Nothing to spoil the villains' coup. Fallen always. Now they can see it.

Needles in her fingers. Calculate reality. In the distant hums of wagging dicks. And the stutters of broken men. She drags out the scale from between her legs. And waits for him to notice the blood.

Shit-faced gods drink the urine. Old men pissing themselves and fetuses miscarried. Dead mothers cradle cracking dolls. Inhaling life in the failed nature of trust. Science never planned far enough ahead to account for so much loneliness.

She argues with the darkness as she would anyone so stubborn as to think that she isn't aware of everyone. People. Needles. Their threads swimming through her gaping wrists. In a relentless quest to keep alive what has always been dead.

It's all tomorrow. It's all so yesterday.

The ceremony of life too much like a funeral she says.

Come the saints in manic pause. Laden with paradise obese. And starving doors. Play. With broken toys in hollow rooms where no one talks. Children lost in over sized skins. Rewinding the highs of crashing Edens.

Face the bed. Coax the choice. In stumbles of trust that inevitably betray delicate demons. Not as evil as they thought they were. Trace the wrinkles in the dark with a heavy finger. Drawing pictures no one can see. Saying things no one can hear.

Pressing the pain for some relief from all this numbness. Every breath a siren. Rushing people away.

The universe is big, but the world is small.

When you don't want to be found.

I turn on the light and wait for someone else to see.

What I always have.

The quantum of her frown. The mechanics of her stare. Dimensions discovered. Time travel in the purest sense. We go back. We remain here. Stretched between the world we exist in and the one we remember once lived in us.

I don't have a shadow where I am. Just men masquerading as equations. Plus. Minus. Exponents. There is no light from above to mark my stand. But I know I am standing here. Not looking back.

The volume of his loneliness is calculated in simple terms. Multiply the man by the women. Determine if he has had enough of them.

Extraneous vaginae make him masculine. Finding the one he wants makes him a man.

It's hard to say what I want. Other than nothing. The sweep of flesh into the volatile Chambers of careless touch. The buck of angry hours as we try to ride them into narrow slits of future. The saddles on their backs thick between the moments we try to pair.

The reins we grasp a trivial component of a greater chaos. I could be your future. And your past. But anything else is just the loneliness demanding a fair percentage.

What I lose. What I've lost to them. Comes back. In dead flies to empty from the lamp. Changed the bulb or live in the dark. I can't decide. What I want to do.

What I could want. Anything I could expect. I know who you are. I won't dare to wait for you to be someone else.

I wouldn't try to dissolve the layers of time between us. But I sometimes think its closer than I had anticipated.

Fools and women try to reconcile the math of absent men.

Close enough.

Or too close still.

It's hard to know.

Not bending down. Trying to pick up. The shadows.

Is dark enough.