Colors. Pebbles scraping her palms. The painting. In long strokes. He never finishes. Wise drugs working on the edge fo his tongue. The child in her torn frock. Addressing a failing crowd. Liars eager to pounce.

Crayons. Dark lines slowly filling in. The child. In failing underwear. Biting down on the thermoter. Swallowing the mercury. Soft metal running through thick veins. Coiled and venomous. As these bits of skin.

Backwarde in the time machine. Counting nothing. The promise blossoms. Dead flowers. Rain. Choices. Bound to the time machine flesh travels away from us. Spreading its cancer. Leaving bheind only the skeletons.

And dying things I cannot save. Drowned in the lies we use to love each other. Years. Butterflies sneezing. Changes. Negotiating with these time machines too stubborn to admit.

That they were wrong.

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.

Slow words fishing too long. In empty lakes. The colors were true. It was the bait that lied to us. I've had enough men. To be a woman any man would want. I've been silent. I've been loud. It's all the same. Touch like pantyhose. Tears easily. Leaves too much skin exposed.

Cocky men. Dicks wagging. Frail and obnoxious. Games of sex. Tiny Monopolies. Cheapen was she gave away. And all that she received. In her bed. Reveal the suspects. Pass go. Collect her. Masturbate. Imagine. Someone still wants. What you pretend to give.

Your words. Play money. Make you rich. Buy you nothing.

The old men. Penises in denial. Liars. Sad pricks. Boast. The edges of the woman. Fingertips of dolls. Wolves shouting through mediocre fangs. About how hungry they are.

I'm full of holes. None of which you can fill.

Old men. Virulent proposals. Thirsty dicks. Drink the puss. Dubious infections. Sicken the girl. Strengthen the woman.

Alone. Hopeless. I've been weak enough to recognize it in others.

Limping toward her the dog began to bark. Its collar loose. Its tail broken in several places.

Why are you here? What do you want? I'm a cat. What can I do for you, she asked. Prepared to run.

My friends are all rodents.

Injured dogs may be less dangerous, but they're still not to be trusted.

What could you want? I think I know.

I can't heal you. Nor can I make you worse. I am only a trifle of skin in claws twice the size of my own.

The bones you buried are not to be dug up.

I wish you well crippled dog. In digging up the other cats you've killed.

Purple confessions in the toes of her heels. Undressing a touch at a time until. Everything is far away. The distance measured in people. Not steps.

The colors concede to the darkness.

Beige cancers boiling between her lips. Control assumes her. Press the key. Keep pressing it until there is a response. The virus is only a side effect of all this sickness. The hours are just puppets in the rambling soliloquy of time. I catch the wormhole at its smallest apogee. It takes a picture of us. Before we were the future.

Whoever we were then, we weren't us.

The past such a benign conundrum. Often misused to further the logic of lonely people.

Time holds its breath. For as long as it can.

But I still drown it.

My constant varies. Everything else stays the same.

Come the saints in manic pause. Laden with paradise obese. And starving doors. Play. With broken toys in hollow rooms where no one talks. Children lost in over sized skins. Rewinding the highs of crashing Edens.

Face the bed. Coax the choice. In stumbles of trust that inevitably betray delicate demons. Not as evil as they thought they were. Trace the wrinkles in the dark with a heavy finger. Drawing pictures no one can see. Saying things no one can hear.

Pressing the pain for some relief from all this numbness. Every breath a siren. Rushing people away.

The universe is big, but the world is small.

When you don't want to be found.

I turn on the light and wait for someone else to see.

What I always have.

The little kick from inside the big belly of the darkness. Incubating. The fetus. The hungry child of nothing determined to be born.

The longest day. Digesting. Breathing skin. Thundering chests. Roaring eyelids. The shortest night. The few words said. The miscarriage. Birth happens only as collateral damage. Life assumes it is self-evident. The insect thinks the world is small. However far it can walk. The dust lands. Escaping from soft skeletons. I'm getting smaller. I'm staring. At nothing. Certain it is there.

Because I say it is.

Because alone like this is not an option.

Not for long.

With so many gods to choose from you'd think I could find one to like. On the petition of heaven alll souls are auctioned.

Mine is stilll mine.

On the question of god all people are flattered that they were created in his image.

My image is mine.

My god is not so selfish. As to need the love of men.

Nor so foolish as to expect it.

There are villains in the soup. For sure. Old stews that sat on the stove far too long. Flecks of gods in damaged men showing us glimpses of heaven. The real one. Not what the angels would have us believe.

Martyrs she squealed. All of them. Sweating the smell of panties like an unjust execution. Penises trying on every aspect of the woman. dissatisfied with the complexities of becoming men.

Flesh judging quickly. The accused. The desperate. The victims. All the same it speculated.

Justice is in the first taste. Everything after is punishment.

In the prick of the dominoes on their tongue. As each one knocks the next one down. Confessions of truth failing us. In the faults of skin that crumble like whole cities. Still the earthquake is a disappointment.

This whole disaster wasted on the dead.

That's how I learned how to add negatives. Bird cages neglected. Distilling the grin. That's how I counted. Backward from zero. Hours in deciding whom to believe. Or if I could believe anyone. Hearing them listen. The wool at the back of her neck itching to say words still unheard. Coughs of confession erupting in bleak bouts of skin. Not stretched far enough. To assume I could know.

What I never would.

The backdoor. In its rattles telling of guns not loaded. fake suicides threatening as the dress wore on her. Make me savage. Make me woman. With a sniff of the man. Until I am as high as any drug would be willing to take me. Until I can't remember why we started this barter.

Deaf gods listening in on conversations ready to jump. Three legged gods limping closer as I flirt with edge.

I'm not awake. I'm not asleep. I'm nowhere. I'm nothing.

I'm yours.

Charmless curs on their way to oblivion. Their gods in choker chains. Pets. Nothing more.

Rag dolls in sequin gowns. Rotting stages for thoughtless soliloquies. Shakespeare farts and Bible diarrhea fill this toilet of a country. Say the lie loud enough. Eventually people will begin to believe.

Devils wearing their white wings. Gods with deep pockets.

The choices overwhelm me. Choose liar A or liar B. All the power belongs to the wealthy. Though there are more of us. Sad little children hiding under mother's dress. Fucked hard in the head when daddy comes calling.

The fact that people think they have a choice. Worse yet that they think there is a good one. Raped in the ass or raped in the cunt. Is there a discernible difference?

The idea that people still tout our disappearing freedoms. That soldiers die protecting rights we no longer possess.

Even the right-wing should be angry.

But no one ever is.

Was as right. Why ask slaves what to do with their masters?

Alone. A. Lone. No one there. Inside the sweaty cradle where the needles first painted our blood. Stoic rainbows bending hard over the spine of the sun.

All lost, owing no excuse. All found in the dead of my skin. the perpetual ignorance of hope. the stuttering fluorescence of breath. Still insisting it can escape the dungeon of my lips.

We are remembering. We are resigned.

A light out not expecting.

To ever see itself again.

This hidden eye. Peeled from my flesh. Sighted by the cut that has blinded the rest. In the perpetuity of arguments with touch. A lie neglects only everyone. A. Lone.

To me, reason finally admits not knowing. Why there must be darkness in order for light to exist.

A loud orphan.

Near Enough.

To see what was never there.

Do you have a piano handy? Someone is standing by to be crushed. Don't want to disappoint them.

The big things. The heavy motherfuckers. They're the most fragile. If they don't arrive broken they're broken soon enough.

Say what you will about liars. At least. At least you know what to expect.

I was all caught up in deciding how far the future was away from the past when it occurred, or I remembered some one's theory that they're all the same. Mutual plane, different time lines. A messy, messy debate. That ultimately always ends in more skins than I could ever fill.

So maybe physics isn't the best answer. Or at least not the one I can best control. We spend our lives arguing with gravity. Trying to convince it we are better than it.

We try. And try again. To convince it that it's mistaken. But it always wins.

We could break. Spoil the egg. Fragments of shell. Like rain. Falling. Not ever landing. Calm Judas in the noose. The suicide absolving practical sins. The whimsy of saviors is cruel. The definition of god too narrow. Crumbles of dead sperm on a warm tongue. Life instigated. In the hash marks of friction. Fusion. Molecular epiphanies wasted on giants.

Waking up. To someone. Not myself. Wanting to remember. The lies that once made it possible to lie again.

Waking up. Wanting to remember.

My life is on the diving board. The pool is empty.

No more moments like the ones we had. The bleak discoveries of hungry skin. That everything is nourishment.

That it doesn't matter at all how it tastes.

All I want is to be fed.

Waking up. Wanting to remember.

The room. Opaque. Stiff blood bleats the bandage soft. The world. Not there. Or forgetting. Bashful murder sserved on cracked plates. The full of the dark dense in her stare. While she contemplated stealing the last of the dog's leg. Just the over she told herself as the joint finally split. The bones in her grasp as thin as flesh.

Drums. Lazy footsteps on the mauve of midnight. Broken lipsticks color the kiss of darkness. Grey again. Surgeons. Every moment. Cutting closer to the ribs. Until there are only tits.

The solvent. Thighs like lye burn the spills into dead skin.

The fraction. Her fingers like battery terminals. The room still not lit.

It's just as well. I rather not see.

No isn't there when she wake up, but she rememeers.

Empty-handed postmen. All the letters they yet to deliver.

Dwcisions in clay. Stiffening the hands that must make them.

The glove in her stare coming off slowly. Words. Numb fingers learning to feel again. As the sun begins to punctuate life's steady stream of ghastly adjectives. Not a verb to spare. For skin exposed. Damaged. Unable to learn anymore.

Sickness packaged as cures. Always. And especially for the hopeless.

Her grin menstrual. Giving birth in empty coughs. Of things neither alive nor dead. Headless dolls left in convenient cradles. Anticipating birth in puddles of vomit. And abortions not completed.

There is only one kind of drunk. And this it is. Knowing it never mattered.

Arguing with the glass in the window. Trying to tell it that it's black, but it won't believe you.

Greeting the infection in pieces of when. The tumors. People. Blind intersections. The puzzle between her legs finally making sense. Quantum physics for the common person. It was the future all along. Otherwise this couldn't have been.

No need for clowns in grave makeup to persuade the children that they can't recall. They're already frightened. No hems. The dress has always been short. She was just wearing it wrong. Touch. Like rubber bands. So eager to break just for the chance to hurt someone.

The coward is certain. He's been there. On magic carpets some call sex. Because it aches too much to have actually been.

In the past. Buried under piles of dinner plates that still wreak of flesh not tasted.

There is your past if you must have one. The faulty ledger that still insists we can afford tomorrow.

Damage control. Persuasions of right. In all its forms. Broken arms aruging with the cast. In murmured freefalls. As if no one else is there. The colors of hard discussing how to heal. Below the skin. Calcium on strings. Kites teasing the sky. In splinters. Marrow. Confiding in the flesh. How lonely it is. Alone inside the bone. Rigid. And unable to feel all the things happening to this life.

The skin. This profound mass of oragn tends to dominate everything. The skeleton waits for its chance. it just hasn't eyes to see it coming.

Sadly, I was the only one present when God finally admitted his accident.

Handcuffs on her dress. Ratcheting tight on her vagina. She claimed she always crossed her legs, but he knew better.

Examing her throat for indications of words not said. The tick of her lips quitetly counting off to the explosion. He was already digging. Arranging the jump in his head. Full of numbers multiplying too rapidly. Nine hundred ninety nine steps to the edge. The square root of zero is nothing. She counted the seconds until the seconds grew bored of her. Driving nowhere. Chasing the moon as it chased her. In a marathon of words all aborted. The mathmatics of second chances is that there are none.

Heroes in thick glasses wishing cellphones hadn't been invented.

Even he did it all to save himself.

Lucky for us he never did.

Save us.

Fathom the darkenss. Calculating eternity. In glimpses of stars long dead.

My words don't mean anything. Waking up without them. Falling asleep to their dying. These tabloids of skin tell so many lies. It's impossible not to read them.

Jiffy pop hearts expand until the cracks are all they have to covet. Wrinkled aluminum dances against the heat. Subtle drugs pretend to know us un all the ways known else ever has.

Touch lies so well that I almost believe it.

When it says I can feel them.

Floods Cereberal. Motion Flaunts Pixels of Skin In Broken Libidioes. Little fibs make us better.

Little women bleed out their gods in missing children. Words on their wrists sharper since they've stopped try ing to prove the world doesn't end where they do.

I once was lost, but now, I'm just trying not to be found. Wet maps to a buried treasure some might call not looking for it.

It tears away. With a purposeful sound. Almost as if we'd ever been connected.