From the Docudrama: Can't Blame Them, Can You?

I have no idea what you're talking about.
No idea what the reader is reading.
I don't understand.
I should be able to understand.
I don't like it.

I ordered the special, and expected enough for a takeaway.
It wasn't easy ordering in the middle of this chaos.
The wait staff can't hear us.
They can't hear what we're ordering.
Everyone seems to think that's OK.
It's not OK.

Grow up! Life is not a takeaway!

But I love to start the day with a takeaway!

Someone just texted me: take your time.

Yeah, OK. I'm always on the clock. We're always on the clock.
Is there an innocent bystander who could take the hit?
Doubtful.

Everyone's trying to hide
not necessarily to shirk their duty (isn't that a cool word?)
but maybe because some feel untrained and humbled.

(A statue of a police officer appears.)

Now what?

You're becoming curmudgeonly.

I'm becoming curmudgeonly? Is that a Maslowian stage?

Yes, the cardboard people on stage are paintballing the audience.

On top of that many are being stepfathered in.
Everyone is Facebooking like crazy.

And that surprises you?

From Alix Pearlstein's Moves in the Field

Desperately Seeking [TBD]

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
          - Yogi Berra

(Action)

(Commence psychobabble)

I'm sorry. I didn't realize this was a counseling session.

I need to flush the system.
Yes?
I need to flush the system to begin again.
Yes?
You know like Finnegan Begin Again: The Prequel.
You mean that works?

Open your books to page 45.
Erik Erikson's notion of "moratorium."

Take out a sheet of graph paper. Map the terrain of your heart.
You're kidding, right?
Wait to be cued. You'll know when. You'll just know.
Huh?

(Apparently, this is an either/or system.)

How coolly Kierkegaardian!

The lights blink.
The kittycats are frightened into Deep Listening.
The network yaps: Me! Me! Me!
The placeholders insist: Look, I don't have all day here!

Risking vertigo, of course, I vacillate.

Anna Levine and Madonna

Slipstream

You ignore the sermon, then think, Everything's riding on this.
OK, that was over the top, but what did you expect?
Waking into a dream saying, You can have anything you want?
I think not.
Distract yourself next time with befuddlement (if nothing else is handy).
It was so thick you befriended a minor player in a minor drama
played out in starts and stops.
And now look at the wake: eenie meenie miney mo!
Fragments floating by.
Forget the freebies. You were psyched out by them.
Yes, you'll have plenty of company when you crash and burn!

Dariusz Klimczak

Pretending Otherwise

1
It's as if you're driving with a rain-soaked windshield.

2
How to get close?

3
Why not others?

4
Climbing into a dream.

5
Losing count.

6
Climbing out of a dream.

7
The imagination, a progenitor. Grappling with bookmakers as if there were a window.

8
Dogs curled in the driveway.

9
Where the hell is this?

10
She was fond of the term irregardless and used it regardless.

11
Now, every dream begins with a caveat.

12
Not much to do about that.

13
Hunker down as if life depended on it.

14
And then strolling the aisles, fascinated by the stamped cartons of everything.

15
Well, maybe not, but still.

16
OK with me.

17
Tell you what. With everything blemished or soon to be, we could pretend otherwise, look the other way, begin again, only this time with a metronome.

18
I'm thinking herbivores, doubtless because of Anne Carson's intros and outros.

19
It wasn't meant to be?

20
A Month in the Country. He shy, she faithful.

21
She couldn't handle the pretense. Does that make sense?

22
I got it. Next time follow the instructions.

23
But even so!

24
The happenstance in the trees is so captivating that you won't hear the other shoe drop.

25
This times 20.

Dariusz Klimczak

I Take That Back

Subtleties aside, the grounding should have made a difference, the verisimilitude coloring the encounter, releasing the amplitude from those cheap enclosures. What's your experience been like? A crap shoot? How about the documentation? Does it continue to brittle, as the museologists said it would? Interestingly, the path, once overgrown and impassable, welcomes us with benefits no less, some of which are far too outlandish to even consider. As it should be, I guess.

Dariusz Klimczak

 

The Fine Line Between

What is it then between us?
          - Walt Whitman

And so we engage in distractions
in deadpan reticence
in loose-elbow canvases with splashy palettes
boarding the airship
waving bye-bye to the good, the bad, the ugly
to those near and far
to those costumed for the haunting regularity
hands held high
the music a light summer rain.
The curiosity welcomed, celebrated,
upholding the meaning
preserving what is done
and what will (or could) be done.
The windiness of cities
of passersby with eyes locked
or heads bent
that this could be otherwise
scripted in good company
without indulgence
without insouciance
or concern or worry
with nothing lost in translation then or now.
The entire palette sprung
all colors
some identified by the stenciled name of another
applied with the transport of an ode to joy.
In the final scene an ice storm dialogues
limbs bend, break, fall
viewed as spectacular
the curtains still'd
the music muted
the congregation assembling
to review the packet of algorithms
signed, sealed, delivered
by a company of like-minds
who now (we can only hope) will see it through
settling on the iced leaves of grass.
Perhaps we should email one another
touch base
make sure the network is up
and only then resurface
duly recognized and accepted
without qualm, without condition.

Dariusz Klimczak

A Vast Someone

The rudimentariness of our arrangement
a coherent jumble
the laws of attraction misconstrued
which you insist is OK.
A vast someone has reappeared
with a memorandum of understanding.
I dawdle, hem and haw,
find too much air in the sonatina
soundtracking the flights of dirigibles.
What am I thinking?
You make a mad dash for your new hairstyle,
your new look, your new persona,
jotting notes in the margins
translating some obscure writer as if
the time is opportune to think about what
we thought we had wasted, I mean, wanted.

Anja Niemi

Runoff

And wait to watch the water clear, I may.
          - Robert Frost

Evidently, things changed while you were gone,
while you were out,
while you were opening channels for the runoff.
I know what you mean.
Something about the water rippling along.
How it seeks whatever it seeks,
while others present their offerings, then step back
and wait to see what happens.
And wait to watch the runoff.
Not a casual thing.
The devil-may-care attitude. Inscrutable.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Say What?

You know full well what I'm talking about.
The run-through was a disaster,
with all roads leading to a sidebar,
which in another time and place
would be tantamount to reruns. It happens.
And it's happened again.
But this time the reset button was disabled.
There was no turning back.
No backpedaling.
But we do have a window.
So as Mr. Bowie suggested, Let's Dance.
Or, at least distract ourselves with the remote.
Channel surf to our heart's content.
Your entourage - whomever they are - is stalled in traffic.
They may never get here.
Everyone's walking on eggshells.
What recourse do we have? Let me think.

Say What? by Tom Corrado

Woman XXXVI

Like Carl Jung on the racquetball court
she drops archetypes into the airspace between swings
eyeing me through the handcuffs
of her pink-tinged goggles
while adjusting the shiny black Lycra tubes
encasing her cardio'd and tanned thighs.
I am singed by a sizzling serve,
bug-eyed, hyperventilating,
and down for the mandatory eight,
sucking a vitamin-stuffed antioxidant energy drink
laced with enough omega-3 and ginseng
to keep all NFL linebackers
for the next 50-plus years
happy and healthy and erect,
as the bell steps in to save me from total annihilation.

At Higher Elevations

Layering is important
but not so that one abandons anti-realistic fiction
or the eyes as pools of desire.
The refusal to let go refuses to let go.
You block out time without a second thought
and reconsider re-clapboarding as a career.
It's enough for some.
Think momentary suspensions
and the offer to remake the self as a weekend project.
There are far worse things.
High cholesterol, for example,
or inconsistency.
You probably feel the same way, yes?,
strolling as you do down the avenue at dusk.
I for one want my writers blocked.

Gotham Chamber Opera's production of Eliogabalo

So Soon?

The late season snowfall nearly imperceptible.
Turning, you realize the door is locked
and, as you watch, it morphs into a wall
which you scale to no avail:
The view is gone.
Not the first time.
You've squandered elements of then to barter for what?
Cue the ventriloquist: But this is how I see it!
Bravo!
Crouched like a scaredy cat on the deck of a ship
with Dylan singing, I'm sailing away, my own true love.

Anita

Turn

Again your delusion bicycles through the old neighborhood
blabbing to those curbing dogs
some costumed as silent film stars on holiday.

Tying up loose ends was never your forte.
Loose ends? 
Come clean and you'll advance to the next level.

Why so serious? asked the Joker.
I have many to-dos on my plate, so there!
And then?

Look, help me out here. I mean help me out of here.
There are several noncommittals choking your version.
Some reluctant to return overdue library books.

I find that appalling.
Chill, already!
In no time chores will begin piling up on the loading dock

and you'll be spending all your spare moments rehearsing,
cheered on by those in absentia
whom you enjoy texting at all hours

thinking yourself a cinematographer of the inner orphan.
But Garbo insisted she said I want to be "let" alone, yes?
Picking nits.

Regardless, turn the page and begin coloring your world
of ifs, ands, and buts.
A world of objects with shadows, smudged and faded.

But, sadly, that's the way it is.
Really? Check the pub date of your coloring book.
Things have changed.

For better or worse?
Dunno.
Peel back the label to widen the imaginary surplus

and in no time you'll be on your merry-go-round way.
Give or take a few understudies
who are chomping at the bit to begin rehab.