Dirty fingernails. Empty purse. While she searched for a pencil. To draw her picture. The future in crude stick figures staring up at her. Slavery in the clothes of freedom. She thought. I can go back. Or forward. As I see fit. But no matter where I go. There's nothing I can do to stop it.

We are now. As much as we try to be when. We are skin. Quivering on soft, soft bones. That try so hard, but fail to hold us. We are strapless dresses worn to parties that never leave us. Drunk assassins under our pillows. While we indulge the hysteria of happiness.

I paid my fare and got off the bus. Going back again. To retrieve. The nothing I still hadn't found.

Maybe underwear. Maybe socks. Or their praise like atoms exploding. Too small to see that massive explosion. Just something. Not deflated. Since I had left discarded my clothes.

One ladder. One broken bit of wood. Closer to knowing.

She takes off the polish on her nails. Insists.

It was never there.

The spider was counting. The strands of its web. Imaging it full with errant flies. The spider doesn't have to explain why it kills. It's obvious.

Because it can.

She was using her eyes to measure the moon. Pupils wide. Chemicals the catalyst. Time always a culprit. When memory is the judge. The Moon. It being the counterweight on the scales of darkness. Pulling the tight clothes onto it. Touch. A ragged doll. Limbs threaded together with random knots.

The pantomime of love. Its invisible box. Pretending to hold me captive. The witch grins. As I suck on her candy walls.

Come inside she says.

There's much more to learn from within the oven.

Long knives. Short handles. That's what love is. Warm blood. Cold skin. Years. Bits of theory. To tinker with. How far is now. From then. From if. We're soaked. Dirty rags in the fireplace. Lavish with the fumes. We're helpless. All the knots in this skin.

Coming undone.

The moment. Hard on the paper. Dying pen scratching out the words. In bloodless cuts. Go to sleep she told him. Wake up someone different. Or at least. Someone with balls enough to admit I shouldn't love him.

Broken glasses full of wine. That's what love is. Stubborn men with their knees to their chest. Women foolish enough to think that they could pry their way into such a fortress.

It's then. It's now. It's if. We paint the the ground as blue as the sky. Assume ourselves clever. Thinking no one can see.

Until gravity betrays us.

What an amusing games this is. Hurting each other.

He was updating his junkie's log. With static treaties to solvent judges. Bland excuses compared with the decadent flatteries of abuse. He had his man-dress on. The drape of the drug. Over his life. A carnival of starving lions. Without any teeth. In tight folds. The reasons lumber from his lips. A petty anesthesia.

To hold the clock. Or at least distract it. From knowing how close it is. To catching up with him.

The freedom. Addiction provides. Hopelessness a refuge. He wasn't sure how old I was. Or what color were my eyes. But he was certain I was simple enough to seduce.

The fog of skin that filled that morning wanted to say I was wrong. I was. But it took me too long to discover that.

There was nothing to ask. Except why. He was alone. As I was. The junkie in his overalls. Convinced. The world was his. The last of a firework posing the color. The child drawing pictures on her pillow. As if nothing was broken.

The junkie on his porch. Me in his window.

Goodbye. Sparkling breasts. Fluid penis. Calm. The underwire reasoning. It wasn't there. During the darkness. That proved he possessed no glitter. The glue on her nipples. Not his.

Stuck enough. She assumed. Hard enough he insisted. The apple singing. A sad song. No one claiming it. No candles to find the stem. Nor glitter to swear for it. That it isn't just like us. Dark. And too close to nothing.

As pale as the hour is. Arithmetic not withstanding. Softer skins. The sidewalk snatches up the victim. The sewer waits for the villain.

The window narrows on who I can be. Just a ghost. Or the one who's haunted by it.

Another lie.

Or the reason it is.

Either way. I'm not the apple. Nor the orange. I'm not the fruit any man has tasted.

I'm alone and I don't care to remember their names. The actors were gentle. The rest of the cast were violent.

If I could tell them apart none of this would matter.

The apron across her thighs was dirty. Had it always been? She contested. So many movements. Like mosquitoes sucking. Anesthetized skin. The more they bite down. The less I notice.

Right triangles. Ugly manifestos of then. I broke because they did. The puzzle. Paint by numbers. Losing count.

I'm red. Where do I go? I'm blue. What is my number?

Go to sleep she cautioned the parking lot. All your spaces are empty. And it's not my fault.

Relax. She warned the window. All your glass is breaking. And you can't blame me.

I'm just telling the lies in the order that they are received. Calm dictators pruning their rose bushes. Old men with their hands on their penises. Telling stories about their last hard on.

The forest between her legs. Wondering. Has it made a sound.

The madmen in the audience make her think she's a star. So many broken cameras trying to record. Dead girls removing their underwear. Children on the moon. Looking forward to the eclipse. It's not the backdoor, but it feels the same.

There were plenty of chances. Grimm tales to stalk. In heavy costumes. Villains. Sour candy. Poisoning her lips. In old equations. That once had theorums to discuss. Love. In scalene triangles.

No hypotaneus to prove us right.

180 degrees of nothing.

Pythagarus laughs. It's all in the formula. The relation. Of opposing angles. The distance apart is determined. By how small we are.

So many corners.

No doors.

Pale victim comes in shutters cinched/ Cameras. Vaginas. What's the difference. The skin hanging from his wrists. While he reasons with the rabid dog. We're not new anymore.

Just textbooks. Empty smiles. And weightless breasts. Gritting the pavement between their teeth. In hard chews. On harder cement. The men. The hierarchy of skin reasoning with my sadness. Gone off. In search of the time machine. That mystical math that can make us whole again. If we could only find the past. Convince it to listen.

Sober as the hour demands. Like Stockholm. She insists. I am a prisoner. The clock on all fours. grubbing as foul as a dog. For the bone buried in the dirt. For the reason time doesn't respond. When I tell it to be patient.

I'll get there when I can. I'll find them. Drenched in menstrual fluid. Insisting they know what I want.

As dies every master to his dog. The whole. A backdoor. This time machine on the verge of success. As I punch in the numbers.

Certain I will forget.

The cough. As the dial turns back.

Hopelessly lost. In something so familiar.

There's no power. There never is. We sit in the dark. Slow burning matches. Hungry for skin. We stifle in the silence. The whole world gone deaf. Screaming words no one hears.

Why she asks. Why do you pretend the world is flat. Long suspenders stretched taut. Assembling time machines out of old girlfriends. Where's the math in dead men? Or cowards with the clock pinned to their groin. Counting the minutes. Between kittens drowned.

There's no power. In either together or alone. I reason with darkness. In flurries of skin. That all melt upon reaching the ground. I gather my Einsteins. And manage to convince the machine it will work this time.

Why she says. Not really asking. Why spoil the deception by biting into it. When its fruit isn't ripe.

The power belongs to those who can manage in the dark. There's no power in love. Nor the want for it. The wolf she notices is out of breath. And the pigs are safe in their brick house.

She hasn't found the future. She's just proved it exists. Without power. In a darkness. That seldom subsists.

Tugging on her skin. In muted grabs. Time. A tailless scorpion. Trying to sting.

Absent demons.

Dirty child. Sticky gear shift protruding from your groin. Dirty child. In the wallows of old men. Swimming. Holding your breath.

Always swimming. Underwater.

Fast enough no doubt. Nipples like sour balls. The sugar shell breaks. In random convulsions of touch. People. All jellyfish. Drying up in the sand. The world that spit them out goes on.

People. Whales. Suffocating. Under the weight of their own mass. Dirty children playing in the sand. Where all the graves are. No one sees god. He doesn't talk to anyone. Because we never listen.

It's all want. Greasy brakes that always fail us. When all I want is find the atom. Make it accountable. For why we are here.

They name the stars to fool us. Into thinking we know. Anything about the world around us. They promise we'll never grow old. But we still do.

We clutch that dirty gear shift. And hope. Her panties don't know our name.

It's best if we don't know why we hate each other.

The world comes to us in whimpers. Leaves us in fists. The punches are fine. It's the slaps I resent.

We spend so much to conform to the dream. And then it wakes us up.

I killed everything. And nothing. The moment made it so. Meat cooking. Till it falls off the bone. I was coaxing the element. Looking for a reaction. But chemistry was never my thing.

The fairy tale. Now that I understand. Witches in the oven. Hard beds. Cold porridge. It's just how to go to sleep. We wake up different. The world biting its lip. Frightened.

Stories told. Sad men. With their faces in their hands. Salvation comes in short sprints. A finish line of sorts. Time wasted a reminder. Of all the dead things it took to have us live.

These little lives we say belong to us. Yet never really did.

Parasites survive the heat. The fingernails are bitten. The drug is preppped to consume. The flawless compartments in my suitcase. That differentiate residence from destination.

The first taste is warm. The third. The fourth. All too cold.

Evolution comes in convulsions. Passive episodes. The bald chaos every word foretells. The man asks. Where are you going? The child answers.

Home.

She spits out his penis. Like she would any chewing gum. Disappointed that all the flavor is gone.

Again. He says. To emphasize the question. Where are you going?

Home she says.

All this nothing. I can't do it anymore.

Yes, you are close to her. The ticking clock. The shedding skin. The infant in her crib. Covered in blood. Yellow ducks on white pajamas painted red.

You don't know where the entrance is. You ask once and wind up back at that same bar. To ask again. So many strangers. How to get there. You don't know why you go. Or why you should. Squeezing the tit on the gear shift for a groan of assurance. Cataloguing the miles in buckets of ink and dirty condoms.

The stars were close. The Moon even closer. As it tends to follow. Until sleep bites hard again. With foul dreams too thin to recall. Sweating sheets that scratch out the song. Until there is nothing left to hear. Other than the dying leaves. That come off the tree as I dig my way toward its top.

I sat down on a stool close to him. And waited for a notice. The fairy tale limping on three legs. A toothless wolf alone with the pigs. The rabid princess. Caressing the woodman's axe.

Struggling with the end of the story.

Bored with the moral.

Dinner with friends never really is. Our lives tell us. In thirsty sobs and poorly camouflaged snickers. Still alone. In the dark. Only now there are people looking. Sex is still just a means to an end. And love is a trophy to flaunt for your guests.

We eat. Pasta and chicken. Fillet and asparagus. Still insisting a universal hunger unites us. Spewing adjectives in careless tumbles. Good. Great. Splendid. Empty candy papers. The package still insisting how good it is.

Long after.

The sweetness has been tasted.

I was talking with my brother. He said, women lie much more than men. Clothes. Makeup. Salads for dinner. True enough I thought. But men, they love. All those little lies we tell them.

I mean, we had gravity to help us. We hadn't started that far from the ground. Looking up. The world towering over us in patient shadows. While we assembled our stairs.

It's hard not to look down. Even when you know you shouldn't.

Stubborn costumes lay on the skin. In razor folds. Determined to be. Something. Spoil the rat with traps. Mirrors in clay. Show shape. No color. Counting the photons. Flashes of sight kill the lock on the cellar door. It's down there. The empty carcass. Skeleton with their faces in their hands. Claiming they aren't whom we remember.

The alligator with his teeth all sharpened. Stalking the river's edge. Until something tries to cross. The other side. Whatever is in our way. Always too near.

The abortion right there in her throat. As she swallows the words again. Old men. In sturdy houses. Painting lilies amongst the grass. With sad eyes that never look at hole. He admits the inn is full. The coin on its side. Refusing to let anyone win. The song in her pocket hoping to be heard. Just one more time.

The cartoon of her eyes in short cliffs and heavy anvils. Gravity surprises. Not falling. Just realizing. there's nothing there.

As round as it is there are still corners.

Unmaking beds with trembling teeth. Angry atoms sorting their neutrons. The shape of change observed. If your stare. Isn't that what heaven is? When the world is all molecules. Falling apart is salvation. Crumbling. Little soldiers into the stopgap of the universe. Asking if the war will ever end.

Of course not.

We are it. It is us. Muddy gloves on sticky triggers. But we forgot the bullets.

I saw god once. He was dark and not as wise as I thought he would be. He was discussing abortion with Jesus. They couldn't agree. On when life first occurred. You're alive when you are. And dead when you're not. But there are so many stages unbeaten. Of course, any addict knows this. The world doesn't belong to us. Rather we to it. In soft coughs on foggy glass we search for a face we've never seen.

It's all strangers and arithmetic. In arguments with when. I was still young enough to dismiss this enormous deficit.

All that's left to do is accept the loss.

Wait for the wolf to throw up. Retrieve myself from the vomit.

We're only alone because all this skin keeps us apart.

There's a chemistry to each of us. None of which I understand. Except that there must be so many atoms that don't know at all. What they are together.

She'll piss herself sometimes. Blame it on the drug. Sad dolls with molded plastic smiles. Condemned to swallow whatever's put in there. Dull knives under her nails. Searching deep for where her fingers begin.

The world comes to a boil. While she watches. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

The wolf takes off its nightgown. Begins to eat red riding hood. Leaving the picnic basket still full.

The spaceship stops just above her head. Looking up she sees nothing. Empty beds. Smoked cigarettes. Places in the mind the flesh cannot go.

She takes the kittens. Holds them each by the neck. Quickly twisting until each one is dead. Dead things she insists are the most alive among us. Dead things. She tells him. Are the best lovers I've ever had.

The mythology of truth is that we've ever known it. Flesh is the chalkboard of life. Temporary lessons. Scratched into skin. Healed long before we have. It's only learning. The only thing we must. What we are not.

The truth is the hurt is omniscient. Knows me. And them. All that it will take me a lifetime to reconcile. It's all there in those seconds of tears. The truth is lies are the best medicine. For this cancer called hope.

The dream woke me up again. And I believed for a minute that the world was there. At my doorstep. A stray dog I could tempt to stay. With a taste of my garbage. Spoil the lust with need. Pretend time had miscounted. And there was a moment I had missed. When it had ever mattered.

Lungs too black to argue the merits of oxygen.

I'm just paper after all. Long matchsticks elapsing from the carbon. Snips of careless scissors. That made too many of us. Lost in each other as we are. Paper arms. One for each of us. Curtains of skin. Draped over a window that never closes.

I turn the dial back. In fairy tales I call sex. The compass lies. And I am lost again.

It's only time after all. Particles of men equal to the ratio of woman. It's all just a formula. A way to measure how wrong I was. When I assumed the the doorway was mine to close.

Always with the mockingbird on her sleeve. Saying nothing. Gathering the crumbling mask with iodine fingers. Cleanse me. Of this absentee death. Give me back the life this freedom has stolen. It's not tomorrow until we're alone again. Towers collapsing in the distance. Worlds within them. The future. A burnt map. Man. The last wolf. In a forest of swine.

Coddling the lies until a truth emerges.

Asking the molecules to slow down. I go. I come back. The same. Again and again. I have my arguments with gravity. In short documentaries that never make it to film. Just words on a billboard I call when. Thick crayons melting into the yellowed paper. Where I sketch. Parables called then. Maybe I was. Maybe I am. Or have been. Hungry mosquitoes of if sucking the blood of now. Poisoning us with the itch.

We'll never change. We'll never learn. We'll always keep the future far away. No matter how close it gets.

In thick pieces of chalk she draws the tableau. Rocks and hops. Counting the ovens. To shove the witches into. All the candy houses too sweet to dismiss. Falling down. Around the us.

I remember the future. This is not it.

We're not there. Never were. We're not even missed.

He had his sad eyes on. The ones he wears when everyone is looking. There's a coroner in his glance. And nothing in his gaze. It's episodes like that which convince me we are not linear. More so elastic. Being stretched. Snapping back. Learning to walk again. In the shadows of those first steps. Death is only a piece of meat. Which tempts us in our infinite hunger.

What you need to remember about the snake is that it didn't create the apple. It only suggested tasting it. If you believe in god the choice is ours. That's why the devil was rejected. If you don't. No difference. There are no bad people. Only bad decisions. But temptation. That's all too real.

His lips like chainsaws carving. bits of skin. Take my clothes off. I'm not naked. It's the foul of touch. Hiccoughs of pleasure in so much shame. The darkness consoling trembling legs. In loose wisdom's about knowing the enemy.

He suggests they cut the baby in half.

And both mothers agree.

We had crab. and sausage. Carrots and rice. Wild feasts in the face of poverty. Because love, truly is, what you don't have. The void. In relentless heartbeats. All too eager to declare.

That I am.

Always was.

Shall be.

Terminal. The present merely a measure of our distance from the past. Mercury. Solids. Running like liquids. Away from whatever touches them. The sand and the saltwater in their constant war. Our footprints. Soldiers gone away. The broken math of strangers. Close enough to count. As friends.

If I were the sea there would be no waves. If I were the sand there would be no castles.

The inferno is closest when it seems farthest away. That tiny bullet they call heaven is stuck in my head.

And it's still as ugly as I remember it.

I recently wrote what can loosely be termed an article, more precisely a venomous rant, on the 08 presidential election. I was equally as dutiful in my examination of the candidates as I was in eviscerating them. I tried to remain objective, but alas, I failed.

At any rate, if you're unaware of what those extra columns are for on your ballot, my dissertation will not illuminate them. It will however, offer sound advice on whom to vote for and why.

Check it out. Two Choices at Maximum Awesome. Where head awesome dude Dave was foolish enough to indulge my mania.

When I refer to lovers I generalize. The conditions of liquid and solid. The stimuli that alter them. The microscopic mechanics that drive the largest of engines.

What is the fuel? I often ask myself. Certain it is flesh. The mind is lazy. The heart is chaotic. The skin. The skin is constant. The pleasure is always there to be had.

I say equation when theory is more appropriate. Telling short stories in long division. I do it backward. Because it's faster. I don't care that it's less accurate. I keep rounding until the numbers make sense. I keep counting. As if infinity has an end. Everything is upside down. I keep the remainders in my head. I'll put them back eventually.

I add by subtracting the base from the mass. Condensing every problem into a card trick. There is no close. Just close enough. For the anxious atoms that let us feel each other.

Fusion yes. In some futile explosion. That my many microscopes failed to predict.

The blue flame close to her lips. The disease pinched and crippled. Lotteries of skin. Making up winners. Pillows on the floor. The darkness. A forklift. Putting everything too big into the corners.

I'd try to tell him. Old is real. This series of deaths. They find us. After we've forgotten how long it's been. Since the room smelled like sex. Or cum. Or anything that tricks the brain. Into believing it has ever lived. Or lets it live outside the thick callouses that own it.

The lights went out, but the lantern didn't turn on. We waited in the dark for awhile. Tangled in the quiet. Taming the words with broken chairs and fraying whips. The roar of skin from small cages. The hydrogen. Too light. The sequence expanding. As we fell.

We waited. Until it was light again. And no one could see us. Sneaking glances at a moon that seldom noticed. The people. The dirt under its fingernails. Still waiting for soap.

Inertia. That's what they call it. When things keep going long after they should be dead.

The lights came on hours later. But she was no longer interested. In the whims of particles. Constantly colliding. Always falling apart soon after.

Gravity slept. We called it names and swore it would never catch us.

I was in the sky. Arguing with the alien. The alien. Too mundane to love. I was staring at the wall where I used to plug in the phone. Remembering how it sounded. Confirming I had muted it.

She always carried her eyeballs in her hands. nickels and dimes. Paying the bus driver in milton's and dante's. Saving her shakepeare's for a longer trip.

Going as she was always far from here. In cold beers. Long conversations with men. Tentative Judas on his choice of rope.

The atom failing to predict. The course of its electrons. The smallest things. Asserting their dominance.

In the frailest regions of men.

Infinity she warned is somewhere inside yourself. The mattress like strobe lights. Slipping its wide grin around her breasts. Blinking. Taking pictures of the same want it always has. The dark. A centrifuge. Spinning. Taking each of us apart. To extract the if.

I couldn't name the time. But I could hear the clock marking the seconds. An eternity of rusty pins stabbing at the wrinkled putty under the kiss of her panties. Too soon. Too late. They are the same. They are always.

I move the island, but am not moved by it. Such is the folly of time travel. It takes you nowhere you haven't always been.

I guess I've gone to the future.
Because everyone is so far away.

I guess I've gone to the past.
Because everyone is so far away.

Infinity is as close as anyone has ever been.

Clenching. The shards of windshield in her fist. This puzzle is mine to solve. This blood and skin adhesive enough.

It's not my fault he left the top down.

Time. Like a record skipping. Repeats. Until the needle is taken out of the groove. I'm deaf. Because I don't want to hear. The collusion of skin. Gouges in the material become what it is to us. Each touch a chisel. Carving the stern to suit the grin. Suicides come and go. IN fluid appraisals.

Of the rings on our fingers. Or the lack thereof.

I told him I couldn't wait that long. That his time machine was broken.

The past in a drizzle. The future in thunderstorms.

Alone doesn't suit you. Neither does together.

We could keep counting, but why bother. Now that the world knows us so well.

Sticks to break my bones. Stones to leverage. For pieces of skin I would just as soon forget.

In every breath there is the liar. But now you know where to look.

Merchants of then. In stagnant dichotomies. The flood arrives. So we swim. Remembering how in fits of skin. Too similar to drowning.

She slips out of the handcuffs. Without him even knowing. It's not for time to determine. Those chokes of suicide of touch that turn love into words. Lies I told. To persuade tomorrow that it should wait. I would subscribe again. When. It had found. The wormhole I had warned it about.

Time has no line. Just too many colors. I can't see.

When you are old like I am you will want me again he threatens. When you are old, like you are now, I won't care, she counters.

Amongst all these decaying atoms the molecule is king. What is broken only exposes the smaller pieces. I'm bored of these simple puzzles. Of these obvious men. In the game of time travel years mean nothing.

I'll never be. As old as I was then.