Certainty guesses at her clothes. Naked underneath so many faces. Pills as eye shadow. Semen lipstick. Working the clock. Churning porridge in cold pots. Confident. In the cuts on her wrists. Lightning bolts to at last. Bring the monster to life.

Was chalk. Now is dust. There. On a deaf chalkboard. Murmurs choke. On lost voices. And found blood.

Sandpaper and saws. Earth and sky. Coerce her fingers. To create the shadows. That worship her. She was. Itches of palms and dirty nylons. She was. How high. How far away. Heaven really is.

A button on her breast. To go there. A switch on her thigh to exit. God and Satan both. Groupies at her grave.

His press settling into her wrists. Paper cuts and dirty bandages. Arrange her grief. Fingers dying. Useless devices. Feel, but cannot keep. The melted sun. Stains the crotch of her new dress. The colors. Excited atoms. Born in lead. Dead wolves with open bellies on her doorstep. Children crawling out of them.

Certain the world has paused in their absence.

The watch on her wrist. Telling stores in reverse. Chasing Faraday cages. To perpetuate the loop. Empty pages. Filled with ink.

Coax the dead. With broken doorknobs on exits for impossible labyrinths.

Go slow. Discovering her smallest holes. Put in the shovel. Tame that unstoppable time machine with violence. Dig until the hole is deep enough. Set her like an alarm. She'll wake you up when you reach the time that you belong with her.

If you ever do.

Go fast. Find the future and then. What to do with it. Stray cats in their tuxedos pay the admission. But never see the show.

Fiddling with the settings. Cooking the yolk. Arguing with the demons. That assembled this vacant throne.

Her legs remains open. But the glass is missing and the window is closed.

She had lost a scab reaching toward the ceiling of man. The blood gave fast chase to the hours at her cheeks. Counting backwards from zero to never. In tiny explosions.

No skin. Just sinew clinging to near undressed bone. No villains. Just dark crumbles of flesh eager to bleed. A big breath. And then waiting. So long waiting. To breathe again.

The world in scratches. On the dirty glass. Spoils of touch miscount the years. The hours. The minutes. All stick figures. Missing eyes. Fingers. Toes. All drawn in pencil. And fading too fast.

The question comes first in answers. Demanding a logic. The machine is built. Which takes us back. It can't have happened. We weren't there.

The window yawns. Heavy with lives we'll never live. The scab returns to where it had never been. Patterns on the flesh say otherwise. While blood quietly solves the algebra.

No remainders. This is not division.

Just when. As stubborn as ever.

The obvious was loitering as it often does between the impossible and the thread. Just a hair on her ass. The razor hadn't reached. The accelerator in her vagina. The motor in her thighs. All idling obnoxiously. At the thought of ordinary time travel.

I want the butterfly to sneeze. Step on every mosquito. Come back. To a strange world that doesn't remember me.

Press the key into the hole. Rotate. Vigorously. Flood the engine. With stories about little girls with pink fingernails and the toys that convinced them it mattered. The teddy bears with broken button eyes. Staring from the corner. Blind demons with claws made of why. It knows. It finds. The knot. That slipped the needle.

The stitches chasing her waning grin. As she make puns about cellars. Dead bulbs. In Broken lamps. And how many little girls it takes to change them.

Too many she says.

No one was listening. No one could hear. As she screamed. About thoughtless men. More abortion than sex. The atom on its side. A treasure in its hip. As it shudders to the god awful songs we use to make it dance. Just a small doorway inside a larger one. To find her at her keyboard. Obsessed with the broken switch. On those practical poisons. All devices of the skin. That would expand so abrupt. Taking her to the safety of the center of the explosion.

The prominent. Rabid with. The bowels called darkness. Polish the key on sharp stones. Found is. The dagger in the sand. Dig. Keep digging. Let the ocean match her glance. As she breaks the ladder into pieces. Knowing she'll never be that high again.

Just the surgeon with fingers made of glass. Determined to know the origin of her reflection. Her organs all askew. Dimensions. Like finger paints. Rub the heavy paper. Snare the wolf. Take his claws. Cut the lips of god.

Scream at him. The abyss is obvious. The lever is stuck. The world is split down its side. Dead as I remember it.

I sleep on the button. Afraid to push it. I weep on the numbers. Looking for mercy. In the futile paradoxes that is her.

I fall asleep on the trigger. And wake up. To small gods trying to stop our ugly machines.

Small gods are that I've left. Ever since that cockraoch first darkened the lamp shade. The bulb in its calm collapse. Pale men at her back door. Collecting the atomsin small slices.

The wolf in grandma's pantyhose. His big eyes like daggers. Spilling the contents of my picinic basket.

One ghost. Maybe two. Scratching at her thigh. The gods sneeze and we are gone.

I left the key on the doormat for the wolves to find. That old door letting in predators of every sort. The madmen on the rooftop. Proclaiming that they know. How to fly. With their capes of blood and bone.

Maybe they do. But I don't believe them.

One lie to tell. Maybe more. The key. Only those shadows in the drawer when I open it. And find nothing new. Her eyes are gumdrops. Seldom hints at what she was. Her lips are chewing gum. All the flavor gone. Her legs are catapults. I am the boulder.

That broke the glass. Held the door open. While she conversed with ghosts.

Bribing them with pussy. Blinding them with tits.

Working the machine as if the switch isn't broken. Or that it would matter. If the ghosts could find her.

The gods chasing her bras straps in an infinite loop.

So what if time is a one way street? A dagger that can't be pulled out. Or we bleed to death. I've gone this far. It won't remember if I've lied to it.

Stick it in. The rupture provides the means. Displaced particles fester on the wound. A virus. Excited by dead things.

Time spreads its legs. Let's me taste. The foul of logic. The paradox. Being that I still remember was never was.

I woke up in the coffin. The hole deeper than I could reach. I woke up. With boulders in my skin. Going back. So often. To change nothing.

Why would we go back to change it had it never happened. And so we never did.

The gods kept watching. Counting the toes on the monkeys. The world eventually found us. Just as we had always been. Starving to go back to a place we'd never left.

Telling the truth in lies to everyone.

All time travelers are deaf. Their mouths move. But the words are far behind. God I sid. Be patient.

I'm beginning to get the this puzzle.

Good enough. It was. For doorsteps. And basements. Infinite loops. Arrange the pathos. Neat little packets. The dress on the floor. A shadow. Not lost. Like all the others are.

It was far enough away that I could want it. Still close enough to hate. Perfect irnoies carved into the darkensss. Wicks of skin engorged on accelerant.

The devil in his sundress. Eating ice cream from a cup. Telling stories. About wars for choice.

I didn't choose. Still now it's mine.

The switch in the off position. The atoms all excited. The balloon I lost long ago fianlly bursting.

It's just paper. Thin enough to see through. It doesn't matter what I write. It's just broken traffic lights. At the intersection I've come to.

No problem.

I'll go first.

Tortoises and wolves. The corset on the stories good girls tell. The discarded underwear lonely men will sniff. To convince themselves they haven't lost. Anything.

Picnic baskets on the ground. In the shadows of empty red hoods. And smug piglets. Bragging about stick houses.

They all blow down.

Even the brick ones.

Just louder.

The ant with the dew drop on his back doesn't think about how he can carry it. He has to. And so he does. Time doesn't think about how it can spoil all these fairy tales. It has to. And so it does.

Because we are frail. Slips of paper driven by the wind. To places we would never otherwise go. We are stamps in the metal. Of machines that are always running. But never move.

Cupboards on the walls. Looking for Einstein in aging oatmeal boxes. The button on her thigh. Scornfully repeating us without a sound. Trap doors. At the back of her throat. Swallow the years. Like every hour was written down. And all that paper is burning.

Never mind the paradox. That tells me I'll never see myself again. I'm gone. I know this. Ice on the glass ransoms all reflections. The chamber. Awash in wolves. Bargaining with atoms. For one more explosion.

Closet doors with mirrors on them. In dark confessions. Neurons break the skin. A cloud of choices. Suffocate the sick. Distant itches awaken. In dead flesh.

The tunnel folds around the sunlight. In broken bones and flaking scabs. The world comes into focus as she loses her sight. Distant itches find the trigger.

At the bottom are musty elevators that haven't moved in years. At the top is where I am.

Looking down.

I was lost. Naming the oceans. After dead men. Expecting the waves to break as they always had. Dividing the sand into territories. Manipulating the space of a million different reasons. All the same. Aliens in overalls. Dull pitchforks and pointy fingers.

No Mars. Send me straight to Jupiter. Empty rooms at every corner. I'm not there at all. Just a face lost in the glass that never smiles.

The hours like a potion. Set the brake. On disobedient time machines. Her finger in the socket. Numb with the electricity. Some stupid Jesus. Convincing the mannequin it knows sensience.

She wakes up the arimetic. To ask it. If it's any closer. To knowing. Why. All these machines take her nowhere.

Just strangers. Creased flags. Lost in the wind. So close, but it leaves us.

As easily as flipping a switch. The future in partial men. No eyes. Just frowns. Dead puppies stuck to their mother's tits. That try to, but never can prove.

How far away it is.

One number. Maybe two between us. Tin hands and Iron eyes. Hold the cold and the heat. I'm just a fiction. A story no one ever told. Of the girl the prince never came to save.

The pregnant shark chews her belly open. So she can eat her baby. Because she longs to feed it.

Lips like bacon. Rendered raw. Curling. Crackling. In a pan of skin close to the flame. The grease everywhere. Heavy with the process of finding the meat in so much lard.

We have to go back, but we never will. Because lies are what make life hospitable. The future in long division. Carrying the remainders with us. Torn eyelids helplessly watching the scene. As the world rolls passed in a snake of empty cargo trains. The rapid echo of nothing inside. As it goes away all over again.

The dial. Guilty with my fingerprints. A stoic machine at the center of an infected wound. The useless brake. The manic accelerator stuck to my shoes. The inevitable crash. Like medicine.

As I begin undoing.

What never was.

The skeleton in its pretty clothes. Planting its garden with fingers made of bone. Death is a joke. Religion is the punchline. No one is alone. Everyone is. The ghost in her enchanting gown. Tears it on the nail sticking out. Damn those doorways. That they tend to put in between then and now.

Working her windows. With steel wool in hand. Clean is relative. Those dolls with their perky plastic breasts and tiny rubber feet. There is only so much I can chew on.

Some people are dirt. Others are stains. The choice is theirs.

Waking up in the diner. French toast at three am is something to be cherished. When all your doll's are footless. And your ghosts won't listen to reason. The red light. Limping loudly in her head. Pressing the button on that device changes nothing. Different snakes. Same venom.

Numbers. Like stainless steel parting skin. To change all the world around her. If only for an instant. It's still worth it.

Where she was. Arrogant equations. Steeped in cloying men. Dead wood. No kindling. Plus. Minus. A sequence. The illusion of touch. Fooling us. With empty rages.

I just want somewhere to go. Somewhere that isn't here. And won't ever know. Where I've been.

Nowhere. Every place. When in whispers. How in quiet miscarriages. Time measured in the prick of needles. That frail vaccine called love rarely works on the dead.

Ultimately.

This disease is all that's saving her.

Mellow bunnies on paper drugs. Nervous ears. Missing feet. The Watership is down. We're swimming toward missing islands.

Silly cadavers making ice cream sundaes out of embalming fluid. The sweet stench of death lingers. He fancies my speeches. Pointless diatribes in which evolution always wins and god always dies.

Delirium comes with many insights. Like the measure of the same. At quantum dimensions. Or the negative. Failing numbers coax the equation. Until finally it shits out cosine.

Anyone know where to find a good monkey replicator. I really need to find one. Now that all my monkeys have discarded their gospel in favor of Darwin. Ask me again after I've finished translating my vomit.

80 degrees too cold for humility. Paper drugs all flame. Footless rabbits hurry the altar. As the demons release the latches on the door. The island glances back, but we can't go there again.

Shivering in ugly little love songs. The socks still on her feet. Dirty glasses distort her vision. As she tests the light for the first time. In the bathroom. With the blood from her uterus. A parachute of red. Tries to save her.

But there are too many holes.

The window was brown on the edges. Dirty glass in the center. Looking out. Moons too low. Chances not taken.

Wake up the coroner. We've got corpses everywhere. Lipstick on the canyons. Her ever-parted doll's smile. Legs like Vesuvius. Eager to erupt. Spread their own brand of death.

The mannequin with pretty eyes. Unable to see. The teddy bear feeling for its nose. Choking on his bow tie. Blindness comes it stages. This is the first.

Moving. Partial skyscrapers push the sky away. With bent fingers. A menagerie of strangers fuss about in little houses on even littler streets. Life overlooks the mediocre. Blindness comes in stages. This is the second.

Naming saviors. After the places where I've died. Trust is crayons. People are coloring books. Thick outlines on recycled paper. Tempting artists to try.

Going forward. I can't see, but I know. Why the window still won't open. For the same reason that the door remains closed.

Blindness comes in stages. This is the last.

She says, I'm ready to leave. He says, go then. My mania is all I have to give. And I've given you all of it. Blindness. She whispers. Is our greatest asset. In a world where everything is just appearances.

Taking her island elsewhere. She began preparing for a different timeline. Monkeys she assumed knew more than she did. About people. And the places they will go.

There was a logic in lying. She could almost see. There was a science to love. She wished she hadn't. Kill the embryo. Build cities in the womb. Some place small enough where I'll never have to see.

Blindness. She mused. Makes fools into sages. Black windows cure a blacker world. I see numbers only. Arithmetic in limbs. And folds of skin. Cascading down from sagging tits. Old women frantically changing into torn nightgowns. Leaching through the dark for a dusty switch. That will turn the light on.

Taking the first step. There are too many she admits. That high left me long ago. I'm looking for the smaller pieces.

Still I don't know what I'd do with them should I ever find.

Ignore the evidence. Being that I've always known.

The Secrets I've just been told.

Blindness. In stages. The needle pushing in. With frets of poison too sweet to disregard. Blindness. Like atoms into weapons. Assuming. I've ever seen.

Take off your face. Slip out of your legs. He said. You don't need them. All those parts. Wasted. On the chronically incomplete.

Spying a finger she looks down to examine the structure of the break. Clean and oblong. A distortion of her fist. Frenzied vortex. Powerless time machine picking at the scabs. Same wounds. Fresh blood.

The stray dog in its top hat. The backdoor. leaning toward. Forgiveness. The staple in her tit. Hardening the skin. weakening the rest. Just the stone. and underneath it only us. Soft dolls stitched in haste. With faces made of scribbles. Nothing left to wear except the soil on our hands.

They leave the windows open and hope that they'll get used to the distance. Or that eventually they'll not notice the glass.

The things between. Heavy bones and tearing skin. Useless bandages for exposed levers. Pull. Keep pulling. Until nothing happens.

Not there all over again.

Forgotten. Dead leaves on the porch. Fighting with the wind. A quiet symphony. In dirty bedsheets. Tasting the math. Sweet syrup in ugly numbers. Yawning. Spitting up lies. And lovers. Told too often.

The number flinches. The fantasy erupts with expectation. Headless dolls all in a row. Violent with lugubrious regrets. No one can hear.

People.

Like clay.

Only easier.

To break.

Straddling the equation. Theorums. Accelerate the sum. I don't know why I end up with this number. It finds me. No matter how many worlds I put between us.

Broken plates. Bent forks. Stab the air. Dead feasts still so alive in the chamber. Monsters. In their tuxedos. Witches in high heels. It's not a party until someone leaves crying.

Chasing myself out of the tunnel. I know where I've been, but don't know where I was. Chemistry. The barren. The sterile. Surge of oblivion as I commit my body to this flesh. A deep grave. Dug premature.

A cracked teacup. As she pours. Her pinkie on the pot's lid. The hot liquid inside. Just a theory, As stale as the cups from which we drink it. A devil gazing in on a window into heaven. Confused.

As to what the appeal is.

So many dead men with nothing left to do other than blame the machine. For not having the capacity to go back far enough. Too many scientists. trying to explain how far away it is.

Portals. Clay men. Softer still. By the heat. Drawing pictures with numbers. Division. What remains. The steps. Up and back down again. The minutes. Extruded. Like meat through a sieve. All extremities fall to the center.

The parallel. Proprietary touch. In small warehouses of skin. I wake up in the cellar. Urgent with confessions. The absence bleeds into the commitment. As the moon seeps into the sun. The lock was made for the key. Not the other way. Pistons and tumblers. Rape the grooves. Doorways. Window that open. Let the world tumble in. In quick tornadoes. And blatant hurricanes. Those that survive are unfortunate.

Portals. The heart is a sewer. Carries away that waste. Convinces us we loved the stench. Love is a morgue. Preserves the dead.

The angles. The geometry of men. Acute and limited. Rusty swing sets squeak as I play. The visitor. The child displacing the sand. Making footprints the wind will soon erase.

When I knew how close it didn't seem so far. The jack rabbit with her torn pantyhose. The clock up her ass. Looking for more time in the darkest of places.

I did my research. Velocity divided by momentum. I argued with physicists. About where it starts. Where it might end. The stage. All lit up. For actors on Valium. Sedate me now. Thank me later. For the lies that made it possible. To live another day.

I watched the movie. Twice. Three times. Maybe more. Wet with the various time lines. The primer. The beginning. Raw Popsicle sticks. Me's at every stage. Demanding an explanation. For the chaos.

Leaving the machine on. For something to find myself in. Wires. A pale damnation. For houses no one will live in again.

What could I want to live for except those big windows. those buttons on the machine. I don't know which to push. To go where. The thick glass. That doesn't let me see. How close it is.

The dragon breathes. Only so much fire then she chokes. Typical woman. All roar. No heat. In her long dress. With the edges made of roses. Little gardens grow at her ankles. Worlds collapse in her arms.

I'm only sober long enough to hate everything. Like all philosophers are found. In the diarrhea of dying cities.

I'm just bone. Waiting to be broken. Just skin looking for new bruises. Grab your pitchfork. Summon your devils. I've been looking forward to meeting them. Undressing those shadows that the corners will soften. Pull down those moons that couch our heavens. In lobbies of stars that applaud the actors.

Following the road. As if I know where I'm going. Same place. Different sandpaper. Those little statues we mistook for invitations. The method. The doors. In fragments of geometry. The sum at my fingertips. The pageant. People. Like scarves billowing in the wind. Pinball machines loud with the obvious ricocettes. Skin bouncing hard. The more we let go the further we are smothered by it.

Counting jacks. Useless underwear. Bold aprons solve the algorithm. Of who she is. Little pauses. Long distractions. In vague monologues. Assuming to know. When we become. These people we are.

A new year. Or an old one.

What's the difference?

All those distraction I once took for granted.

Gone.

No one there. No buttons left to push. The gears chew on time. Life is the pulp left after the juice has been extracted. Love is the dress I never wore. Because I was afraid to try it on.

Lost. Only in that abstract sense. No one there. The formula in sick repetitions. The prince in robes made of lead. We move. Through time more than places. Gardens of skin burgeoning with the venom of first kisses. Dead men in my basement. Demanding their funerals.

No one. Nothing. The triumph of alone. New year. The profound lie time is always telling. Change comes slow and ugly. Clown faces drawn on cardboard time machines. Smiling at us from inside their coffins.

All the dead things are alive as I go back. Fragile skyscrapers negotiate the moon. The earth in putrid Sundays. I was never there. I never left.

But it remembers me still.

Nowehre to go. The world in shattered glass. Life. In bitter increments. A slow bulemia. Swallowing and spitting up. These same few pieces of foul meat. It changes, but we are not. Scarecrows nailed to heavy posts. Straw fingers thread the needle. Charming the holes with talk of when. There was something other than this rubber on the road to indicate where we crashed.

The figure. The diamond. Like rabbits and priests. Innocent and guilty. No one to question. Now that the caterpillar lives. On thin wings. Stolen from a capsule. The world had the foresight to give it.

No change. As she sips her coffee. Stray skin aggravates the balance. As the digits turn over. I play the fool. And still fool them. With little bits of how. We are alone in our paralysis.

Coaxing the window. Pushing the attic to listen. As if time ever had an answer. Waiting for the door to open. Waisting for a reason to answer the sound. The knocking. Those old bells still tolling. As if. There is somewhere to go.

Only the blood drying on her wrists. As she explains to them that it isn't just now. Always. And then some. Telling lost in poetry. Explainigng everything else in vowels.