bronkelthorpe

I make a point of climbing right up the scaffold instead of using a ladder but once up there, I'm just as fucked as the ladder-climbers the panels are not level; they do not join at right angles; the seams are not meeting on the studs. the screws leap into the gypsum and spin free, or deflect and burrow sideways the teacher is elsewhere. three of us wait for the fourth, who is trimming half an inch it is hot up here. I take off my hardhat. soon (?) this will be a classroom but the laundry machines are still here, hot, tumbling I put my hardhat back on sweat drips down my face the panel still doesn't fit the teacher is elsewhere I suppose what we are really learning here is how to plod in the face of entropy

He worked on the last stair tread for far too long. What took so long, exactly? Was it low blood sugar? Befuddlement induced by inhaling sealant fumes? Refusal to admit that a dull chisel and a hammer is not a router? He attempts to place it on the stringers. There are obstructions. Metal brackets, SDS screws, the guardrail post. For an experienced carpenter, this would be boring. Later that night, the imposter carpenter contemplates blogging his disastrous stair tread. What, exactly, would uploading a picture of chisel-savaged redwood with a self-deprecating caption achieve? Perfunctory sympathy? The deafening silence of indifference? He imagines an old carpenter, confident in his abilities and his battered Toyota pickup, graying now, unhappy with how awful lumber has become. He wonders if seeking sympathy for stupid mistakes on the internet is something that poor quality lumber would do.

she is several floors above i rise in fits, narcoleptic dashes, the purpose forgotten and then suddenly remembered the waking mind stirs, sees dream rumbling and swirling about, puts its eye to a newspaper, asks the dreaming mind -- “what’s the paper say?” the dreaming mind is sure that it says something it’s a newspaper, that’s what newspapers do pressed, dreaming mind looks closer and the black lines dance like an ant hill, no letters, no meaning, just shapes shapes thus crippled, the dream folds away i find her, she regards me with bitterness and answers my questions (no words, just desperation) with shapes no words no meaning

(as read at Nomad Cafe 28 April 2010) SHAPES I wish I could tell you where that goddamned fuse is the one in my nose, just outside my brain the one that burns out on its own inscrutable schedule underlining random incidents in red ink sometimes it's an ambush the drops splash down before I feel them falling a one-color pollock stares back at me from the ground, expanding sometimes, I just know and you'll see me tilt my head back am I looking for shapes in the clouds in the ceiling? no, I am just standing here drinking myself to death