The song. Deafness in long cautions. Always have been. Misled. Thinking the sound was enough. Slanted walls. Ceiling pretending to be floor. The joke. The threat of fingers too close to the truth. Falling forward. Into when. I can only claim to remember having been someone. Turning off the alarm. In a slow dance. Between blindness and waking up. This void. The only bridge. Always open. Go through. Not over.

Looking up at falling. The hours talk loudly. In metaphors. The mountains are small. The molehills giant. The minutes an aperture. A lens taking pictures in black and white. Of all the colors I still want.

The thief in her underwear. Takes nothing she hasn't already lost. The ransom in her heart. Remains ignored.

Old movies. Grainy orgasms in fraying nightgowns. It was night. But it wasn't dark. There were moments. Gobs of spit on the tip of her tongue. She would mistake for opinions. Angry memories. Neglected whores. Finding their pimps. In the people who love them. Dead batteries. Marathons of. Pressing the numbers. Watching the movies.

As if, there were more than one.

Big dicks in little holes.

The whore is choice.

The table was heavy with nothing. Knives and cups and plates waiting sober for the thrill of lips. The humble epiphany of touch that gives life to dead things. Outlines all those ghosts. So we can see what we've lost.

Her silence the scale all his words were weighed upon. Her silence like a prostitute between her legs. A volcano of pointless sex. Incinerating everything in its path.

Her fingers the ambulance. Too slow. Too small. Too late. The dead strewn. Dried flowers on the hips of the wind. Scattered. The living. Contorted placentas. Spilling out after rushed abortions.

Blood like lions roaring. Skin like hyenas stealing.

All these dead things.

The rabbit in the orchestra. Was tuning its harp. 280 degrees at most she declared. It's just blood. Years of fruitless sex. Evolution not evolving. And so I am. Both perpetual and fleeting. As much as any comma is. Lost in the throes of rogue sentences. And ignorant paragraphs. As if the clock could measure. Or in any way quantify. The depth or currents of the ocean. Or speed up this drowning.

Life comes in sobs. Huffs of others' skin. Cloying and oppressive. Words like potions mark the start. And the finish. Liars tell their stories to the deaf. And I hear them.

Dull scissors cut out the paper dolls. Shaky hands unfold the results. I go too far. Too many of me. Too thin. Plain white rainbows sneak in after the rain. Offering a path to the sun, but no colorso at all. To accompany it.

The brake pedal in her heart full of fluid. The engine hot and trembling. With places she must go. Dirty pit stops on the road to nothing.

Lovers like roadkill.

The color of finger tips was quite pink when she reached out to grab the last brick in the little pig's fallen house. The wolf she whispered to herself is not deterred by mortar. Nor defeated by logic.

I don't remember who I had been. Before the moon fell from the sky and the whole of the earth became silent. I can't recall if there was, infact, a life before this. Or whether I would want it back given the choice.

The picinic basket lays still in her fist. Her red hood spoiling the smirk of death. The wolf leans in close. Big teeth showing through the beds he's worn. She pretends she is already dead.

So long that she thinks she is.

She loves each and every one of them. Slowly building her time machine from pieces of skin. The future makes her ill. With lives she not yet lived. The past shouts. But she can hardly hear it.

All this time travel is deafening.

All this counting is endless. Looking for broken needles. Courting dying gods at the bottom of tall glasses.

The air shrugged hard. Scraping loudly over her breasts. The confection of her skin laced with sour bits. She walked. Paced. In the small span of her decision. Elastic moments snapping back. Calendars in her chest erupting with the future. Withering with the past.

Everything gone. Nothing forgotten. The air not noticing. The chisel in her head. Carving. Culling yellow from crimson. In puddles of when. Time still tasted her. She it.

Alone in herself. Alone in anyone. Close. A lie told by anxious fingers. Touch. A treason of the heart. Sex. The coma. The machine. Keeping dead things alive.

Nothing ahead. Nothing behind. Travelling outside the confines of skin. Emerging from the asshole of time. Covered in its shit.

Lanterns. Burning light. Trapped in glass. Saying we were sorry to the cards. As they careened across the carpet. Deals we made long ago. Asthma of the cunt. Suffocating tired tongues. Speeches. Rafts. Going over the falls. In barrels made of skin.

Seldom is the beginning. Too often is the end.

Madness is living just to live. Genius is knowing when to die.

The sewer in his kiss. Searching for synonyms. The cradle sleeping around us as we jostle it into submission. The tattletale of touch in each press on the bed springs. The ache. Leaden genitals tearing away from useless bodies. Our endeavours as useless as our expectations.

The atoms on his tongue. Splitting wildly. The measure of his manhood. in the shallow of my pain. The vague of the bomb catching up to us.

Everything was gone. Nothing had changed.

I wasn't even close.

Little men. Or big ones. I haven't a measure for such questions. Only a collection of moments. The scent of strangers like a perfume I've worn all my life.

I argue with the hour. As all women are want to do. It was no one's fault. And every one's. Red thighs rubbing together until the feeling is gone again. Bits of sleep left upon her pillow after waking up. Pieces of men in the bleach she soaks her sheets in. Pieces of shit floating to the surface of the wash.

I was trying to explain to time that it didn't understand us. We don't live in it. Just too close.

I was listening to the time expiring between us. Bleeding loud in broken sobs. Like a naked woman reading Dostoevsky for the first time. The swallow of truth in her voice as she began to speak. Of men. The ones we have. And those we let have us. The difference only a phone call. A disproportionate conversation about skirts still unworn.

The crime: just trying to decide.

The punishment: choice.

Cotton candy tells her where to melt. Distribution of gods. Kind and malevolent. In the resolve of mediocre chemicals. The man wearing gods' gloves. Fingers drawing samples of her. Pieces of pussy. Prozac if you're old. Heroin if you're young.

I could sleep if I wanted to. If you would let me. Close my eyes without still seeing. The fingers of life pointing. As if it matters what I say.

The octopus with so many arms still cannot hold. Or ever hope to touch. All the raindrops her body decides must fall. Sorry is the wolf who cried pig too often. Now no one believes him. When there is something to kill. While the boy is praised.

The hunger is easy. Absolute. One dimension to the person. Taste. The sour of not saying anything. The rubber between her teeth filling up with poetry.

Puzzle pieces. To assemble. Looking like people.

It's only natural that the fish should swallow the hook.

Two drinks. Maybe three below the skin. A little girl tries on her dress.

Four drinks. Maybe five later she finds the mirror in the drug. Bits of her mind gang raping the shell. It's only an appetite for hunger. Never meant to be fed. We're supposed to keep wanting.

Life is a porno. Greed unrelenting. No one's exploited and everyone is. Love is a script. Poorly written. For awful actors.

Two sips. Maybe ten later I ask myself what I've said that is unscripted. Nothing really. Other than hello.

I can feel them. In dense blusters of human wind. Shy breezes that come off from the underside of young trees infatuated by the frantic. Capsules in pendulum carefully clock the hours between if and when.

Two drinks after. Perhaps four. I know who I am. Who I tried to be, but never was.

Little butterflies on the tips of branches. Trying not to sneeze.

It is a science. The lost that finds us in this search for nothing. It can be measured if I stay awake long enough. To see her. Question. How many drinks it takes.

To know it's hopeless.

All the sparkle. All the shimmer of fresh ghosts haunting her skin. The bleat of crowded disco techs extruded in a frenzy of faulty morals. The road map of his dick. Again pointing me in the wrong direction.

It's a profoundly ugly destination.

All this going nowhere.

Scabs of snot on her bed linens. Indicate where she hides her face while she sleeps. Stolen away from this world in small steps. Stewing in dreams she can't remember having ever possessed.

Making up sex in small gulps of friends. The ceremony of touch carrying on long after she has stopped counting. The years between. Then and now. Angry bears coming home to messy beds and missing porridge. Dead girls in worn stockings failing to reason with circumstance.

Pretending she had heard him when he said she didn't know what. A kite. Its long string teasing her hand. That she could touch the clouds. Move the sun. See again.

Power she muttered to herself. Control. This decrepit time machine in my head keeps trying, but I'm still not there. Nor any closer than I was.

I keep soliciting the cancer. It doesn't answer. I've scared the disease away again. I always do. Frighten it. Dark clowns with too much to smile about. Love is just the punctuation in this slow death.

The prayers of monsters make beautiful songs when I'm alone like this. Wondering which time I'm in. Which one I've left behind to be here. Negotiating with the me's I've created going back so many times to find what was never there.

My favorite part being the paradox. For all this to have happened nothing before it could have.

I keep trying on their faces. Moments of math rationalize the skin. In chokes of drug hoping I'll remember their collapsing heavens. Reconstruct. All the lies life creates to make these habits seem worthwhile.

Those tight jeans. They do fit. If I hold my breath deep enough.

What I can't hear. In the pauses between the rain. Gnawing on doll's feet. Minor provisions for the blind. The deaf. The dumb. Gods in plain clothes on corners too dark to see. Their faces as they thank us.

What I can't see. Revisions. In thrusts of charcoal. Men. Layers of soot. Dirty chimney. Keeps the smoke in. Bad lies still coming back to challenge the poverty of fallen bridges.

I can't hear them, but I know what they're saying.

Forgotten dogs trying to run on three legs.

Bad dogs. Tails still wagging. Bad dogs. Little women.

Looking for old leashes.

Dead things. I know about them. The spark of streetlight just before the sun rises. The dirt from the well right before the water rushes. The pea tormenting the tired princess as she laments her lack of princes.

Dead things. Loud songs playing softly. Children pretending to be asleep when the bedroom door opens.

Drawing the pictures chases away the words. Broken bottles struggle to hold onto a dwindling illusion of escape. Dead things shift under their dirt. Sleep comes in the rapid intervals between breathing and screaming. Dead things. No one hears them when they say they are alone.

Dead things. All their open cages prevent them from being saved.

Paper planes. No breezes. I'm a fortunate zombie. The hunger still hasn't arrived. It never will if I can hurry.

Chewing gum. No teeth. The dead things count themselves while the living aren't looking. Heaven comes in strobe lights. Hell comes in footprints.

Snow. Dead on the road. It's never cold enough to hear. To ask them why they fall when there's no place left to land.

Dead things. Remembering us. Old clothes that no longer fit.

We are leaving. Headlights staring in my window. Autopsies on movement. We are leaving. We just have nowhere to go.

Take your spasms away with you in tiny tears. Loose fit skin that sells for much more than cost. The sleepwalk is the best I can do. Lies untold. Unexpected. And therefore not cruel. Ghost never buried. Let the dead free to scold us. The rulers down our backs keep us staring at the empty blackboard. Chalk dust writes its eulogies. We attempt to measure moments, But they're too small to count. Fingertips at the ready to taste the freedom time has absolved.

Chosen. By design. Broken crayons still try to color in the empty outlines.

This pale solution to such vivid nightmares. Is just to wake up.

Turn off the demons like light switches. Let the darkness decide.

Where I am.

He was speaking in skins. Lifting weights on every breath. Waiting for the rotten fruit to become edible again. Bartenders in some fairy tale of blinking eyes that never happen to see what's staring at them.

Hearing the stop sign, but deciding not to listen.

Life. Like bubble gum breaking between careless lips. Stuck to faces that quickly forget.

Laughing sadly about the many haunted houses we've slept in to get to this one.

The stones seek their language. In bit and pieces. The doctor is overcome by his medicines. Tongues. Like treasure maps. Counting the steps to heaven.

She imagines the cradle in the tree rocking. Full of hope someone has to hate.

Pop!

She continues chewing her gum. She loves the taste of nothing.

Cupid's on heroin saving up the methadone.

The man waiting for the elevator fascinated her. A stolen souvenir of humanity in a marathon of machines. Tired of running and never much good at it, she decided to forfeit the prize.

She was glad she did.

The eclipse took place just as it should. Skeptical lovers turning envelopes inside out. Looking for proof of something for which there can be no evidence. Satyrs in their bubble baths advancing their pawns nearer to the back of the board. Conversations like taffy stretched too far. And stuck to my teeth.

The road was humble. The lies arrogant. As he steered her away from the oncoming traffic. Eager for the collision she lamented his decision to save her from herself. Who was he to do such a thing?

Just a man like any other. Just a penis on a Popsicle stick called intellect. Just some hard caramel in a wrapper I never should've undone.

Bedtime stories for the rest of us.

He brought in the speakers. Inch by inch until everything sounded like she remembered. Too much treble. Too much bass. A lot of strangers paying for their highs with drunken women. Or postcards from their mother's they'd yet to read.

She turned off the amplifier and tried to listen to the nothing. Feigning deafness until they started scraping the chalkboard.

All the erasers gone they decided there was still time to lie enough. Black markers seeping through thin paper. She thought about saving what she'd written, but changed her mind when she found out the words had decided she couldn't be trusted. With all those little shoes that barely fit on the feet she'd gnarled playing so often with dolls she'd only remember by hating herself.

Taking off their clothes in tiny doses of hysteria. Sad clown smiles losing their makeup. Sirens at the back of her throat looking for someone to blame. Besides herself.

The fruit is over us. Bored.

Too cold to bleed.

The battery is dead.

Loose skin looking for drawstrings in the moment. Zippers in the smile that means nothing. Escaped prisoners in a long occupation of liars and sex. Found attics in a failing war. Salvation comes not upon being rescued, but accepting that you won't be. Some soldiers have guns, others only experience.

Browsing fault lines. Catalogs of men erupting. Chemical fires doused in blood. Until everything has fallen. And the pantyhose are all that's left of her flesh. Friendly enemies turn her surrender into triumph. She waits for the burns to heal. A puzzle of skin now, she waits to be solved.

Hooks in the meat as the knives carve the cow. All eyes discarded. Chains pull the the skin from the carcass. People dissect the shit from the meat.

Bad air fresheners and thin masks separate us from the things inside us. So many dead animals try to teach us to live.

I was watching this weird french movie. Except that's redundant because all french movies are weird. Smug with sex and violence. The french seem to know more than any other culture that there is wisdom to be derived from self-indulgence. That sex is a mirror for everything else in our life and skin is not just a cover, but more a window than any of the more laudeded organs.

That's not innuendo. It's just crass observation.

True, american movies are full of sex and violence too, but the sex is all covert and deceptive. The french don't cover their sex in bundles of sheets and loud music. They wear their sex right on their faces. It's not that sex is so important, it's just that it is integral to everything we are. Everyone speculates about what separates humans from animals. But I've always known it's sex. Animals are driven by instinct and nature. Animals have sex because nature has designated them to do so. People have sex because it is what we want.

The nightmare was in the doorway. Sereptitiously taking its clothes off. Skin broken into syllables. Chunks of breath too small to hold all we'd said. The fingerprint was on the doorbell. Songs I so seldom hear. He took off his tie and hung himself with it. It was only then that I finally noticed the knot was wrong.

She was gathering her barbie dolls into factions. Keep and discard. More concerned with the war than its outcome. Fighting she presumed for reasons beyond her. The choke hold of high heels rewriting the heart. Into something contagious. Convincing the moment that all those fragments had once been whole.

I'm not hearing the words.

When they tell me it's hopeless I only hear ropes. Gods in gym class. Cruel teachers. The ceiling so far away. Lost faces like phosphorus and calcium. Make everything harder.

White paper drowning in ink. Broken closet doors negotiating with familiar demons. Skeletons slipping into tuxedoes of skin. What was mine. Flesh has all kinds of reasons. I'm just not one of them.

Ill with determination she scribbled the disease in chunks of vein. Tort lips arguing with gravity again. Pieces of train track lost in finding where they've never been. The piano on his hip laughing c chords in unison with faulty wisdoms about what I should want.

I don't want anything.

The smoke spills from her nose and she imagines herself a dragon. The fire in her throat real at last. The long stairways taking her somewhere else. Anywhere.

I don't go there.

It comes to me. In spasms. Baby birds thrown from the nest too soon. Bland wings and dull beaks hungry for more throw up. The lawsuit of want accusing victims. Letting the monster go.

We need the monsters. To make us ourselves. To knit these all too patient skins. That let us try them on even when they could never hope to fit.

Wearing myself in sips of coffee too hot to swallow. Liars in worn overalls cultivate the reasons.

I don't know how hard it is. I only know it's far away.