amateurs. toiling on their sunken walls. dull needles flaunt their medicines. her clothes coming off in confessions. her lips thick with choices unresolved. and empty glasses. eager for a sip of something

the stairs climb us. in a rigor of anticipation. howling angles on the circle's crutch. the cripple in this need turns the math into the villain. I pour the lipstick onto the clown. heavy buckets dispense the makeup. that determines. beauty. and ugliness.

i sneak a glance inside the basket. my grandmother's picnic hunts the wolf. spoils the pigs. as they languish arrogantly behind their electric fences.

But inevitably the power goes out. and all those open circuits reveal their dead ends.

she wonders why its dark. as she pressed all those buttons. she knows the numbers. how stubborn they are.

and all the tiny cracks that let the light in.

Questions forged. With heavy mallets. And the broken toes that lead us there. The climb is therapy. As she pulls that foul box down from the attic. Full of rotten cunts and orphaned numbers.

Pausing to let the doorway catch her. She often runs ahead of it. And puzzle as to why the windows are still shut. The world out there. In flattened pennies and vicious steam engines. The darkness in faint touches. As the arithmetic evolves to keep up with us.

These dirty, rumpled rugs. Spoiling the trap doors in our impotence. And the heavy keys that would presume to unlock. The empty boxes that should solve this puzzle.

I stared at the door. As it refused to open. Assuming I had not found the key.

The buckles on her pants coming undone. Like the wings falling off a dying insect. The purpose. The thrust. Of tumbling ladders. Reveals more rooms. But no exit.

the glass in his fist. sharper because he has picked it up. the broken container. its contents. only the stench and her spilled blood remains of them. the weight of the sound forces her up on the fulcrum. closer to the sky. a good fall is what she wants.

the dirty broom is drawn from the closet. the shards are swept carelessly from the floor. she's angry. she shouts. she cuts herself. on bits of the puzzle still unsolved.

she listens. the way all the deaf do. closely to the silence. tugging on her ear. as the monsters circle her bed. Laying poison for the predators. And hoping they're still hungry.

testing the scales. the mass of moving particles. the differential inertia presents. dead birds on the patio. flat tires on the engine. Womrholes gone. and the weak imposition of gravity. as she sheds her clothes. for another thrust at pretending to be.

someone else.

The merchants in her panic. Putting a price on everything.

Simple puzzles. Dolls without their feet. The hours in grim orbit. Circling the experiment. That foreboding box. With nothing and every inside of it.

Deaf ears listen better.

So few walls to write upon. No space for numbers anymore. And these heavy wings. That wager their feathers against gravity. If I could measure the falling. The choices would be mine again.

Taste the shock of wet tongue on the manifold. Cylinders raging. Fevered with combustibles. An apple under its tree. Potent with obvious anomalies. The wringing fists of moments dovetailed. Small drawers. So much inside them.

Her target. As taut as the machine is careless. The arithmetic named and solved. with several errors. simple puzzles. of skin and bone. Rip the map into smithereens. But I know where I am going. I see the destinations in the empty box. It's easy enough to wait for the world to catch up.

But I see better in the dark.

her conspiracies taut. like rubber bands ready to snap. portions she says. bits of meat. decaying in her hand. forests. thick on the horizon. lost kites. and painted summers. i can only remember in black and white.

the ball bounces. the fist forgets. the taste. of stern walls. determined to say nothing. evern as her face tells all. The steps evolve. Their betrayal not unexpected. The picnic bakset is literal. The characters extraneous.

The proverbial cellar lurches into view. A long trip down. To places i'd rather not visit. The propeller. The chop of the blade as the engine tenses. The depth of the ocean irrelevant. As i struggle for the surface.

failing again.

Space travelling through us. Time weighed by the density of ghosts. An infinite yardstick against a minute supposition. the vanity of reality is in the clues we assign to its proof. I think. I feel. I want. parables of morality spun on spiders' webs. a stick up the pussy of justice. Aborting her only child.

Time. Promising nothing. Expecting so much. Faces. Hands. Lips. Random atoms crashing. As they ricochet off these walls we've erected. And in between. That overwhelming distance. More time. More counting what cannot be measured.

More space. Flattening this excited skin. The mass of lost atoms losing their momentum. Close enough to heaven to know. That hell is the same.

Arrogant scientists shuffle the hours like a deck of cards. Time and space. Pound the drum. We march on. These monkeys becoming gods. Strangling lonely songs from the neck of a broken instrument. Time measures us. With sticks on stones.

A brutal apostle and its bloody student.

Twelve. Eight. Two. Crush the flame and try on the window. Close was never near enough. Angels on their stilts. Scrape the moon.

With dirty claws and spent grins. The time trap. The numbers. The foul arithmetic. of touch. Spoiling the lie we had hoped to believe.

I saw myself. She was young and stupid. I saw myself, but could not warn her.

I liked this lost better when it had villains and heroes. Now it's just the pointed elbow. The sigh of the needle.

Ten. Six. Three. Look inside the box.

It's empty.

A wild confusion in the thrust of the machine. As it pushes forward on severed limbs. Taking her with it. A cascade of dominoes as she opens her dress for another chance.

Writing down the numbers. The series urges her on. As she chases the sequence. That evasive unity that will prove her progress. Days stay the same. Nights languish in their filthy litter box. Shit and piss is home. It's the math that moves us. The starving future in her arms. Wears her close to the skin.

An often. A seldom. The trivial extravagances of time and touch. She scribbles on her chalkboard. A series of sums and destinations. A killing board of choices. Too easily erased.

Everything and nothing. The beginning and the end. A walking stick fetching the contours of the darkness. As blind feet take their last steps.

She writes her message on the chalkboard. And promptly erases it.

Her eyes adjust. To the obstinance of her stare. A deaf bell rings. The sound caught in its hollow. She chases the stairs. Up. Then down. Finding no difference. Only stern consoles. Their buttons ablaze with choices. And empty clothes where the people used to be.

There are moons. This she knows. But she cannot find them. There are clouds thick with rain. But parched she is. Closed eyes hidden in the heavens. No longer looking. All those window painted dark. The world outside them lost.

The pauses tempt. The numbers lure. With vague experiments. And a series of skin more wolf than woodsman. She tries on the ax. Heavy, but still appropriate. And the beast. A hunger. Almost religious. A thirst as vast as any desert.

Peeling away the bandage from her cunt. She finds some blood inside. But mostly scars.

And empty spaces.

a choice. shutters and rain. big footprints in shallow graves. The package of poison she left for herself. When the walls were thinner. The needle like a trumpet. The medicine in stumbles.

and then she can't hear. the rush of desperate lungs. as they breath the feeble agendas. Broken ladders would endorse. The appeal of the puzzle is in the solution. The darkness moves through her in bits of sun. A fraying dress. More thread than cover.

she tries to wake him at last. a few sparks. and then everything is dead.

she fusses with the seams. Hoping that they'll come undone.

Nothing is left. Everything is.

she spun on her nitrogen heels. a whipping tail divergent. a patchwork of sexual chagrin and mechanical antipathy. a vicious carcass. The ghosts still circling. Tiny explosions. Their many catalysts arguing. Which had made it so.

Lying beside her lover. Pauses in her breath expose constant calculations. How far. How close. The impossible to determine difference between them. A series of feet moving beneath her. Worlds dying and being born again with every inch forward. A series of small catastrophes propelling this illusion of dust and bones. She crosses her legs. A detour in the journey. The destinations unchanged. The real determined by a grand confluence of chemicals and circumstance.

slipping into her hunger with a grin too eager. slinking out of it the same. the void devouring and digested. as casually as it was hunted.

she nudges the monster beside her. Consumed by his hungry growl. She tells her lover it's time to feed. Hurry. flesh and blood is scarce. and there are many more monsters than there are people eat.

a set of stairs. leaning to touch the gate. long eyes just shy of the oncoming train. bits of rain well above. the things we know are there that never reach us. an empty wall. coaxed by the necromancy of windows without their glass.

a scientist. his experiment duly contained. The results are in the chaos.

She works the footprints as the snow quickly gives way. It's too warm now. For those places to remember us. Where I was. Where I am. An ancillary topic. In this circus of how.

She rubs her forehead. Pushing the sweat away in bursts. She closes her eyes. Managing the memories in fragile sculptures. And heavy bricks. Little walls quickly grow big. Open doorways lock shut.

Calm castles on their moats. Feed the crocodiles that protect them. Heavy drawbridges attempt to thwart the hunger. As the water presses closer.

Her little stacks. Dust and dead things in neat piles. Counting the inches to the ceiling. As the stairs collapse under her feet.

Her ears ringing. No one to answer. Her velocity constant. The distance not so much. What of this faded coat. That the winter wore me as. A brittle shell. Stiff with the echoes of a transformed larva. And melted snow. Long since dried up. In this drought called life.

Trying the numbers. Patient equations populate the scabs. Counting backwards from zero. Until, if ever, they should reach one again. The obvious shortcomings of words themselves. Evident in the tumult of memory. The pen pricks the skins. Delivering that callous remedy. A dubious elixir of poison and stubbornness.

Her feathers wilt. Her tail, but gone. Her eyes sink into her cheeks. The dead refusing to die. She attends her funeral. She stares as her body is lowered into the ground.

Arguing with time on the finer points of circumstance. The cork in the bottle. The pressure of the liquid inside. The eruption of cells that designates life. A pound of flesh she was told. But she believes it requires more. A body is profound with holes. But very few that actually let you inside.

She pities the worms that will feed on her flesh. As she decays from meat to skeleton. She greases the zipper at the back of her neck. And waits. For a hand desperate enough to pull on it.

She constructs her time machine in a mist of placebos. Confident her sickness is more symptoms than it is illness.

A breathless wolf. A homeless pig. The grim fairy tale of flesh. A walk through the woods. With no way home again.

a small hole presumes a larger one. a small peg looks for its opening. Ladders and pigs. A bloody spectacle. Windows and doors. The dance of a cripple.

she examines herself. with hungry fingers. nothing and everything. inside that space.

a covered bridge. that the stray train sometimes rumbles through. her tunnel. her hollow. urgent with equations for which there is no solution. her flawed math. her poor perception. poisoning the numbers.

A scale full of stones. gravity only an ancillary consideration.

how much does it weigh? nothing. too much. both.

How long has that square been trying to fit itself into that round opening. days. years. forever. i don't know. But it isn't any closer.

The carbon in the paper. Pushing the imprint through to the next. the very idea. that there might be duplicate. stops her in her tracks.

a moment as wide as a lifetime. a life as narrow as that last drop of rain. That fell so long ago. before this place was a desert.

and myself. arguing with this fairy tale. that insists. it once was different.

These magic beans I've planted laughing. As the giant shimmies down the beanstalk. And me with my dull ax. negotiating gravity's conditions.

the crocodile in her soup laughs through broken fangs. and missing scales. the steam lurches upward. in frantic maps of hidden windows. absent doors swing open. but where they are is still unknown. the hours scream. but she cannot hear. everything is so loud. except the way out of here.

the corridor terminates in a rapier of light. full with sounds and commotion. the end is distant. more so with each step. she counts the drops of water in the ocean. determined to know how many it has. she counts on her fingers. and she counts on her toes. she must prove there is an end.

a box in the darkest corner. what's inside knows not what's out there. And all the eyes upon it. Cannot guess about its contents. it's just a box. it contains anything we want. so long as we don't look inside.

she flirts with the numbers on the precipice. crippled birds too eager to fly again. determining the series. brick by brick. arguing with gravity. and losing. this time.

The road stutters beneath her feet. The dashboard. grunts. A choking vein drowning in its own blood. A dead whore in the arms of her last lover.

Worth nothing now. Or everything.

The guile of perspective fuels the machine. Telling stories to flooding tears. Straw houses deceive their pigs. As the wolf huffs. An end of sorts. If an end is what you seek.

She drives through the summer. Carelessly navigating the desert's empty charms. Lashed to the heat at every limb. Travelling through the infinite sand one grain at a time. Heavy numbers. Chasing her. While she attempts to subtract. All those needless confessions. Of tongue and gut and rotting skin. Left out too long to still be nourishment.

No blankets on the bed. Soiled pillows and empty nightstands. Marking a story not yet told. Blotting the semen from the carpet. Cleaning the condoms from the wastebasket.

An empty hand. A devil in an angel's garb. a room full of deaf poets. and blind artists. Auctioning off their grief. Fighting over the last bits of crayon

The outlines the same. The pictures unchanged. By the colors they flaunt. That are no longer theirs to give.

Eyes closed I stumble down the stairs. Boxes is full of nothing greet me. The door closes behind. The world paces above my head. Deciding on trivial things. The wolf waits for the piglets to build their houses.

Only they never do.

The numbers betray. Our morality of when. No one fits. We have been. Or will not ever be. The asshole of this time machine spits us out again.

Left with the buttons we pressed as only consolation. Confined to the basement. Lapping up the sunlight that sneaks in.

Paused on the adjective. The bit of flesh that would cure this apple of its poison.

small prophets caught in the zippers foretold by this flesh.

the amnesiac asserts her dominion. a vague war with biting pieces. gnawing on fractured images. whispering stories. no one can hear. a light bulb in the floor. heavy feet dancing around it. missing switches. crunching glass. torn filaments.

it's very dark. but i can see. the orphaned mosaic of sight. gasping for the vacuum that once gave it life.

nothing to turn on now except myself. turning the conditions over. the cavalier choices of skin. spoil my fantasy. that i was different. or the same.

i do remember. occasionally. a rain falls suddenly from a clear sky and I am drenched in it. i don't seek shelter, but prefer to embrace the flood.

The darkness yawns. As arrogant as ever. if it remembers me, it doesn't offer any indication.

it's very dark. but i can see. how close it is.