Something close to now. Or maybe later. The time on his wrist fibrillating. Wide and assuming x is constant. The end. The truth in fits of vomit. The future names its price. The past negotiates. No one buys either one.

I was so young then. And now I'm not. I was everything. And now I'm nothing.

His eyes counting the minutes between pussy and friend. Different doses for different addictions. Maybe time isn't as smart as I thought it was.

We're always fooling it. Into thinking it owes us more.

Fire escapes on the back of her neck. Where the words argue with the their saviors. What to save. And when. Now. or Then?

Or isn't all the same.

Skimming the surface of heaven. Collecting my demons in broken math. The eternal paradox. I can go there. But if i do, I can never go back.

The time lines of lonely men answer enough.

mellow bunnies on pretty paper drugs. the swamp. too sure of my struggle. death is a greeting card. it matters almost as much as it doesn't. ugly little love songs. dirty crayons coloring in black and white. every word is a colorform. waiting to be shrunk down into nothing.

silly cadavers making ice cream sundaes out of embalming fluid. The morgue is the place I love. Rife with mouths that cannot argue. The logic. The madness. Of waking up every morning is caucus enough to discard them. My eyes are my attorney. My fingers are my jury. Innocent isn't even an option.

But I know that I'm not guilty.

Delirium comes with many insights. anyone know where to find a good monkey replicator? ask me after I've finished translating my vomit. Primates on the patio leave behind just enough shit for me to determine I don't want to go there.

Shit-faced gods drink the urine. Old men pissing themselves and fetuses miscarried. Dead mothers cradle cracking dolls. Inhaling life in the failed nature of trust. Science never planned far enough ahead to account for so much loneliness.

She argues with the darkness as she would anyone so stubborn as to think that she isn't aware of everyone. People. Needles. Their threads swimming through her gaping wrists. In a relentless quest to keep alive what has always been dead.

It's all tomorrow. It's all so yesterday.

The ceremony of life too much like a funeral she says.

She was foul. Her entire body busily surfeited by too many tugs on her vagina. The politics of touch excavating. Forgotten graves. Exhuming the balding bones. Further evidence. That truth is multiple choice. Pointed. And curved. Like candy canes. The colors running on a bias. Where all the sweet things go to obsess. Over the process of changing.

Becoming sour.

A fountain of semen spitting out and swallowing ceaselessly. With the calm panic of one who knows how fickle love must be. To leave us with the decisions that it does.

My demons. In their best heels. Trying on dresses they can never afford. My demons. Like swatches of skin too delicious to discard.

Even after the meat has gone rotten. and the bread is stale.

It tastes better then. If you chew slowly.

Little lies on a simmer. Finally coming to a boil.

Still cold. Still scratching their names into empty folds of skin. Left over after she's undressed.

Close enough some would say. Close enough to wrong to be right. Or at least have some hope of finding it.

Choice is a victim. We are the consequence,

Her discussion with the cliff ended abrupt. Missing punctuation. Trying for poetry she ended up trivia. Time not being the constant she had hoped it would. She never got over it. Failed travel devices. Finger painting on every scrap of skin. She'd not already torn away to confirm the meat within.

The future she used to tell him was someplace too easy to get to. To hard to get out of. The future she used to warn him was where they were. Surreptitiously creating their pasts. Everyone thinks we're moving forward. But they're wrong.

But time has a sense of humor.

We're always going backward. Being constantly reassured that it's progress.

We're finding old lovers for the first time. We're smashing these whole heart to find the people we know we once a part of the pieces.

We're lost in extraneous time lines and causing new ones. Going back with the help of commas and adjectives.

To find we've lost nothing.

And have accumulated so much perspective.

Fingers rehearsing touch. Eyes auditioning stares. Her indecision like bubble gum popping between his lips. Messy and broken.

The words we use to describe it feeble at best. The median in the middle of her throat. Words. Fast cars on either side. The apparent collision never occurs. At least not while any one's looking.

I've had discussions with Satan that lasted for years. Debates about God. He says he's real. I say he's not. Who's evil now?

A leak in the pillow suffocates his stare. We both die traversing the desert between us. Sere skin poisoned by too much sunlight.

All the things meant to keep us alive killing us.

Chasing the vortex. Tiny lions trying to roar. Assembling the universe in sloppy stitches and matted hairs. Lies I've yet to tell to people I still don't know. The black hole of together draws us closer. Tears us apart. We are nothing. Not each other. Nor ourselves. Just pieces constantly coming together and falling apart.

Staring at the mediocrity principle apparent in his empty socks. Explaining to herself why it should matter. Admitting that it never has.

Small universe. Big lies.

The dog's still wagging his missing tail.

I was his wormhole. Packages of future in bundles of past. All wrapped in pretty bows and willing to pretend none of this is real.

Sionara kittens in the backseats of loose fit pants. So many claws. So few scratches.

The apple in the window was so appropriate. Temptation tantamount. I asked Eve what it was like being the mother of everyone. She just laughed and said those stories are for children and the weak. I was one of many who didn't listen. They chose my name for the story, but the truth is there were many snakes. And many men. Taking. What should be ours.

The things your parents tell you to shut you up. Behave. Santa Claus and God are watching.

The truth is, Eden was a terrible place to be a woman. The snake, he offered a way out. That's all I wanted. To not have to fuck that man again. To not have any more sons that would kill each other. The truth is, I wasn't the only woman. There were so many. Condemned to men. I was just the one they blamed.

Modified notions of exit. And reasons to. The outline in question not really wanting color at all. Just to be sampled. Salty bits of caviar left on stale crackers. For the rest of us to find. To believe we had actually been on the guest list.

Time is like putty. Because memory makes it such. The brain doesn't xerox. It reacts. In chokes of booze and fits of xanax. Colors are thrown upon the walls. Left to harden. And we move on. To find new whites. Blank spaces to let the rage live.

Time is not the measure. It's only a witness.

When the gods finally decide to wake up we'll have plenty to tell them. Until then, we continue to tell our stories as if someone is listening.

Nowhere. That I can think of.

Poor diseases too long healed. The sports car in his pants shifting gears. Sober engines talking like drunks. Wherever they go. Pretending to care. about helpless ken dolls searching for their penises. Amongst so many dead gods.

If one word could matter that much. Dead jeans attracting thighs too swollen to fit. Leave us alone. Wait for the bookstore. The signing of wasted stories. I've told so many times. The dissection of assholes under microscopes to accurate. Little wolves blowing down big houses.

Absent piglets.

Fail the tongue. Sour darts strike the bulls eye in the bleats of dying lambs. Circumstance evolves. Weighing the blood against the bandages. Long shots. Cold bluffs. Still to be determined.

Lovers. Carbons of dead skin. Old cameras. Still waiting on the negatives to develop.

Lies we should have, but will never tell.

Time. An avalanche of people. Moments. I wish I could remember. Or otherwise prove that I've forgotten.

The hour is my nemesis. In this trail of fragments I can no longer assemble.

The leopard looks. Find its skin on he ass of the elephant. Nothing to regret or to save.

Ghosts too stubborn to argue with.

Thighs like canvas unpainted. The whispers of her dress concealing what had always shown. Liars like poets making the worst things beautiful. Come paint the cage. Making it your home. Name the claws that cut you. Take notes. This is test material.

Choosing her lipstick in shades of revulsion. Save me because I deserve it. Wrtie to all my lies and tell them the party is tomorrow. Gifts are optional.

Warn the snake, it's a thin corruption. I have so much more to learn of betrayal.

Teach me.

Her eyes unravelling like cellophane wrappers. Soft candy with a hard center. She told him to bite down. Reveal her weaknesses. Release the goo that means I'm human. Because I don't know if I am a person. There are flaws in all things. So where is my proof. That this long game of monopoly has any purpose other than to make me lose.

Passed go too many times to remember.

Bought Park Place thinking I had won.

And I would have if it weren't for those damn hotels.

How can you know I'm lost unless you've been there?

I was doing laundry. Attempting to quantify the ratio of suds to clean. Or dirty. Absolved to the sovereignty of the stains. Content to be ruined.

I was waiting for the world to stop. That diabetic coma that occurs between sex and words. The poetry of soiled skin missing its meter.

Thinking about the mediocrity the ritual had become. Soluble Satan's and corn syrups gods baking their afterlives in cookie dough and caramel crunch. The rotten sweet of heaven too much. The saccharine sepsis of hell my only alternative.

It's not ours. Nor does it belong to the dead. It's the realm of disenfranchised saviors. The almost sons of gods sweating their crosses in bits of candy too hard to bite. So we just suck on it.

Until that familiar candy shell is hollow again.

It's over. This is my gift to you.

Plotting his course with the aid of a broken finger. He kept going back to the beginning. Hundreds of trips to nowhere.

Wrapping the packages with bows left over from gifts not given. The cataracts of sex impairing my vision. I'm blind at last. Nothing to see except what I can remember of before the disease was a factor.

She's Star Trek. Captain Picard. The Enterprise. Lost in a rift in the space/time continuum. She's talking to herself from the past. From the future. The disparity of timelines spinning her like some lonesome dreidel. She's data. Unable to feel and yet aware of all emotion present. She's the dominion. Everyone is an alien. She's a changling. Neither person nor object. Searching for what to be next.

Counting the itches in her underwear she can calculate how much sex would be required to stifle her depression. Gain herself control anew. How slowly the flower dies after being plucked. The thumb of the clitoris writing stories in places no one can see. Touch like a stone sending ripples throughout so much stillness. The skin of the water cut. Letting everything in.

Counting her emails she can estimate the last time she had sex. And with reasonable accuracy if she ever will again.

Picking seashells. Eyes of ocean. Fingers of sand. Sorting fragments into reasonable bargains. She was ready to pick the apple, but it picked her instead. This garden is too small anyway. I'd rather be unhappy. I'd rather hate myself than them.

Counting the years between she brainstorms a new protagonist. All those other stories done with her. She searches her thoughts for fresh heroes and villains. Knowing every story requires both. And that sometimes they are the same person.

She asked him which he wanted to be. And he answered her.

I'd rather be the hero, but I can be the villain if that's what you want.

If you're hungry I can give you something to wear. If you're cold I can tell you what to say. Cause I know both of them better than I should.

I don't remember how I old I was the first time that alone made sense. I just know it was too long ago now to argue with. And that I'm all for ending a sentence with a preposition if it means someone will remember.

You can say what you want about various gods, but I think they're misunderstood. Used condoms of angels bursting on mortal dicks. Poor lubricants for the painful sex acts we use to make us human.

Grim fairy tales playing poker with what's left of sobriety. Big bad wolfs and quivering piglets. Each with their own reasons to hate. The stories we've culled from their hardships.

I'm never drunk. But I'm never really sober. They'll name their saviors after themselves. As if the world knows they're there. A butterfly in the cup of their fist. Wondering if they'll ever let it go?

I'd like to say I've changed.

But I haven't. Not yet.

God said kill yourself. But he wasn't listening. God said I don't care. And for the first time I believed him.

Submitting to the X-ray she assumed they'd find nothing inside her. Blank organs in their powdered wigs. A map to nowhere. A round world pounded flat to fit inside tight pockets.

Drawing the window with an empty pen. Trying on the Devil's nightgown while walking in God's slippers. There are pictures to make to dampen the thump of the future pounding on her door. Songs like wars fighting over crippled moments.

Seeing the bones she thought of how hollow they must be. To fit all that marrow inside and still have room for movement. She pictured tiny Shakespeare's in plays culled from unripe fruit. Green apples on the ground like clocks with dead batteries.

She writes in wine knowing it will age with her. She's practical in a foolhardy sense. She's ready for life to start and waiting for the world to end.

It hasn't been long enough, but it will be soon the skeleton insists. As she pulls it from the closet in a cloud of dust.

Ready to be ill.

It's so fulll.

And so empty.

She's blind so you must forgive her for not seeing. Favors of the tongue bargain with the structure of vision. For little shits of sight too small to stink. Too big to flush. In the child there is knowing. The end is close. In the woman there is the execution of memory. Colorless palettes. Dry brushes. Still pretending to paint. Failed portraits. Life was. Is. Shall always be. A cancer. To be cured. A tumor to by cut out of the pale terminology of skin.

She makes braids. Thick ones. She folds one hair into the next. Until there are none left.

She assigns each orgasm a name. She's lonely. And she knows it. To make them real. She sweatss. Surere still. The lies aren't untrue. She makes them last. When it's done. And they're not there to blame. She colors in every outline. As though they never left her.

Promising the fairy tale she won't betray it.

She tries them on. In lying mirrors. That make it all look beautiful when it's not. She wears them. As small as they are. She likes how tight they fit.

Her tits were soft cooked eggs. Her eyes were sausages. Trays of skin. Stacked. Plates breaking. In accusations of skin. Dirty enough. Don't you think? Cans of bacon grease on the counter. Pretending she was there. In theory. Or practice. Or anything she could call constant.

Little gods on their totems. Drawing the dot. In puddles of meat. All the dead things that make us alive. Empty pens like Used condoms on the carpet as the words fail her. Little women. Littler men. The abstract. The conditions of seldom like paper cuts.

Open. Unbleeding skin. In need of nothing but time to fuse it back together.

She said she was over it and started counting the days until forver. Like any one hurt must do if time is to be their compass. She started walking away from where she had begun. Trusting the advice of broken men. Because who knows better what not to love?

Red riding hood tells the wolf to wait for her, but she won't be eaten by him.

Servants of pleasure polish the crown. Potent orphans create the ladder she falls down. Away from the fire they tell her. Away from the flames. But the costume fits better in this inferno. Its skin becomes mine. Seeds exploring. Harmonies of skin. Pales symphonies in the operas of my life. Cicero's composing their women. Cyrano's pretending to know them.

It's like every fairy tale. Happy endings in stern resolve. The war to win the battle. The Hero unwilling to eat the apples on the ground.

We are the bible. Eden undone. We are the beginning of the world. And the end of it. Like every song wants to be.

The commas in her bra punctuating sentences he'd yet to speak. The colon in her pants waiting for someone to finish the thought.

She's just a woman. Lost in a sea of men. Swimming toward a shore she'll never reach.

There you are. Simple Satan's gambling my skin. Stray saviors painting white sheets red. It's her prom in liquid eyes. Dancing like rain upon the missing glass in windows. It's tomorrow already. Too late. Too soon. Wasn't. Won't be. Juggling those apples with so many missing fingers. Won't be tasting them at all. With all those bottomless baskets playing attorney to my death sentence.

I'm not a seed. I can't grow it. I'm not soil. I can't nurture. I'm just the weather that decides if either will matter. Everything else is just the folly of circumstance. Long overcoats left without anything to hide. Naked hangers laughing off the clothes we're in. The lottery of condition calling out numbers no one has picked. Warm legs on the carpet memorizing steps to dances they'll never dance with anyone else.

I'm a meal. Meant to be consumed. Dirty dishes waiting to be licked. I'm an appetizer. Meant to accentuate the hunger that is there. High heels for the heart. Soften the curves of that ugly muscle. As if it has anywhere to run.

They were close. Junkyard's dogs protesting. Drooling novels of touch. Chewing. Gnawing. Discarded flesh. Like aliens examining their discoveries. The universe laughing at us. Because the glass is just us.

My fortune is that I'm lost.