The undetermined. Sad faces on the wall. Soldiers on the playground. With laughing guns. Fiddle with the settings. On dying triggers. Tired machines. That have waited too long for us to turn them off.

The woman. With hear eyes in a slipknot. Years like rope. Sneaking through the loop. She remembers the future, but it doesn't remember her. When she comes back she'll say its close. But it'll already have happened.

The stray. Its eyes bruising the window glass. The hunger stomps forward. With all the lead it can carry. Long numbers. Arranged. Like butterflies about to sneeze. Longer division. To perpetuate this wonderful sickness.

Hours. Years. Toiling on the epilogue. The sober like infants learning to walk. I let them fall. The gods like emperors trying on their new robes. I let them think. That we are all naked.

The witch at her wardrobe. Trying on her pointed hats. Choosing her warts.

The constant is still flesh. The numbers are smudges on the dashboard of this arrogant farce.

The result is still undetermined. The math is certain. The skin is still deciding. When we are.

Partial arms. Reach up from the soil. From this distance the sun is in their palms. Pillars of perspective. Unfortunately aware. Of all the dead things at their shins. The hooker with a penis discards her dress. Need like an empty swimming pool. I'll drown long before the empty catches up to us.

These filthy hands count the raindrops they cannot catch. Far away watercolors seduce the flood. In chaotic suicides some hear as music. The deserts are cleansed of everything but sand. A virulent nothing. Fists of her face as she begins to draw her pictures again.

Per a version of the truth. The prod digs the gods from their sleep. Their relentless nightmare of people. All clown faces. In tears.

The nose falls off. The makeup begins to streak. She wears it hard. A costume with concrete sleeves. The black and white mask pretends to comfort her. As her arms weaken under the weight. Of too much nothing.


References made to: Mudvayne, Mushroomhead, Tool

The man in the green hat. He always walked slower than all the rest. The world just an object. To be manipulated. Time more question than fact.

Stones roiling underfoot. Tender toes bitten. Chewed. The atheist in the garden. His pen out of ink. Not enough eve's. Nor enough adam's. To go back.

Stitch the faces back onto those puppets. Flirting with other dimensions. The bald dramas often mistaken for chance. Exuberant dances on the shoulders of if. We can go back.

Take these pockets of time in its fist and clench. All the little things. The islands obscured. By madmen with gods in their crotches

The man in the green hat. Chasing the darkness. As if it would matter. If he could catch it.

The apple that started this war. As rotten as those who have perpetuated it.

The man in the green hat doesn't say where he's going. But it's obvious to me. He's saving his time machine for when the last apple has fallen from the tree.

I try on his hat. Spindles of skin. Move too quickly. And together we laugh. At the whole preposterous idea. That anyone can be saved.

Touch like taradiddles. The vibrating drum. Extemporaneous resonance. Elongates the synapse. Stretches the memory too taut. It's options. Snap back or break. But choice is one of those ubiquitous mythologies that seldom pans out.

The butcher with his blade. Dismantles the whole mess. Cutting up crayons. But all the colors are already gone. Small fingers tickle the outlines. Still the light cannot be coaxed.

The drum beats. Soldiers in her ears. Raise their weapons. Velvet landmines hidden in her panties. Steal their victories over nothing. The bomb in her bra. Counts patiently. So much time between then and now. It all passes so unremarkably.

A bulb gone dark. In a room still brightly lit.

I was learning. As all skin does. By error, folly and shame. Matchstick and tissue parachutes. Tiny planes. Not ready to land. I was learning. As flesh must. That time is the villain. And the victim. In this franchise some call love.

I greet the ocean. As I have all my deaths. With a curious caution.

The war lasting only minutes. Falling down. Greeting the ground with my face. Looking up. From the dirt. The sky arrogant with winners I never knew were my enemy. I was learning. Or trying to. The cull of the cement as it scraped my shins. Trying to walk.

The calamity. Bold muscles. Eager to punch the button. The ghost. In his chair. Solving problems I've yet to come across. The almost empty chair. Splinters and adrenaline. A dismal stopwatch. That long ago elapsed.

This skin on my bones. Musty drapes too dirty to wash. All those hours. Fucked like prostitutes. Still want to be paid.

It was just seconds before she was to leave. Every window was covered in lead drapes. All of their anecdotes were obsolete. The distance from here to there mediating her thoughts with whips and chains.

It was so far. All her footprints disappearing into the sunken shoulders of humanity. I can't remember. How I got here. I don't know. How I'll ever get home. Or that I ever want to. Leave this ghoulish carnival of endearing fiends.

She could draw us a new god. Like a child does with finger paints. She never would though. Admit that it's dead. That distant light. The smiling radiation courteously poisoning us. She could wake the Zeus from his long dream. Explain to him we are wise enough now. But she never would.

Because we don't know. We haven't conquered. And gods aren't real.

She did leave. Her flesh still warm in my bed. Just the thought of her remained. A bit of sour candy on my tongue. A lead curtain across a sunken window pane I haven't the strength to open.

The owl with its eyes in its hands. Measuring the donkey's ass. To determine how deep the bottom is. Dull claws. Draw trenches in the dust. Half a bottle. Maybe less. To thrill the question. Long blank spaces. Laugh at the notion. Children on their toes. All those toys behind the glass.

Phobias of dead men. And petty gods. Spoil the maps. The monkey bends over to tie its shoe. And he misses out on evolution. He'll catch it at the next station.

The mouse with her many babies. The cat locked into her trail. The atom belongs to each of them. The elevator pauses. The landing is there. An infinite expanse of faces. Stairways to places yet to exist. gods on their stilts. Stumbling over sorely bent necks.

Heaven comes in awkward stares. Pots of shit yet to be flushed. Digging. Dirty fingernails.

Are my only evidence. Of how far we've come.

The calm man in his shorts. Fiddles with the open box. There. And there again. Flashbulbs and awkward fingers chart the course. Time in ripples. The ocean breathes its magic dust. And we sneeze another life.

Thighs chasing the pendulum. As it marks the map. With its perpetual course. The huff of the earth. The shrug of the moon. Little playthings in a series of judgements. The time line waivers. As we sip our drinks. It waits. To see how far we'll go. To arrange the atoms. Focus the explosion.

On the things that should have, but never broke.

Prying the hours from her fingers he discovered partitions he never knew were there. The whole divided. Independent sections. Overhead masks. For the dead to wear. Fail safes. Should she not come back. She could still find herself. By the smell of rotting men. And Tortoises with their toes on the finish line.

She turned off the box. And pulled it closer to her bed. She listened as it admitted it was an accident.Go, but don't try to come it said. You can leave, You can face all those malevolent gods. But not without a weapon.

Time is the last bullet I have left. I plan on using it.

She was mending her machines. With needle and thread. Plastic. Flesh. Fabric. It's all just molecules that never listen. Little dogs with absent tails still wagging. Long legs bent into their short dresses.

There is this much matter. No more. No less.

So we are. Always will be. Pennies in the wishing wells of bigger men. Loose change in pockets of time. Our only voice the rumble of its strutting thighs. As it trundles onward. Tossing us about.

There is this much. You. Me. Us. No more. No less.

We don't change. It changes us.

There is this much. That is all. Faded stop signs. Busy intersections. Slotted spoons. With which to drink the water. Empty wells. To slip into. The panic. Naked dolls with sharp heels. Stalk the vacant bridges. Wake the statues. From heavy coffins.

Time enough for dark windows. Doors left unlocked. Curious fingers. In private carnivals. Proud lions with their manes cut off.

There has always been this much. Always been this little.

We take it away. And it's given right back to us. The constant. This little. This much.

It doesn't change, but we do.

Post the patterns in vagrant outlines. Grey clowns with their pants down and their red noses in their hands. Break the crayon in half and tear the page from the spine. There's no one there.

Tell the drummer boy he's no longer needed. No one dances. Nothing moves at all.

Just the insects in her head searching for their larva.

I can't tell time at all. It always looks like an enemy. Until I press the button. The machine wakes up and I am debating with imaginary gods again. Yelling at the window. For having tricked the sky. Into believing it is above us.

The egos of petty gods. Spoiling the glass. With men dressed as angels.

After too many coffees and even more broken switches. I finally find myself, but she doesn't listen. When I tell her they're already gone.

Woke up. The rubber band about her neck. Skin suits loose their brittle bones. Poignant mannequins. In the windows we still share. The stiffened pendulum. Shoots its load.

The yellow tape around the perimeter. Weak eyes for nearsighted gods. Everything dies. Some sooner than expected. But what is murder. Intent? Ignorance? Or the science. That propels us. To discover. The truth.

The enormity of a world in which we are miniscule. Our willingness to admit. How small we've become. When giants are what we once were.

Evolution comes in wagers. The monkey lays down his chips. Bets it all on Darwin. The means we have created. The technologies invented. Everything we've made. All monsters now. Much bigger than us.

I don't trust the switch. But I turn off the lamp just the same. And stay in the dark. Convinced all our gods are deaf.

Tires punctured. Years of history escaping dormant thighs. Lost. Fingers like matchsticks. Scrape to sparks, but are unable to ignite.

She was to die that day. If our future was correct.

We gathered our notes. Poring over the evidence. Trying to convince the world that we had been. Songs underwater. Touch in the vacuum of space. It didn't matter what future we wanted. The apple had already fallen.

The witch had been cooking for too long.

The world spinning on a pottery wheel. Every one's hands shaping the clay. The windows to her back inhaling. The prevalent cancers of when. The paradox was slow to catch up. With the mechanics of zealous men.

There is no lonely when there is no one to want. There are no buttons on time machines. Just a single switch. On or off. Go or don't. You'll change everything. Or you'll change nothing. You'll never know unless you leave.

But wherever you happen to end up.

Always remember.

She mustn't be saved.

I pointed at the process. Lingering experiments distorted the results. The parallel. Her hair. Something so mundane. More alive than anything I can recall.

The opening. The lengthy filament. Long snakes with vitreous poisons to lend. To red doll lips. Void the armies. Split the bullets. Open her legs to reveal the locks.

Plastic fingers stuck in hold. Like cracking lollipops. Sharp teeth strive for the paper twig. That tamed the sugar. Soiled the friend.

It's the process that's at fault. It's the molecules that are the cause. For this trip back. To where we forgot. Why the dolls are naked. Why we can not satisfy those plastic faces.

the jutted smile. Pierces every rift. The axiom imposed. Bare threads. As I clench my thimble. The pins are in place. I have no thumbs. No fingers left. The knot misses.

The devil turns on his radio. And listens.

For my confession.

Write down the numbers. There's no way to keep them all in your head. Pale fragments. Suspended in skin. Dodecahedron's. The manic geometry of then.

Brilliant ratios. Spoil the darkness. With broken knobs. Doors that won't close. Windows that wonn't be shut. Still there she is. Inside. So many calculations separating us.

The box. Humming with the orgasm of a million moments. About to be. Or always were.
The pirates in her stare hold his dick for ransom. These ugly negotiations are life's foundation.

The loop. Strangles the process. Beginning and end the same. Clowns lacking makeup. And red noses. Stumble from the car. Like all the people I almost was. The atoms form a pattern. Scars on the firmament. Construct a compass. In her lap.

Like arrogant clouds. Confident in their thunder. She bends over to steer the vessel, but the loop persists. Stubborn dominoes. Still falling upward.

The trigger was moist. Soft like a pencil after many drawings. Little travellers. With heavy diagrams. Sure their tunnels. She ran into herself there. They argued over the decimals. Between time lines. But they were both wrong.

They wrote letters to the future. That they envisioned someday they would deliver. And others to the pasts that they were afraid to send. They decided to go back together, but that didn't work out.

She stroked the dial on her forehead. Sweat like tumblers. The lock coming closed. She tapped gently on the glass and found in the resonance something familiar. A warm coat in a relentless winter. Minutes. Hours. Years. Parasite on the skin. Convincing it can go anywhere.

She told herself they would meet again.

And hoped that she was lying.

Of all the hers. In all the dimensions. Why'd we have to meet in this one.

I think I left the light on. And I would turn it off. If only I could remember when the light was.

moments as big as continents. sweep the graves. tall men with bent backs. breaking their ladders in half. managing the monsters with bigger ones. the place is the catalyst. the hour is the drug. as any villain will tell you. their victims solicit them.

the marked man. with the tiny tattoo on his thigh. tries on the child. imagining himself the same. that no fire had ever been set. That no rooms were blackened. and that no one had died.

except.

it was.

they are.

she did.

now every hour is as large as then. and as small as he is.

skin like chalkboards. The dust resettles around what's been erased. The clock beside his bed explains. It's only now. Your chronic surrender to Morpheus. You'll see. When will lie. Tell you it matters. Don't believe it.

How will say it can. But fails on every occasion. The buildings will collapse. Faces. Like mortar and brick. Piling up again.

Those gods are will always be deaf.

That glass cracks, but doesn't break. As he puts all his weight on it.

Fingers. Scales to weigh. Errant atoms. In the bomb. Just words to describe. The island. In its raw form. Seeds. Soil. Water. Ingredients. Not life. Seldom the architect. The apple. Hanging loose on the branch. The serpent. Dull fangs peel the skin. Turning the flesh brown.

There the child learns the arithmetic. The numbers that choose when we are. The butterflies whose sneezes decide what lives we'll have.

Deep in the window. Embedded in the glass. Frowns a face. Urges a hare. That this is a race. And we are losing it.

Just the future with its whiskey methods for resolve. And the past bent over with tomorrow's dick up its ass.

I reason with the time machine that it's losing us. And wonder whether it cares.

His hands. Like a lampshade over the sun. Men never recognize the dark until women point it out to them.

I was discussing with the molecules. The ramifications of the switch. Future. Past. Going is only a metaphor for never having left. On or off. All the same to the gods in our underwear.

The fountain of her breasts not stopping. Though my thirst remains unquenched. Patents on how the moon cracks. To allow the wolf to grow his fangs back.

Pigs for dinner. In beds of straw. Her tits laugh at my eager penis. Empty red hoods leave their baskets. The child waiting for the axe.

Mercy arrives in small glitters. Dead stars I'm only just now learning once existed. The future is then. We were. Clasps on the volcano. Quiet eruptions. Wait for the clock to catch up.

With layers of skin. So much more science than touch. randomly fiddling with buttons. That know so much more than than we do. Daring the future to find all the things we have lost.

Alone is the perfect playground. Chase the dimensions that lurk in the bowels of salvation. Yield to the hours that proliferate self-same antagonists. Reiterating the path my whims have taken. To convince the slave that he is a free man.

Take her in doses. She is a delicate medicine. A woman of any sort. Bathsheba's with patterned asses. Trussed thighs. Invite only villains into their warm graves. Wake the priest. Tell him. She has died again. And will die. A thousand times before this Earth loses its grip.

Blessed are symptoms such as this. That I can't see. Because the world is absent. That I can't sleep. Because the hours are always close. Begging manipulation. Making gods from small men. With eager uterus's.

Discarded articles of skin. The attic calls. In whispers of chains. Condemned to a future where we do not exist. Ghosts. Observing. The consequence. Of how we've lived.

Just a woman. Only a man. Primitive directives present their evidence. I wore her. As tight as any man could have. The blood still warm in the pelt as I snuck my limbs inside the skin. It was a drug. Passive chemical euphoria. It was religion. It was science. Vultures on the horizon. Confident with the sickness.

Little lies creating bigger ones. And home still so many machine away.

Just parts. The parallel pursuant to the result. Of long women with their eyes missing. And my finger. Dry clay. Listless on the wheel. As she spins it.

Just people. Demons in their rented tuxedos. The barometer. Of able skin. Pinches. Through turnstyles. Toward limp trains. As loud as their destination.

Just fractions. Pieces of the math that gradually insist this life will happen. Out of place. Flamingos on the lawn. Stick legs driven into the grass. Can scarcely cork the volcanoes. That say she is there.

Soiled bowls on the table. Tiny gods with their alarm clocks set. For our next epiphany.

Just when. The radius consults the diameter. Breasts. Vagina. Places. that too easily forget. What I have confessed to them.

How long. The serpent's teeth are. In mediocre parables. The burden of skin. Relaxing at crotch level. The stalwart prince. Bending over to kiss. Dead things more terminal than prophet. I woke up the dead eye, but it was blind by then.

I knew the hours would not listen, but he insisted that we try. Turning over the hourglass again.

The calendar evaporating. As we exchanged vacant skins. Time is just a tyrant. A foolish dictator of penises and tits.

The disease comes in doses. The flesh ambiguously resolved to other locations. The universe shits. And we exist again. In another mutation.

The artist with her easel. The poet with his ink. The dead child with her chin in her her hands.

No toys left.

The cottage in the dark had no lights on. No doorway at all. Just a flat roof and tilting walls. That were struggling to hold up something no longer there.

It had many bright light bulbs in all the lamps. Only no switches with which to turn them on. Just as every woman begins. And every man eventually ends.

I took the stairs to the basement. Determined to find the guilty fuse. I played hopscotch on bed. Convinced my pebble knew it was leading me somewhere. Like an octopus with all its arms lopped off. Pointing at something.

The valentine on my doorstep flirted with the snow. Dirty panties too close to the fireplace. Gone again.

Waiting for the witch. To offer her poisoned apple. Looking forward to that first bite.

It's only dark because the windows are covered. It's only lonely because the doorknob is missing.

The dark cottage. Has taken off its clothes. A ripe dystopia in the lushness of new fables. The doorway is obvious when I don't look for it. When in confessions. Sleeping infants with bloody assholes. Try not to remember.

The more I worship the wolf, the better I understand his decision. To devour the pigs.

She was cold. Wearing nothing. As well as she wore it. Like a bomb around her neck. Always wanting to explode, but so inept at the math.

Counting. As if time actually passes. On these islands we call freedom. To steal. What we desire. From fresh skin. Chewed up dolls discarded in basements. The rouge on their plastic cheeks. Never fades. Until the lights go dark again.

The stirrups on her hips. Begging me to dig my spurs in. The saddle on her back. Needing to be tightened.

I have my devices. The choice the algorithms pretend to offer. Stubborn locks on sinking ships. We wait to drown. In each other. As the flesh rises. And the words diminish.

Just the virus. The vaccine of lust. In the cavities assigned this body The calm abyss that she wears so well. Knowing how much I want to be its victim.

Oh. To outsmart the clock. With these fragments of long division. That have come so near to proving we can go back. To the island.

The clock is broken she whispered as her lips fumbled with his balls. We stretch our legs. As taut as we can. Exposing the target. Then we let go.

Pain is all there is to trust. These rubberbands. Sloppy catheters in our dicks. That backfire on us.

On crippled gods. With their saints all in torn panties. Velocity times pussy marks the hours. In song I wish had never entered my head.

Pretty things in stumped high heels. Fight with the numbers. I chase. Not what's gone, but wasn't hasn't yet been.

Building those mythical devices one broken woman at a pace. Like the secret is to hurt them. Prove tomorrow can't catch up with. Dirty cocks with a a penchant for science.

They're all as stupid as I always knew. Pressing the button. Always waiting. For it to do something. Make me love. Make hate. Anything that could define us.

The button's always been fake. The machine never was. I was always just a man. Without anything to give them.

Still they bite down on the meat. Eager to swallow.

Still chewing. After all these years.

On what hasl always be raw.

Some lies tell themselves. The pelt awaits bone. Dead is a familiar chamber. In a series of rooms. The sequence begs the catalyst. We are nothing until combined. The cellar arranges its monsters. In order of fear.

Refusing the numbers she convexes the root. Turning the cage upon itself. And all those hours tumble down. In absent raindrops. That never reach the ground. Transparent martyrs tugging on the strings of stoned gods.

She could. Trick the machine. Give it the wrong coordinates. But why bother she spits. There's nothing out there i haven't already lost. She could bargain with the darkness. Humble time with her dead bulb.

The future is a vacuum. Like all this space around us. Nothing enters. Nothing exits. Pigs praying their brick houses won't fail them. As the wolf exhales.