mazes>mazes>mazes>maize
chapter one
Maybe one day they will meet. Meet like gritty words swapped to change the course on sandy beaches. Sandy with bread crumbs waiting for the tide to change twice right back to how it already is. On this beach with a bottle of soda but never a can. The top twists right off instead of pried with the fingers of his hand. It takes the coating right off his teeth so he zips his jacket a little tighter and wades right in, wades right in, wades right in, wades right in. To the bass, of the radio that played.
Someone’s running away, far away, with his radio away. And by the time he’s back on the beach the music’s gone. Farther down the beach the radio plays a commercial break as wet footprints chase dry footprints and the dj sells the car to buy to propel the chase to other modes. Faster modes with lane changes and third parties with flashing lights. Everyone gets a turn so the on lookers wait their turn.
The gas burns dry and it’s back to the feet we all have. Now all foot prints are dry and concrete fills them up on this ground that never gives anything, runs footprints that don’t take away from anything, runs the man who takes radios, runs the him who looses radios, runs the cop who chases chasers. And the crowds they all walk, they don’t run. But they spread out, take their radios out.
Now the chase is on the stations but we want the music. There’s one left, that one we dial. A beat and it’s more commercials but we’re all buying, sales rising. ‘An economy saved’ said. We all cheer now, there’s radios for everyone and footprints on every thing. We all listen to the tune about money saving misiles, fevers, typhoons, and we hang eagerly from our feet eagerly. From the ceiling from our feet, upside down and away from the chase. Panting from that chase. We all hang still on our finance victory rescue lap. Scratching the enamel off our teeth, it’s a brand new beat.
It’ll be a new way to fall but at least we’ll land in the protection of our teeth.
chapter two
Bradley fell first from the ceiling. Into his bed. It turned out being a good thing no finance victory parties had yet been thrown. ‘An Economy Saved’ was an unconcious attempt at a ferry tale in a time when we build the young up to eagerly face the world with ferry tales, then let them fade away with matching textbooks and matching desks. Dreams are rarely good sources of detailed walkthrough and while fairy tales are good for morals, they tend to skimp on the cold hard reality parts. The moral was great. Everyone banded together and saved the day. The path was cloudy and skewed though. Most people woke up very similar to that morning. Hungover from the previous day’s fiasco with a hand in their mouth on their sticky and weathered tooth enamel, their other hand far from a well lined pocket.
So Brad awoke with an urge to get the hell out of his drool cavern and with a nasty craving for some kind of pasta sounding harmonics, bleached or not bleached, be damned. Not minding his teeth. He had stopped noticing them long ago. Ever since his radio broke.
He put his glasses on and entered the lines of the every morning awake. Every one was all up and giving each other hell about it. The soda fountain was nice and warm. One thing to thank the political day to day about. Everyone loves a nice warm and carbonated beverage in the morning, and for every day the political system gets older, the soda seems to get more room temperature. Brad gave his eyes two long scoops before trudging over to fill his mug.
A nice relaxing sip as he sat overlooking the harbor. Moments you could pick up and pocket but if you did they’d fall right out a hole, only to be caught by your other hand, tucked under your hat, cooked for a few moments, then sprung up like a toaster to land on your raised knee, as you sit taking in the last idle stares of morning prep and stretch, and shoved in your mug for one last drip, downed with a final sip. It would be off to the pot holes. It was his job. He was off to pave whats due with hopes on a new radio.
chapter three
Biking down the coastside town street, quarters slide back and forth chasing each other on a street sign floor in a crate strapped above the back wheel.
The potholes that be always wore a desolate face. They scared vehicles away and their eye rent scares people away. They scared cats away and dogs away. Not birds. Birds had their pothole songs. Brad coasts off his bike by a tree where a ladder uncoils down. Living in a business first mode the tree’s gotta wait. That’s okay the tree’s have waiting down. They’re not going anywhere. Our situation has more variables. Brad’ was acting as his didn’t though. He had channels on his mind but holes between his feet. Was growing past sick of making the blur feel a little nicer. The blurs that when you’re in them lots of times don’t even feel.
He threw a quarter in the bottom of the pothole and then sealed it up for safe distance. It’s how the work gets done. With out that metallic clink and something shiny to get rid of in a way not supposed to, he would be doing exactly what he was told. In a societal car with the suspension getting old. The birds always sung out right when he brightened his work up. This way he knew it was the right way.
This day was something different. There were just three potholes and it was time for the trees. Climbing up the rope ladder, getting more in time with the trees. Climbing up, unaware that he’d find a way to leave.
chapter four
In the tree canopy sat a tree sitter. Brad took a seat. He reached for a smile and it didn’t do that well at releasing greetings. He’d been getting better at that since he picked up his habit of burying his networth. In a hole, bellow regulation concrete, closer to the earth. Still he wasn’t great at it and changes in altitudes threw everything off. It was a forrest in two ears and a song creaked out.
‘ivy moon
poison tongue
stops it short
before it’s done
but when it grows
that moon of green
empty your loads
upon the machine’
“What’s your name?” Brad asked. It was Sandy, but she didn’t answer. Instead a farewell smile and half handed wave. Not a get out of here goodbye, but a ‘you have work to do down ladder’ goodbye. It was a ladder to descend. Brad looked back and forth, then thought “I’ve got a pair of shoes and can’t walk on air so it’s time to get to where there’s more ground.” The song was pretty catchy though. He wish he had his radio with hope he could find something like it.
chapter five
The snow was unseasonal but the love is unconditional. As Brad was starting to realize. And realized fully when he thought of the dread of going to work tomorrow, thought “i guess i should” and listened to the silence. Then thought, “no maybe i wont” and was answered by a huge lump of snow, landing on the street. Then thought “but maybe I have to” and heard nothing but silence. And “fuck that I wont” to a nod from some snow. He’d think about it a little more, then decide where to go.
But the scene, it was grim. The faulty season saying something’s got to give, when the whole world’s about to give, habits no need live. It was snow in the wrong time. The smoke stacks coughed over the cold air. “They could use some honey.” Said the bees. The thinking bees. They had worked long enough at what they knowed not. The pyramids to them were starting to look like molasses. Honey combs being laid in very new ways. Horizontal cuz kidnapped piggyback rides are square.
People were building their likenesses in the snow. Snow men and snow women. Something wasn’t right though. Snow men and snow women melt in the passing days. Snow angels just flap their wings and float away. It wasn’t some genius decision. Blessed chance. A bus scared him and he slipped the curb and landed on his back. Snow turned butterfly wing prints and there were still leaves in the trees. It was a holiday feeling though the holidays ahead looked tiring and had him all priced out. He didn’t need a radio anymore.
chapter six
Brad couldn’t keep his eyes off the moon. It was out in the day time. Some said “a two for the price of one!” He fought the notion and stumbled upon “no a desert snapshot I wont pay.” He slunk back to the lake where he’s from.
In his apartment, looking at the quarters. Sticky like the gum drops. Thinking of a way. Too many old socks. We already passed spring. ‘Hey I’m scared of this season!’ Looking out the window and thinking to the wind.
He drank some shots of whiskey drink. It turned into the butteflies. But flying low it melted. And burnt up on the pan. No change showed, and stepping out of this mode, he threw a quarter to the ground. ‘I think it’s time I leave my town.’ With his two feet he biked for a ride. With his one head he thought of the times. When we could have something they sometimes have a sign for, but don’t yet have a name for. But in the land of check your day dreams at the turnstiles, wall street was a place to go. Ironing for irony and looking in the creases for funny things at the epicenter of these financial diseases.
He took a walk to wall street, he took a walk down there. All around just stares and no’s. “Not for you where money grows. No not for you, not here.” Gargoyals on the buildings. To show you who’s got ups. People blurring, holding forgotten concepts of had enoughs. Now the time to take a piss. He stumbled in an alley way he hopped over a ditch. Resigned to do as such maybe, but dancing through the shade.
Standing in an ally way where life grows through the cracks. Just hum and drip of air conditioner. Release of what’s been downed. The things that go grow naturally. Release heads bowels spectacularly. The sounds that were kept going, the sounds that weren’t stayed not. But the pavement was getting wetter. “This is it. I’m pissing forever.”
chapter seven
Walking around. Feet petting the ground. Smile catches and snares. Pissing for the fountains. Walk arounds, lots of people giving lots of cares. Where do you go when a toilet feels force fed? Where do you go to sooth your strung around head. He follows the strands. One lands on a man. He has a pamphlet which soothes some words. Into his eye frame’s framed stare. ‘The Sensitive government had a bad day. He took a bad smile upon his bad face. He took a ton of it. And pilled it all up. Worrying he was more she. Non genders weren’t ideas. Stretching his official lips to his official hips. So he pilled it all up. Upon the dresser floor. Why the dresser floor? He lives in a drawer. Use your other hand. To close and zip the man. But we don’t have a plan? Let palm trees in the sand. Pink oak to this soil. Then… We’ll speak again.”
The paper fluttered in his fingers. Tapped him on the pointer. Sense of smell came on strong. Something he’d never noticed quite in that way before. Showed all old and disjointed. Sucked pollution from the pavement. Marked the air for reinstatement. He threw his pocket full of quarters to the ground. Hearing music ring out sound.
chapter eight
Everything was shit. So it seemed to the pisser. Sandy bread crumb beach meat ups. Fixing shit with cheap thrill push ups. Muting vibes by sticky hands from beehives. It’s new to piss, far far away from all this nine to six. The pee it’d yet to stop signs. But it was sketching out a new way to exist. Something about not quite running stop signs. Patterns on a wall, quick fix, he celebrates his lime eyes. But worrying, in time we must realize why’s. Good vibes don’t stay in muck cave. He ran quick down the street, wall.
He pissed against some glass. Like a goldfish, light a blurring, is this a process or has it passed? The light through the glass, the water through the glass, it can tell you if you let it. Told him all that stuff he knew about telling time with sundials. You’d see, “Coffee chain culture there’s no time for it. There’s no stars, made of money, in no skies.” But no one’s timing to do that now.
Then the goldfish leaves, to a rattle of leaves. Unaware that the sun has more to share. We’re walking around. Standing there, in a city that looks like it’s starting to care. But it’s life, it still could not be fatter. Unaware of the trails, leaking out of smokestack bladders. Brad knew his piss wasn’t so bad at all.
chapter nine
Stuck on the pavement. He’s cycling through choices of faces. Speeding through ones that don’t fit. Gasps and yells clear out space. Still trying to save face. Cuz he’s a guy ‘pissing forever’. Has there been many of those before? Yeah many, but it’s been along time. Are there more of those right now? Very likely many, but they’re scattered all around.
Safe from the police man and no go for the hospital. This is about something. The world don’t slinky dog whirlwind out of shape for one lost dog, pissing on a tree. And it don’t get back into shape that way either. Brad was doing his business, found a good face that said, “Respectfully, let me be.”
chapter ten
It was fixing with the smell of tune up the level. Before. It was working, when there was a smell of tune up the level. Now he’s searching, for the smell of tune up the level. Walking around, from tree to tree with some kind of craving for new form. Nothing’s happened much. Trying to mix it up. Irrational times require walking on hands your rational mind. Talked to someone, with standing aim. Told of a man, he works in building three. Works a job signing papers. All about repossessing south of the border farms. But then a car window screams out “Why you pissing!” and “Don’t it all work? I got a watch, see!”
Brad look around. Still wetting the ground. And there wasn’t much to see. The mountains are top down. Secret caves to climb them. “No, this looks like piss town to me” hints through a one half eye closed face.
chapter eleven
Brad had grown used to a clear space of feet on each side. It helped him to notice the imported molecules more. The ones taken out of the earth, melted and crushed down and mixed and molded into shapes then expressed over to places far away. Some times there would be a single long thread of spider silk trailing from one to the other as they lay unaccounted for on street floors and sat prepared in shop windows. The spiders could never be seen. Hidden in cups and trash cans. Choosing a next course.
He tripped over a spider web some spider had tied between a garbage can and a street corner for some very quick transportation to another destination shit. He stood still on the sidewalk, but his head flew to a covered warehouse. Covered and walled with heavy concrete. Sometimes used to keep light out. The conveyer belt was a large bubble in a covered mud puddle. It popped and refilled as the current drifted it along.
chapter twelve
When you piss for so long you loose concepts of long and short. You think your full of piss sometimes. Sometimes you think the world’s made you full of piss. You identify connections. You think about the longest and most prominent pisses that you have been involved with and say, “Hey! That was piss.” Well that thought process is piss. And it has no where to drain, it lies in dirty gutters. Makes you forget pissing is a vital function and if there’s a long piss, there must be a reason for it. It’s how the body gets rid of toxins. If the world’s pissing, there must be a lot of toxic.
When you go to the same places at the same clock times day after day you see some of the same people over again. When someone just doesn’t stop doing something like that you take notice of it. It was some accidental path clearing stuff before, but he was learning to go as he talked. They were much more enjoyable walks. Some one said something, and it was exactly why he had been pissing. “If the only strings you can spot are that of your own piss, your balance is off. It’s time to look for strings. Starting with the ones that go inside of you.” He nodded and knew where next to walk.
chapter thirteen
Back on the street there was a talk at a meet up. A truck of sausage links were tied up with balloons and hoisted into the air. The air knows where to link. The meat was deposited somewhere out of mind. It’s said a speck of color in the sky led the farmer to domesticate his livestock. Not really adrift, but feeling much better, munching on some new kind of shit, Brad found a vine. It was in the most unexpected place. Humming out loud, it was a one about a tree. Hey it’d make sense that this world would want to warn stuff.
With even better aim. Munching on new kinds of eat. He tried it three and it all did seem, the earth was rolling along a meadow of low hilled planes. It went into some heavy clouds. They broke off as we danced through and clung like opaque graffiti. It was shit to read. Symbols eating words, spelling out ‘think and walk tall or rain and wash small, in this land that churns right under your feet.’
There were more and more pissers. A few running frantically around. And a man with a private bathroom. Charging for lessons, his claim to fame, coming back to life after he had drowned. But his beach had its own hospital, and he was munching golden lobsters as his words were shouted down. “Everything’s living. So i’ll eat all i like. Here, go chop down the brocoli. I’ll give you a bathroom and make it nice.” But you can’t piss and hold an axe. So his students came right back. And went home and made new snacks. Removed from the official stacks.
chapter fourteen
The private bathroom was a joke. Brad, glad he didn’t have to yell it, let out a yawn instead. A yawn sometimes arises with no connecting state of mind, but seems to float out like an air bubble escaping from a fish floating to the surface. Some kind of reupping on cosmic nutrients we know nothing about but run on and scoop up like the trees growing at their pace all their own, always all at once, pushing gracefully and holding tight with an unstoppable force through all kinds of materials on a time line all their own.
Pissing in the dirty financial district, Brad thought how he’d like to find himself in a meadow with grass pushing up like whiskers. Standing there, not shaving anything ever and they’d grow there, not breaking my molecules, but at a rate all their own, sharing the space and moving upwards, whisking me closer to a grasp on rotations and growth. And elevated by that grass, resting on that grass, molding into that soil, take a few steps. Percussion for the earth worms. Then take a seat and sit. Analyse previous strings. Hit a moment of low space quota, or sit their, passed through by a cloud of space stuff, and scoop it up with a nice big yawn and smile at days all new and a future that keeps growing, seeding, growing.
chapter fifteen
Slick marble toilet rigged halls are stirring. They piss all the time in their own way too. There’s lots and lots of kidney stones so they housed and walled an ice cream factory, too floors and a zoo. They’re not thinking about the levels, just horizontally at the top of the stairs. It’s not flat and equal when you’re the tip of a spear. No matter how many flower vases you hang from it.
Bow Tie’s getting new age. Trying to beat the piss. Traded in his martini for a bonzai tree. He says the pain is just guilt that the others can’t be like me. So he hops up the medication. Jumping from pill to pill. A grumpy life with fluffy hedges screaming ‘give me the doctors with the most skills!’ Paranoid, twisted, passed out in a bathtub. Monocles that wont just scrub clean. It’s time to be one of the masses. No one wins when land turns molasses.
Piles of kidney stones in the east. Piles of kidney stones in the west. Everyone up top’s feeling the pain, thinking about throwing rocks. They got a feeling. That the next’s gonna be a big one. No one know’s who has the better catapult. Just that there’s plenty of rocks to go around. But pissing pains for financial gains, seldom end in wins.
Of this Brad was passed a hypothesis. When the pee flows fast you’re not listless. It happens less where habits boast. Where gold glows through the cracks, where people run from facts, where circles talking smack. His mind not in the field. And shadow against the wall. Staying alive by jumping from sidewalk hearts to smiles, made when signs said wet cement. In a cursive script kind of way “i need to get away.”
chapter sixteen
The closely guarded sanity. Fertile soil for grave and desolate vanity. The people of the town hardly noticed the pissers were doubling. Then tripling. Then quadrupling. A self described buisness man, fresh out of college stands in a food court bathroom. The pipes below him gurgle. He clutches his stomach. The bubbles in the toilet spell out doom. Calculating a shopping sale, adding ones to nines. When arrived at the sum, eyes lock on a stray red tile in the mostly green stall wall. Though a moldy cold green wall.
Damn stop light living. It brings you back towards high traffic congested inhalation. And brought Brad back to Wall Street. But lately, Wall Street tycoons and riot squat goons, have all been showing him more love. Baffles us all, but as he pisses, looking for walls, they tend to recognize sentiment of ‘hey fuck a stall’. It’s something like a groove in time. A bobsled run maze. Mostly just feel amazed. Man does this motion really fly.
But edged into a flip of switch, backed into while thinking, Brad backs into while cooking. A trash can heater stove. All alone in the cold. Removes the newly visiting smile, drops it down many miles. It’s hard to tight rope up over a bunch of race. In this fucking race. With separate lines. For shaky stands. Mechanical, rusty piss for gas in sands. Stolen lands. Secret plans. Vicious pacts. Cards that stacked. Customary attacks. Handshake slaps. Chained to maps. Wake up to that. Your ground is shit. It’s tied to your shoes.
chapter seventeen
Sometimes i think of the future. When the world hasn’t even left start. If i delay this, will it find a natural jump start? Do you have another bite? Of something that’s taught? And stuff the wrapper through a hole in the wall? Directions upside down, turn them round, must build it right. You’re trying to fly with an iron kite. While we ruminate in wrinkles. Trying to sooth what flows freely into what ever you would like. Well fabric gives to pressure. No matter how it’s dressed up. You tout that every thing has its price. Wouldn’t that logic be nice when applied to sustaining life. Good think your extension cords wont reach a kite.
A green flash in sky. Made it clear. Spinning the compass, when a pisser comes near. Now there are much more. Feeling solidarity, walking along, Brad spun out a bar. When the glitch, in the program, tapped your thought. You were sitting distraught. And realizing things aren’t what they ought.
Brad turned around and walked back to the bar. Where he was sure there were some more. He ran into the bathroom. And there was a lot of talk. It was agreed upon that these were new times. A gift for our minds. Just mark something for someone to add to the math. We’re moving along, but it still feels so long. Speak loud and check how you walk.
chapter eighteen
It turned out Brad wasn’t pissing forever. And he felt embarrassed for running around with streams of advice while sitting on what is wrinkled. Do as you’d like, always and for sure. He zipped up with his head low beneath some wall’s heavy clock and headed for the nearest river. A couple steps and his head was back up. Felt eyes beaming “DOCTOR. CHECK UP.”There was a bathroom. He went in to wash his hands. After he shrugged his hands. It wasn’t clean soap but it would make his hands cleaner after days all around. Bottled in olympic sized, oily grimed, swimming pools of tangled nucleuses. It was stored in a water cooler and there was a crowd and a conversation around it. People talking about streamers made of stocks, plastic confetti, face masks made of unopened bills. Brad forgot the water on a little too long, listening close. He remembered to shut it and learned the talk was all joke. His hands were plenty dry, he remembered the potholed moon in the sky. Knew that piss or no piss, it was time to be finding a way.
Brad climbed over a fence and over a fence and under a tarp. There was a canoe to be returned. He pulled it out and lined it up and slid right back the way he’d come. The general direction, not the same exact course. Skiing with the water, a better way to get across. But nearly as soon as he started he had to stop moving and dock it till next starting. He was floating in the building at the end of a ride. That covered enclosure. At the end of a flume or roller coaster. Turnstile like ‘Did you have a nice ride?’ No patience for money, or someone’s claim to some water, he hopped it and came out on the banks.
He stood, then moved to give thanks. Found a crazy pattern in sand. It talked of crazy shit, couldn’t doubt it. He remembered some of it on a scrap of paper in scribbly lined drawed pictures, turned, and decided to move away from there. The water where he was standing, turned down the level and washed out the scene. Filled with thrown down wrappers it moved like a poisonous snail. Flashing powerwires makes shadows in the day time and they fence the trail at night.
Brad looked down, still an electric insistent buzz. Pointed his steps somewhere far from getting walled. Stepped over a shadow, began getting started, always much farther out from there.
chapter nineteen
I was walking through the tall grass. And saw five all lined up desks. Backs against the city skyline. Fronts by wirlwind den. They said ‘Why you, hey you there. Pisser?’ They were the coolest gang. ‘Scale of one to ten! A one to ten rank!’ they shouted. He just upped and ran. Judging from that weird place. That collects assorted toxic barreled pollution. What was once sea shore, only not now, before. The grass where some birds still now do feed in. Was the front landing to a whole lot more treed land. Now the trees have all, most receded. We crop them where we have space to see them. And chop them when in front of our bosses signed wall. They’re confined to less than the sidewalk. While the cars claim the biggest connecting space.
The marsh land is a tray under a leaky machine pan. The gear crunch that was once loud dial up. Does now pass in ticks from most watch hands. Set an hour back and an hour forward cuz we’re tottering. Or stomping and shaking on top of it. The top of the mountain to loud hard music. Earth to ear, getting hard at sound hearing. And both blurring when eyes drool the money fountains. As they drain out they torpedo out common accountants. Then submarine off to still full dollar fountains.
Staring at the fountain, these are days to not to be missed. A broken dollar, then a hand that tapes it and shouts fixed. A drab and locked down building. Standing on line, in place, he did not count. He get’s to the front, looks in and turns back. The next in line, acts a little surprised, then realized, “oh, he must need a stall.”
9:50 pm • 1 January 2012
