Tendencies she said as she crawled inside the wet mask. Of clay to harden. Of brittle things to crack. She shuffles through the fission. Impotent vampires colliding with the monsters we mistake for ourselves.

All that I remember. Is just this. That the fire caught up to the ladder we were escaping on. That the hands on those dolls were fixed. No matter how steep the stairs they descended.

If I could color it all in. Dead things filling those obvious outlines. Scales on the skin. Measuring. For the missing pieces.

Years she confessed. Wasted counting the steps to nowhere. Their faces like ink. Their touch like paper. And nothing left to say.

The proof of her guilt. The machine spoiling her skin. Her defense. The tendencies of atoms. To split.

The stubborn. The sore. Full with infection. The empty suitcase. Leaving her again. Drinking glasses. Foul with the stench. Of barren gardens. The seeds still under the dirt. Missing the sun.

I tried to save her. Knitted parachutes. Weak against the thrust of descent. I put the atom in her hand as she made a fist. The sad demeanor of little girls weighed down by too many men.

All the world like quiet raindrops. Falling on a distant glass. The storm is apparent, but I don't care.

A crossword of skin. Waiting on my letters. A cryptogram of gods fumbling with their crutches. Lying that they can reach me.

Crawling the same as I have.

Isn't that poetry?

Maybe it comes like this. In folds too small. Helpless fingers uselessly undoing and closing. Empty openings in the skin. Maybe it does. Is. This obvious. That even I can see. How easy it would be. To let go.

Maybe we are. This weak. This strong. Butterflies. Paper wings. Convincing the wind. We're ready for the storms. We never imagined could be so big.

Maybe we are young. Maybe we are old. We've been both. And neither. And have been humbled by too many graves.

The world arrives in doses. Little bits of medicine. As we make ourselves sicker. As we work the disease. Little pieces of clay. Drying on our fingers. While the wheel still spins. With ashtrays and vases.

The night arrives in silk and leaves in tulle. First I can only feel it. Snaking over my skin. In tender bites. That only take a little. Afterward it's all empty bones. And butterflies on their broken wings. Changing the world.

Maybe it's dark. This close to the sun. The hours choking off. Like steam engines. Running out of coal. Maybe I'm covered in soot. From shovelling all this fuel, but I'm getting closer.

Sound of man gagging on his own vomit. Empty beer bottles litter the floor where he lays. Pillows on the floor. Dirty mattress. The sheets falling off.

A deck of cards not far from his left hand. Aces. Jacks. Twos. All showing. Cigarettes butts dug into the hardwood floor.

He coughs. Heaves. On the bile. The thrust of sunlight pounding through the blinds.

Looks up from his nest on the floor. Eyes still dirty with the night before. Sees something. A person unconscious in his bed. Their face hidden. Their breathing transparent against the whirl of the ceiling fan. As the morning's heat begins to overtake the stagnant apartment.

The man lights a fresh cigarette. Stares at the body taking up his bed. A familiar stranger sleeping in vomit and piss.

WAKE UP! he shouts as it rattles his brain. Wake up. Who are you? Why are you here?

His own face rises and turns to look at him. Frozen lips. Vacant stare. His own face look down on him. The bed creeks. The ceiling fan continues to spin. Circulating the stench of their shared vomit. Cutting through the sunlight as it slithers inside.

He rises. Removing the carpet embedded in his skin. Mostly undressed, save for a soiled pair of underwear. Rising to stare at himself there in the dirty bed.

Laughing. Loudly. Euphoric. At the fragile condition of that thing that resembles him.

Just too much drink. The remnants of poor drug. Or else I am dead. And what have I to regret about that, except that it has taken me this long.

He walks over to window. Opens it too wide. The smell of life makes him gag. The absolute. The surrender of happiness. Like a million honey bees all raping the one flower that is left. In a dead world.

There is no prison. No victimology to cite. Nor villain. There is only the sun. As it teases the blind with glimpses of sight.

He moves toward himself quietly. As not to be noticed. He places the pillow over his head and tries to imagine that there was a struggle.

Undone. Things like hysteria. Willing enough. To climb on top of the clouds. Weighing them down with am invisible ransom. Talking to her dreams. In groggy stumbles. The stairs. Too close to their heels. And so much empty space behhind them.

The atoms. Like sour jelly beans. As the plastic grass falls from her easter basket. The chocolate bunnies melted. The colored eggs not found. As she loses herself in the muths of gods and men.

too soon she expects. as the monster ascends the stairs. THe rain on the window cypher enough. To perpetuate the mystery of her skin.

The words arrive and she carelessly pretend to know them. The scale tips to weigh the stones she can no longer lift.

Butchers with broken wrists. Cut the meat. Into edible portions. Specters with missing teeth. Chew on the remnants. I forget my time and fall into a likely conundrum. Sent back. Knowing what will happen. The knots in each thread too familiar. As I begin the process of untangling them.

Sad without her bullets as the trigger presses against the barrel.

Random shots. Disable the link. Between flesh and surrogate. This last touch proves the bitter science. The future has used us. The past is not our friend. This grossly liberal machine. Bent fingers on the button.

This thief. In our rib cage. Pretending to know us.

The sidewalk under her feet moving too fast.

The train is coming. Her thoughts prepare. In a calm surrender she reserves for dead ends.

One way. Warn the road signs. Turn left say her hands.

I was only an infant when the world ended. Was just a child when it sprang anew. The end is everything to me. The candy house. The witch in the oven. All untrue.

The wolf ate the children. The witch still lives in her sugar-coated mansion. The children are still lost in the woods.

What's to save. Except for a few scraps of skin. The empty clothes she abandoned so close to the exit.

The open door. moving farther away. Her eyes. Slow. Like long division. No remainders.

The tempo asks her. How fast she'd like to go. The long legs of dirty jeans ascending toward the summit of her crotch.

Want governs choices in an absolute Nazi regime. Touch negotiating tenderly any form of freedom for the survivors that remain.

The war went on forever. And she grew tired of it eventually. Words a heavy scale to weigh nothing in particular. Memories to gnaw on the remaining threads. Of fraying gowns. Long after the party has ended.

The candy apple in her bedsheets eager to be bitten. The poison masquerading as sweet. In too many forms to count.

I tried on the device. When I woke it was over. Fragments of when I was closer to them. The broken second hand relentlessly counting that same moment. Until there were no others.

It's not the future until you fear it.

It's not poetic until you're hopeless.

The sky seems so unambitious from these heights. The little soldiers in her words. Measuring their wounds in pieces of missing skin. Nightgowns thick with needy thighs. Gagging on the clouds. The sky is too low. The ground is too distant.

We had so many lies to tell. And not enough time to do so. Her empty underwear on the tips of his fingers. As he tried to smell her again. Sharp seashells between her toes. As she played back and forth games with the ocean.

The dusty curtain on the window. Chasing the glass. In obvious autonomies. The rain. The perfect sweat of dead ends. And missing things.

Thee math. Just a tired cliche. The machine idling. Still waiting. On our ability to change.

The last time the sky was this close I wrote him a letter. I built him a contraption. Some might call a time machine.

I wore holes in all my panties looking for the heavens. I tried on the devil's knickers. But what good is a savior when hell is this tempting.

The monsters pissing loudly. Woke her up. From a dream she was barely having. She cried that it wasn't fair. In a flurry of torn dresses. The mania more than caution enough. For vultures on the hunt.

Toying with the fail safe. As she often would. Determined to prove. It didn't make sense. That every day took them further away from the world that they knew. And each time that they were throttled back represented another wolf in her already heavy picnic basket.

I'll huff. Once I catch my breath. And I'll puff. The trajectory of hapless atoms. Like all villains. I am obvious. The time machine. The whelp of science. Struggling to remove. The conditions we've set. For the future.

It never seemed very far. Though years passed. I always thought these dark woods were the only way to get there. And that the wolf would be sorry he had eaten me.

It's in the atoms. The smallest pieces. Where the power is found. I scribbled on the pillow that I'd be back, but those changes snuck up on me. I detonated the bomb. But nothing died. Rubber ducks. Burnt, but still afloat. In the dirty bath water I'd left to choose. Which skins I'd next try on.

I paused. The splinters in my side. Carving hungry pictures. Finger paints moist on her brow. Tiny frowns. Congealing in the wrinkled above her eyes.

I stopped and waited for the world to catch up with me. Not knowing it had passed me by long ago.

Contraptions built still stutter and spin. As I collect the future in empty tins.

The officer and the gentleman disputing. The merits of broken atoms. Short ladders she warned him. Sly blackhole he confessed. As their data turned to contriton. In the lumber of the particles.

The future wasn't hard to see. It flaunts itself. Like any angry hooker. It hides in dirty rooms. Waiting for the shower water to warm up. It tries on all her shoes after she has passed out.

The future is simple. One plus one. It's all those other fractions that I get lost in. The metal housing for the monster. The hollow makeup for the bride. Cryptic shcematics teach me how to build the windows.

That would let me see everything. If I could only open my eyes.

Dead things we said. As the hare hobbled tow rad the finish. Shamed and contrarian. The fairy tale in standard stutters. As flesh echoes. In a rueful collision. The devil with his hoof on the accelerator. As the machine humbles forward. In a salient incision. Just holes. The same as there are in everything. There's just more rain in these buckets.

The solvent skid. As her lips touch the stairs. Down. Down too fast to remember the path. Dead things. Buying into the franchise of skin. Richer still for what is missing.

The patent strays. With their bright teeth all abare. Snarling their way through zombies and saviors.

The puddle of rain. At her feet. Not stopping. Even though the weather has changed.

Some kind of king. With fists made of when. Sturdy algorithms chase the chaos in her head. Thinking backdoor. Seeing basement. Dirty levers play with the velocity. Of angry raindrops.

The roof. Singing. In effortless defiance. The atom splits. Like the rush of pussy on his lips. He tastes the future in the blunt lunges of her pelvis. Time sits there on its perch. A parrot waiting for something to mimic. Time sits there. So certain of the math. There's nothing else.

Manic randoms in a cold surrender. Solvent plateaus. Negotiate the altitudes of flesh. Sublime with numbers. Liars. And dirty windows. Better to see the rain with big sticks. Better to wear the costume rather than the mask.

I see so many of us she admitted. As the drug couched her cure. I see angry men crouched in their time machines. Creating too many empty worlds. I see the green light up ahead. and the red one far behind. I see time in layers of skin. Picking at its scabs.

The box. In curious conditions. Of sweat and skin. Intricate sinews tear at the paper. Chew on the pens. The parable. Full of characters and wit. Chewing on the morality of if. His eyes finally close and she can think again.

About butterflies. Their frail wings. Pushing her back. To the beginning of inevitable catastrophes.

The muscle gorged and sated on a feast of now. Slithers through each dimension. Confident the exits won't be found. Patterns she insists. Pulsars. Beacons in the flesh. Leave a trail. No matter when.

The motor. Empty lungs breathe each lurch. As we attempt to exist. In spite of ourselves. In a world so random. We still search for the patterns.

Missing numbers wake the insomniac. The burden of search. With dolls to dress. Hungry engines stutter on their plastic eyes. The stare. The hours like stalled hurricane. Poised to consume us.

The arrogance of failed poets wasting their lives. Trying to explain the things that no one can.

The hours on the clock counting backward until she can't remember. How wrong she was.

Some time later. Or what she thought was. She punched the the shift on the throttle. And braced herself. For the the impact. It was then. As she'd remembered. Everything an outline on a dirty page. All the colors disappearing.

She'd not built the time machine. Nor had she conceived of its construct. She was merely a passenger. A bit of roadkill on his foul cummerbund. As the party raged on without any people.

The windows slept. Loud and cruel. The stairway stumbled. Bright and abused. Too many eyes looking beyond. A hurricane of footsteps. Wholly unremarkable. The silken cloud between silent gallows. Awakened at last. By the sound of hanged men. And the fortunes of skin they've left behind.

The light. Too confident. Broken zippers on tomorrow. Too near to the brake. As the machine ceases abrupt. She'd not built the machine. But she had travelled in it. Years. On steroids. Picking fights. She'd seen ahead. But had only gone back. To them.

Men. Drunken condoms. Falling off like empty underwear. How. I'm not ready. The glass breaks. The tornado rushes in. And quickly forgets her.

She'd not built the machine. But she had certainly used it to her advantage. Moments. She knew. Were all she needed.


** Yes, that Primer.

Long hairs sifting through the darkness. Slender ropes chase the marrow. In the bones that remain broken. Lifetimes in a cast. Heal only the pieces they can find. Of shattered bulbs. A fragile treason of light. In a world where blindness prevails.

Busying herself entertaining the snakes. Obsessed with the venom. Soothed by the empathy inherent in each dose of the poison. Her lips. An unfinished tattoo. On the face of heaven. The stencil still in place as she shuns the needle.

She went far. Though not so far as to forget. How often the future and the past intersect. Our arrogance and the press of science. Knotting together the tiny hairs. On the genitals gods and men.

The grief of urgent atoms. As the nuclei grow impatient. The slick of sex as we trouble ourselves with those same mundane deceptions. That choose for us. How quiet the music is. How far the rubber band stretches.

The colors. Stagnant and altruistic. As the drum beats. Hungry for a bold superstition. I rake her skin. In infinite loops. The dead leaves. Their diminishing hues. Ripe fruits. Fallen from the trees.

Toying with the time lines. Fingers pierce the many holes. An urgent mosaic draws the pictures. For broken crayons to color in. Blunt edges force the knife to press harder still. On the dense knots in her throat. The words pretend to know. She's not there. As she speaks them. In variations on this obvious apocalypse. She tears the paper in half. Waiting for the pieces to disappear. Rummaging through the selves she accumulated. Telling the story backwards. From the moment the future found her.

The universe pauses. To let us contemplate. Obvious ramifications. The end. Compares itself to a needless summer day. Pockets full of pollen. I save my sneeze for a more imposing plague. Devils coax the stage. In bits of poetry and skin. Not unlike the contracts between poets and madmen.

The step ladder at the edge of the room. Scares the attic awake. The black light bulb. Feverish with the electricity still coarsing through its shattered filament. I touch the switch, but nothing changes. The dark is still dark. And I can see just as well.

It's not officially time travel until you can't go back.

The salvage. In drunken epiphanies. Absolves the flesh of ghosts. Turning. As if on parched steroids. The meat thick and empty with a pious sickness. She kneads the dough. Flesh in various stages of gluten. The risen. And the rising. Warm. Frantic atoms punch at the stove. In a failing heat. A lazy blend of physics and words. Where we find ourselves. Left. Hostages of so many futures. Chewing on the past's meatless bones.

I would always try on the costume only to give up too soon. That I could change. That such a construct was viable. The skin usurping the soul.

In little windows where I watched the sedans parked too close together. The hush of coming and going. In small denominations. The whisper of trust detectable behind the cacophony of straining hinges. The doors opens. The road is closed.

The travel. In fits of ampersands. The Boolean expectation. That it can be found. The hole deep enough to prove that the one inside is mutable.

The ceiling on the depth. Converse. And quite apathetic. As I twist the mirror to see. A pity of choices. Deaf stories. Blind portraits. Happy to oblige. The paradox of when.

We were. Those people. We can't remember. Those people. We've always been.

She twisted in the sheets. Some pale ghost struggling with the dirt on its grave. Flaunting her skirt. In gentle breezes. That barely suggested. The highs. And the lows. The mountains at her back. The horizon at her throat. Shaky daggers. Fumble with the ropes. As the noose falls into place.

Every word as if it were the last. Each face. A treasure map. But the sand is so deep.

She stayed up all night revising her itinerary. The time machine idling patiently. While she searched for the dots to connect. Crude outlines. Count the colors in her hand. As she opens her fists. Lets go. Of those absentee treasures.

Wearing him when she can. Being naked when life permits. The atoms. On her fingertips. Waging a war too small for her to see.

Doll heads in her hands searching for their torsos. Wolves sniffing in her empty baskets. No one fed.

She tries on the red. It barely fits.

Dreaming the math. In the fragile needles under her skin. She easily persuades him. That this life is one amongst infinite. Waking up. The ink still is there. The numbers are gone.

But she finds him. Still counting. Long after there is nothing left. Uncertain whether he is the whore or the insomniac. Or what the difference is.

He'd not dreamt me. I not him. But we woke up next to each other nonetheless. The whiskers on the drugs twitching. At the tiny holes through which we could not fit. The water. Teasing the sand. In a calm insomnia I couldn't help but envy.

The toadstools between her toes as she stood. Looking quite contrary. The moon casting shadows. As she bent. To pick up the pieces. The math she had failed to understand now manipulating. The sums she'd always assumed she had.

The creak of the chains. As she swung her legs. The playground under her dress. As the dog barked. The stray. Under her skin. Hungry for strangers. Cautious. With the broken bricks that once were her house.

The lever at the yoke of her fist. Disconnected from everything. The thunderstorm in her bed. Yelling so loud that no one would listen.

Counting the apples on the ground. She wondered should she pick one up. The fruit of the tree as nervous as she was. The demon in its fancy pantyhose. Lubricating the turbine. As the future stuttered in a haze of pistons. The engine running on nothing but hope. The machine. Collapsing into itself.

Like a butterfly caught in her throat. The hurricane in its sneeze following too close. The thunder too quiet. The rain too verbose. She woke him up to ask him why. She fell asleep to the sound of his disinterest. Stockings on the clothe lines. Caught between the curses of the wind. Little monsters under her skin. Pressing all the wrong buttons on those dormant machines.

The hours. Stoic gods referring us to each other. As the years spiral flesh into screws. The muddy pools at the back of his heart. That I would swim in. All that filth plugging up the holes. The memories turning to liquid. As the flame stayed on inside that heavy stove. Just dead things she said as all that flesh moved closer to food. Just dead things she told herself. As the buttons lit up. The contrite imaginings of addicts. and poets. and those amongst us left human.

She had wasted so much time. Drawing maps. Not knowing where they led.

Pretty once were the dead things. Now upon my soiled sheets. Her nervous fingers the catapult. For too many boulders. We can't sleep together. But we can disappear side by side. Silence in fallow tremors. Ruptures as our bodies collide.

Red. Clouds wither the storm. Blue sands convince the ocean. To give the bottle back. I steal back the note inside it. So that no one will know. My desire. Tracing the map of his grin. A nervous pencil and onion skin paper. More observer than artist. The shapes lie to my fingers. The colors are each one a treason. As we fumble with the black and white of who we have become.

I chased the pigeons off the ledge. That I might see those heights. That descent without the benefit of wings. Not that I couldn't fly. It just required so many drugs. And they were growing tired of me.

We fiddled with the gauge. As the corridors pretended to open up. Long passages. Like ignorant epilogues. Turned our monsters against us. I didn't try to, but I still managed. To find. The broken handles on the buckets. The ghosts wailing over them. The sky falling. Impatiently. Me trying to, but unable to grab it.

He didn't say anything, Atlas shrugged. The world moved. I stumbled and fell off.

It wasn't far.

Maybe a touch. Or something like it. Empty hallways. In a deluge of broken dolls. Their tiny fingers all pointing. At ghosts I can't see. The lurch. Her bones. Solving mazes in her muscles. The clench. Ringing bells as the nightmare loudly pursues. Deaf orphans.

The rush of the future. As it collides with the windows on my time machine. No one goes there. Cooking dead animals. Still too rare to swallow. The pulse of the demon louder as I listen for the cue. To enter that brash open stage where all is revealed.

The past draws its tourniquets on simple wounds. Sacrificing the limbs to save a few drops of blood. The motor thunders. As loud as it is ineffectual. The stiff arms of dolls draw the map. I engage the brake and ask where we've gone.

Just places she says. Conundrums of touch. A drop of honey to drown a mountain of ants. Stop lights at a time. We eventually get there. Life between the pauses. Just places she says. Where we've always been. Finding us.

Dials in our hands. The rod on the machine spinning unchecked. The particles that we are colliding. In a cautious dance. Sipping the future in crimped straws. The singularity obstructed. I wait to be lost to oblivion. And I am sorely disappointed.

The wolf in grandmother's nightgown impersonates the anecdote. Be careful what you wish. I throw the ladder out the window. But forget to attach it to something. We lose the building in our escape. The fall to the ground menial.

The Earth pushes into my skin. Like odd numbers. Long equations I don't understand. Like now. How is bleeds into the other chapters. Fragile gods on their tiptoes. Trying to see what I wish I didn't know.

It's not entirely our fault. That we go too far. Trying to measure the speed of machines that never take us to the places they've promised.

What time is it she asks.

I don't know. Too late for us.

He tells the stories in genuine chokes. Failing in his math. Excelling in everything else. Maybe it was then. Or later perhaps. Semantics to appease bickering veins. As they thunder at the thought of bleeding again.

I like dying. Isn't that a funny thing to say. But I do. Life is always there. Combusting in its sulfurous heaps. Flint striking. Gallant sparks igniting nothing. Rips in her nylons sneaking up her legs. To find mechanical doors. And an endless array of passengers. Everything about life alludes to death. Or rather the fear of dying. The monsters in fairy tales. The drugs that attempt to make it happen. Fruitless contradictions. That invariably lead to the same dismal end.

The child in the corner flaunting her tears suspects empathy will prevail. The old man in his underwear assumes the dark will descend. The logic in the drowning teaches me to breathe again. Those missing hours in the time machine expel the world in fragments.

Little cuts. That's all it asks. Patience. And a steady hand is all it needs.

Wake up. The fairy tale has been read a thousand times. The monsters are all long dead. Only the hero's intentions remain unclear.