drivebys

It was a driveby night. - Lana Del Rey

~

A repurposed wasteland appears.

The walls whitewashed.

The floors swept.

But the rooms remain empty.

Meanwhile, stories . . .

~

It's 1967. The Summer of Love.

You're living in a VW Bus

trout fishing in America with Richard Brautigan

drifting along like an easy creek

reading poetry to find yourself . . .

~

How should a person be?, asks Sheila Heti.

~

What is it all about?

What are you all about?

You get what you put into trout fishing in America

stepping in the water

feeling the cool drift

taking it with you.

Taking what?

The otherworldly contours of love.

The spellbinding angularities.

The waking-in-the-middle-of-the-night inconsistencies.

The ups and downs . . . the ins and outs . . . the wicked game.

~

Here’s Rilke, across the ages:

Dear darkening ground,

Just give me a little more time.

I just need a little more time, . . .

~

She dances to Strauss's Annen Polka,

floating with the wide-eyed innocence

of a nine-year-old who has yet to glimpse

the world of the backstage.

Look at her taut sureness, the steadiness and poise,

the promise of her young movements

as they transcend choreography with a joy that,

you can only hope, will buoy her through a life

filled with huge pockets of uncertainty.

~

. . . and so the damage

the static of hair between eye sockets

dropping to the floor

arms shaking

making room for 9-1-1's

Which hospital?

before hitting the siren

over snow-covered streets

as if we are going

to grandmother's house.

~

You cross over and find yourself in a choral group

performing Arvo Pärt’s The Peace.

This is good. This is really good.

The puzzle at the foot of your bed?

You try to recall the connection.

The mystery of happiness without remorse

or something like that. You’re not sure.

Here’s how it’s done, the caped magician told you

after your eighth birthday party.

Misdirection. Misdirection.

~

At 42, she faced her final storm,

and now floats, high above the seas,

guiding fellow sailors,

her last words, Goodbye, my love.

You turn the soil for a vegetable garden:

tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.

Rhode Island Reds appear

scratching for worms with gnarled, yellow claws.

Your grandfather, a blacksmith,

is here, too, from the dead,

a stubby Philip Morris dangling from his lower lip.

He speaks to you, in Polish, about happiness.

~

K. H. Brandenburg tweaks an algorithm

for compressing audio files to birth MP3s

using Suzanne Vega's a cappella, Tom's Diner.

~

You return to a post

about a rhino poacher

who was stomped to death by an elephant

then eaten by a pride . . .

~

She checks herself out of detox

chugging rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer

and into an ICU where a voice says

You're not going anywhere

but to a psych ward

and a 28-day program . . .

and the Monkey laughs

and rides shotgun

through late-night streets.

~

It's good that grandma's here

on this early July morning

on the beach

in her housedress

with her beach chair

and it's good that she's invited you

to sit on her lap for a while,

watch your cousins in the water

and slowly wade into the day.

~

On reconnaissance in his second tour of Viet Nam,

he takes a shrapnel

dying 35 years later at 57

without a memory of a parade

because there were none.

~

Looking at the lobsters in their watery cells

awaiting execution by boiling water

reminds you of David Foster Wallace,

clinically depressed for most of his life

who one day stopped taking Nardil

walked out onto his back porch

threw a rope over a beam and hanged himself.

Wallace was an abusive assaultive explosive misogynistic

gifted alcoholic and drug addict.

Looking away from the lobsters

you think of Consider the Lobster

Wallace’s essay highlighting the unethical abuse of animals

in which he asks

Is it right to boil alive a sentient creature

for our gustatory pleasure?

Knowing that the so-called scream

of the lobster being boiled alive

is not its voice but air rushing out

of the holes in its shell doesn’t help . . .

nor should it.

~

You've stopped by again today

to see how your father's doing.

It's August and he's eighty-six.

He's asked for some blackberries,

so you're out here,

in the blackberry bushes,

in shirt and tie,

picking.

~

You get lost with Chet Baker

replaying the opening bars

to All Blues from The Last Great Concert 

recorded two weeks before he fell

out of a window in Amsterdam . . .

because you can't stop

because it's real . . .

one of the realest things you've encountered . . .

~

She breaks into her counselor's office

at the therapeutic community house

drinks a bottle of hand sanitizer

and is taken to the emergency room

where she drinks more hand sanitizer

then sneaks out of the hospital . . . wasted . . .

She's picked up by the police

taken to a homeless shelter

on Christmas Eve

then back to the community house

the day after Christmas

where she apologizes to her counselor

and the other residents

and is put on probation . . .

binging . . . purging . . .

She is given the option of treatment for bulimia . . .

She refuses

and is discharged to a cot

in a warming center

where the lights go out at 9 . . .

Next day . . . she's back on the street . . .

~

Do you believe in magic?

Of course you do.

~

March 28, 1941, a little before noon

Virginia Woolf

with hat walking stick overcoat

and large heavy stone

wades into the River Ouse drowning herself.

She was an escape artist

who mapped the extraordinariness

of our interiors . . .

Her note to Leonard, her husband . . .

You have given me the greatest possible happiness.

~

And Anthony Bourdain

who wanted to be remembered as an enthusiast

introducing us to the wonderful world of food

in all its wonderfulness

before hanging himself

in a hotel room in eastern France . . .

~

Elizabeth Bishop catches a tremendous fish.

~

The neighborhood Carl Jung

at the wheel of a red Ferrari

cruises you on your bimonthly talking cure

collecting your unconscious

to pry open the shyness

that smacks you back

to the darkness of OCD . . .

You enjoy these cosplays

with their pretend puddings

and freedom from counting syllables . . .

It's all theater, yes? . . . 

~

Latin Class. 1960.

Julius Caesar is dividing Gaul into three parts.

Three rows over, an upperclassman,

in the school uniform

imprisons you in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

with her long legs

while Marcus Tullius Cicero addresses the Senate

with his Third Oration:

How long, O Catiline, will you tax our endurance?

How long will that madness of yours escape us?

To what end will your unruly boldness hurl itself at us?

This, by the way, is an example of trichotomy,

says Sister Anna Roberta, in full habit . . .

~

. . . and why the Fates red-carded Caesar

in the middle of the Rubicon

and why Hannibal joined the circus

and mastered elephantese.

~

I can well understand why children love sand, says Wittgenstein. 

~

Frank O'Hara appears.

He's living in a yurt . . . in the 'Dacks

doing this . . . doing that

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

~

And how about Gustav Mahler

channeling Frank O'Hara . . . bicycling Bavaria:

I seem to be absolutely born for the cycle!

deconstructing Moby's Porcelain

disconnecting the dots

as if it matters . . . and it does . . . but not to

his gorgeous, alcoholic, hearing-impaired,

superflirty, 19 years his junior, wife and muse, Alma,

whose bedpost is mottled

with the notches of affairs.

Billed as the most beautiful girl in Vienna

she believes several men are better than one

and spills as much to Freud

one afternoon on his couch.

Never a fan of her husband's music

she chooses none of his for her funeral

50 years after his death.

~

And here again is Frank:

It's my lunch hour, so I go

for a walk among the hum-colored

cabs. First, down the sidewalk

where laborers feed their dirty

glistening torsos sandwiches

and Coca-Cola, . . .

~

A photograph's all that's left of you, sing Simon and Garfunkel.

~

O. Winston Link photographs the last days of steam locomotives

rumbling through town

four warning blasts at the crossing.

~

You enjoy Chinese with a stem of Malbec

examining religious artifacts and collages

and a 2 AM life drawing class

in the bedroom

captivated

by the mouth and angle of shoulders

as she turns to read the script’s next line.

~

An algorithm walks into a bar

quoting José Ortega y Gasset:

I am I and my circumstances.

~

In the mountains on a summer day with Li Po:

Gently I stir a white feather fan,

With open shirt sitting in a green wood.

I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone:

A wind from the pine trees trickles on my bare head.

~

You’re walking along Commercial Street

in Provincetown

past Mary Oliver's ghost

sitting outside her oceanfront cottage

then on to the tip of the Cape

and Stanley Kunitz's tiered garden,

snakes dangling head-down, entwined

in a brazen love-knot . . .

the tide lapping the Provincetown Inn

with memories of the Moors . . .

more than a bit raffish . . .

presided over by Scooter, the pet owl . . .

~

And here’s Gary Snyder's homage

to log truck drivers:

In the high seat, before-dawn dark,

Polished hubs gleam

And the shiny diesel stack

warms and flutters

Up the Tyler Road grade

To the logging on Poorman creek.

Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life . . .

~

Listening to it, we become ocean, says John Cage.

~

Become ocean . . . all become ocean.

We hold these truths to be self-evident

prestidigitating words words words

into cauldrons of delight

the double double toil and troublers

given 24 hours to get outta Dodge

while you like Proust

for a long time going to bed early

seduce the watcher at the gate

slip past the dozing Rottweilers

in the warm fragrant kitchen

and into the hidden room

behind the stacks in the library

to gaze upon hundreds of portraits of beauty

from the comfort of a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

white leather Barcelona chair

circa 1929

before being eyeblinked back

to Tanglewood

surrounded by shadowy strangers

plodding toward the parking lot

united in their quest

for their anxious vehicles

chomping at the bit to traverse

lonely upstate two-lanes

on their late-night return trip home.

~

It comes full circle . . . all of it . . .

the dots connected . . . disconnected . . .

fading from view . . .

with paybacks and fallbacks

playbacks and callbacks

wetbacks and drybacks

and boxes of ephemera

near the counter of the old, lamented

Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston,

Dan Chaisson wrote in The New Yorker

brimmed with

mangy postcards

wedding announcements

lobby cards

vinyl LPs

hippie stickers and patches

Civil Defense pamphlets and evacuation maps

poker chips

Old Maid decks

and skinny dogeared self-published PO-ET-RY chapbooks.

~

The mixing of your lines

bears the awesomeness of youth.

The imperfection is imperfect, perhaps,

yet as perfectly as possible

as perfectly as you know how

with the almost-imperceptible mistakes

making it delightful.

Let disorder triumph along the boulevards of redaction

where the ifs ands and buts barter transfusions.

Adjusting your sightline along the monochrome,

you resemble a look-alike

from your favorite film - The Turin Horse -

the wake of which is a which of a which

but my advice is not to wait it out.

You will know, trust me.

And it will be good.

~

You write what you want to write in the way that it has to be,

says Anne Carson.

~

Late at night when you lie awake,

tell yourself that you love who you are,

that your half-concealed life

is not without promise.

Anka Zhuravleva

Screen Dump 850

Pistachio trees in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

insinuate themselvs . . . the exhilaration with a profusion

of stringed instruments in the opening scene

with helicopter and huge boom . . . multicolored

costumed extras snack on pistachio seeds . . .

There's a call-and-response kind of mood to the day . . .

the comings and goings . . . the turbulence . . .

the drivebys . . . You consider Rent-A-Documentarian . . .

A journalist tapes her interview with a photographer

on a small 70's style reel-to-reel tape recorder . . .

She hopes to frame what she calls a normal day,

which some are lucky enough to enjoy while others

have perfect days, as featured in the film about

a janitor finding beauty in the world cleaning public

toilets in Tokyo . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 849

Semantic drift leaves you stuck mid-thought

on the slippery slope of your backstory

with corners folded . . .

In the lost scene you redact emptiness

on the deck of a steamship

ferrying steampunkers

to an island of breakdown lanes

echoing a polyphony for multiple voices

when midnight matters little . . .

Particulates contaminate the River Styx

with the pushback taking on a life of its own . . .

Soon a moment of silence . . .

Have you tried using AI in a sentence? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 848

You're filming the in-between moments

with a hand-held camera . . .

You're pretty sure they mean something . . .

The power grid of your memory

is not a black hole

nothing like that at all

with crumbling facade along an overgrown path

sprouting shoutouts of Data Breach

expecting somersaults at inopportune times

begging for an unpacking of subject matter

thrown out in the last downsize . . .

It's the in-between moments, again, yes? . . .

the in-between moments

that have to be filled

with something, anything? . . .

How about the box of loose ends? . . .

The latest opening was cringeworthy

made more so by the late start . . .

You were perfect for the backlot scene

before you went underground with hobblers

following a trolley loaded with ho-hums

reimagining how it might have played out

if happenstance hadn't happened along

with innuendoes roaring over you

like an unscripted mudslide . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Outtakes

(reposted from Friday, June 15, 2012)

I am not now that which I have been.
          - Lord Byron

You befriend a Chinese Puzzle Box,
walk through scenes of over-rehearsal and exasperation.
The (mis)direction is good for both of you.

This time without the backdrop.
You begin to lose interest, yes?
Nonetheless, proceed as if smearing paint on canvas.

Forget the image. There is none.
Wing it.
Let yourself be enveloped by the drama

of the moment, the spontaneity
of the lens, the elements of time captured.
Bemoan the loss.

Again, this time with tension.
The method is beside the point
resurfacing as binaries

which down the road will have their say
striking a chord with many.
(Pretend an audience.)

See how far you can take it.
The surprise will be costumed in the next chapter
however oppositional.

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 847

The edge of a conversation

a word here a word there

trying to piece together the fragments

trying to follow . . .

Then in the courtyard

somnambulists exchange dreams

but again you're out of the loop

so you retreat to the next chapter

of an instruction manual

filled with asemic writing

but the way in is the way out

adding to the mixtape

with tattlers exposing Easter eggs

for ventriloquists

in the throes of a talkout . . .

It's the same old same old infinite loops

from the first act breaking stride

sending the dappled engagement

off on its own golden goose chase . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 846

Has reading between the lines helped? . . .

What about the blank page? . . .

Is it the intimate interiority

of a different life floating in

at all hours . . . covered with snow

that keeps you young, yes? . . .

keeps you moving across

the mind's moors . . . visiting

metaphysical what-ifs, haystacks,

brick-and-mortar clock towers

the inevitability of the postponed

as you try to fit into place

the last piece of the puzzle . . .

The dropdown menu of possible endings . . .

The wherewithal coming into view . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 845

Can anyone die without even a little bit of poetry?

          - Mark Strand

A sudden anticipation . . . this routine of words

portending immortality . . . however fantasized . . .

A dialectic with obscurity and belatedness

participating in various dreamscapes . . .

weather mounting . . . offshore . . . rain moving in . . .

Apollo clutches Daphne . . .

You clutch a mug of morning coffee

and you get it, yes? . . . this parallel dimension

where you appear . . . unannounced

in dress rehearsals for your present waking life . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 844

The rustic earworms of your fantasies

storyboard Paradise Found

as you review choices made

in your past shuddered life . . .

eroticisms whispering Etch A Sketch images

infusing your DNA with new ways

into your days . . . without which

but that would be what? . . .

impastos unshackled? . . .

the clock continuing . . .

this unnecessary cupping of hands, yes

awaiting a sign . . . on this snowy night

traveling through the secret air

down the steep, down the stops, down the deepenings

until asleep . . . dreaming . . . mirrors, faces, all . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 843

The answer in question awaits

costumed and ready . . .

There's little sense

in mapping the route

or in reconstructing the argument . . .

The cat has escaped the bag

with dissertations

waiting in the wing

to move in and have at it . . .

Just look at it differently . . .

Kierkegaard's rotation method, yes? . . .

You have passed the Driver's Test

and are finally roadworthy . . .

Advisors are at your beck and call . . .

Soon you will be off and out . . .

No need to be squeamish . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 842

An unkindness of ravens stalks you

with forked-tongue misdirection

pulling labels, stalling the machine . . .

You fear for your inertness,

intimidated and defensive . . .

the question, How Should A Person Be?

drops with forged watercolors . . .

And now word salad is being served

as placation . . . but the bigger story . . .

yes, the bigger story . . .

Abecedarian assemblages are no exception

with beauty the answer

and not just that . . .

so thoroughly disrupting

the urge to impose,

through a sense of your evolving self

despite the irrepressible narrative . . .

Sheila Heti

Screen Dump 841

A closed timeline curve plasters walls

with canary flyers opening to the fluidity

of dreamscapes . . . Everyone is inked . . .

in solidarity . . . the word out is beyond scary

looping back onto itself . . . painstakingly

slow black-and-white panning

squeezing scripts to fit the moment . . .

the experience . . . a thousand voices . . .

You raise your hand and are dropped . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 840

Painting with a muted palette . . .

the foreboding promiscuity head-butting

to tempt happenstance

but how to do it

without intentionality, yes? . . .

Trails groomed by AI . . .

Objects of desire vanishing . . .

There is no joy in Mudville . . .

A Magic 8 Ball rolls in

with Ask again later . . .

Now what? . . .

Are you ready to click Resume? . . .

OK, maybe go with the cosplay? . . .

but what if a much of a which of a wind

{in fact} gives truth to the summer's lie? . . .

Kelly Boesch

Screen Dump 839

Getting the words out, yes? . . .

the joy at the level of the sentence

despite hallucinating chatbots

with you touting your next iteration . . .

long lines followed by short lines

saying the real say

a window into the why . . .

Is it alive? . . .

away from the non-presence

of philosophical yadas . . .

the kinship among the disillusioned

pushing the disembodied space

into something else

energized by nature’s calisthenics . . .

You can do this . . . you know you can do this . . .

Serge Barbeau

Screen Dump 838

So what's a little queasiness? . . .

This is what you wanted, yes? . . .

this staging of the ethics of representation:

who was there? . . . who wasn't? . . .

the magic . . . what sustains it? . . .

what snuffs it out? . . .

The engaging motleyness

emerging from somewhere deeper

than rationality . . .

trying not to be judgmental . . .

the menacing collage

the porosity of stalled time

the bucket list leaking indecipherables

into your playpen of dreams

the rate of polymer degradation

awaiting your inner film preservationist . . .

Implausible . . .

Would you rather something else? . . .

How then pharmaceuticals

in the throes of ecstasy? . . .

Deep discounts? . . . of course . . .

Repercussions bouncing around

the breezeway at all hours . . .

Throat singers trailing scripts, yes! . . .

And now the day . . . with coupons . . .

Can you wait it out? . . .

Blanche Sewell

Screen Dump 837

Filling in the blanks . . . especially the urge

to drop your story

doing your Shangri-La with wait staff

unselfconsciously . . . without worry . . .

shredding the shell game . . . under glass

a peaceable array of mock-ups

gradually falling in sync . . .

The outermost dunes of imagination

with character studies for those in waiting rooms . . .

You have returned in your favorite backstory

as an elementary guide

through the valley of bass clefs . . .

The moment-to-moment on the tenth yard line

with eye sockets appended to enjambments

as if ideosyncracies managed to get through secuity

without the usual discomfitures . . .

This is good . . . with you without remorse, yes? . . .

Marcin Szpak

Screen Dump 836

I suppose that's how it began . . .

odysseyites worrying the crossing

with Facebook friends 

roadmapping next steps to happiness

morning rounds interrupting

the magical mystery tour

promised by the maître d' . . .

But the sign-up sheet? . . .

Forget that, it was a misstep . . .

But you mentioned a vague disquietude,

a vexation totally unexpected? . . .

That too was part of the excitement . . .

Apparently, you didn't get the memo . . .

So many do not want to be bothered

opening Door #3, fearing what,

identity theft? . . .

You mean tweaking? . . .

Not a big deal . . . bringing

something new to the table

should help you navigate the unknown . . .

Marcin Szpak

Screen Dump 835

Stop making sense.

          - David Bryne, Talking Heads

Is it worth the effort to bring home the bacon

or release the stops and replay the collision

of fancy-pants words for odysseyites-in-training? . . .

Of course, the ramifications, allegations,

the daytrip to the photo-shoot

with clothes-horses astride the aforementioned . . .

An abundance of light . . . or delight, yes? . . .

You were promised a free ride but then what? . . .

The ventriloquist's dummy lost its voice

after speaking in tongues to residents of Utopia . . .

There was no turning back . . . the River Styx

if that's what you're thinking

or are about to think about . . .

Akin to moving into a loft to excavate

grainy black and white footage

from a foot locker earmarked for extraction . . .

before the scene in which briefs are filed

at a unknown law firm is dumped . . .

But that won't explain everything

being light years away from any sense

of street reality . . .

It's simply an idea . . . not unlike any old idea . . .

enamored as you are of the contemporary art scene

brimming with new or outlandish notions

in a culture punishing outsiders . . .

Mattias Bjorklund

Screen Dump 834

A playlist, yes, that’s it, a playlist . . .

rewound between scenes

and in the distance . . .

Can you believe the intermixes

of ensouled sediments à la Annie Ernaux . . .

memories the stuff of experience

confirming life's fragmentation

and the belief that one belongs

in a graphic novel? . . .

Try that on . . .

Oh, OK, to occlude the looming gloam of death

beyond the parameters of age

as if the sound of a train

steaming along the shore

will arrive with installation instructions

for your next next . . .

This is too far-fetched, isn’t it,

too ill-fitting

the range of options a word salad? . . .

You have to admit though a certain exuberance

so exuberant in fact that it applauds missteps

with A+s . . . nonsense, but yes

you can see it as well as I

and I have to admit I'm enjoying the garble . . .

the magic . . .

Annie Ernaux

In Anticipation of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

          for Mary Shelley

The powerful engine reanimates the commonplace
and transports you to Doug Adams's Galaxy
where you shop for food and tend the fire.
A little red helps wipe out the nightmare.
You thought solutions would drop from the sky
but instead squirrels on drifts ignite messages
from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
You recall taking off in secret,
traveling incognito around the countryside,
not unlike Torquato Tasso,
whose alleged schizophrenia rescued him
from a life without love.
Did Percy too stir with an uneasy, half vital motion
when you were out at all hours
with soft brush, dark crayon, and rice paper?
Were the rubbings a hit in the cabin on Lake Geneva?

Bernie Wrightson

Screen Dump 833

It was like that, yes? . . . like the obtuse angle

in a math problem posting the past

with an escape route to explain why

as if Tears for Fears:

Welcome to your life

There's no turning back . . .

Prisoner in a trap of disbelief

choreographing rewrites that clutter

your mind's forgotten transfer station . . .

Why the passport makes no sense

in this pool of adjectives backstroking

the aseptic elegance of angularities

extends into extra innings

making it almost seem worthy

of the nonsense syllables

transcribed onto a faux scroll . . .

This maelstrom of bittersweet streams

is nothing new . . . nothing you did not master

in the stairwell of the apartment building

where you had set up shop so to speak

for your clients

that has since been razed

to line the pockets of wheeler dealers . . .

Your habitual scribbling about one-trick ponies

with empty sockets

suffers a conclave of nostalgia . . .

troubling knowledge of what will happen . . .

the time opportune for boilerplate logic . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 832

Then, in the middle of it, you made a u-turn

collapsing rehearsals into autofiction . . .

labyrinthine waves promising hypnotic delights

from the seven levels at blowout prices . . .

A panhandling cat mutates

into an apothecary

the afternoon petering out . . .

bills interspersed with postcards

including one from Giza

with pop-up pyramids mimicking Albrecht Dürer’s

Draughtsman drawing a recumbent woman . . .

Women as subjects to be drawn . . .

objectification, yes? . . . 

bending the rules of perspective

leading to anamorphisis . . . mirror anamorphisis . . .

positioning a mirror to transform

a flat distorted image into a three-dimensional picture

that can be viewed from any angle . . .

the alteration an adaptation

this incompatibility unspecified

both amorous and tension-fraught

the nucleus powerplaying the realism . . .

No doubt the power of the costume
the power of indifference

channeling Schopenhauer on his 3 PM constitutional

with his puppy-dog Atma targeting paparazzi . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 831

Misunderstanding all you see . . .

          - The Beatles, Strawberry Fields Forever

Going for broke . . . essential but without

the plunging happenstance . . . colored with outtakes

from The Last Picture Show . . .

Never you mind, honey. Never you mind.

There was a moment but it doesn't matter much to me . . .

That's the Beatles . . . this too

I am he as you are he, as you are me

and we are all together . . .

then retraction or redaction

the little matters that matter little

setting the bar . . . it must be high or low . . .

On cue? . . . You costumed in praise of folly . . .

Begin again? . . . you mean with

all that David Copperfield kind of crap? . . .

So yesterday . . . Anyway, so yesterday,

Don't you think the joker laughs at you? . . .

for going out on a limb

tallying The World to Come

with Abigail and Tallie

battling hardship and isolation 

in mid-19th century Schoharie County, New York

where husbands reportedly poisoned their wives

in record numbers

irrevocably drawn to each other

comforting one another in the afterlife

taking the Queer Lion Award

with Norwegian filmmaker and actress

Mona Fastvoid at the helm . . .

but not Back to the Future

storyboarded soundboarded waterboarded

beyond the yellow brick road

with lists aplenty streaming on Netflix

in the guise of The Stranger . . .

or at least sounding out every other line . . .

Mona Fastvoid

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But then the time out with roadies loading inuendos

while you as self-appointed architect

began mapping an esplanade for extra credit and rumor . . .

It seemed lots of fun . . . at least that was the impression

with footsteps sounding as backstories unfolded . . .

Antonio Palmerninio

Do you believe in magic?

Of course you do.

Antonio Palmerini

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You used to do this . . . the self you were

used to do this . . . a sort of trickle-down

not unlike what just about everyone's experienced . . .

but now a different game

with lapsed free-throws

reminding you It's not the content, it's the form . . .

OK, you can shapeshift as well as anyone, yes?

but you chose elsewhere

and I'm thinking line judge . . .

Night-sitting and all that . . . radiant night-sitting . . .

the water slow-lapping the shore . . .

fingers walking . . .

Not overrated! . . . despite the catechism's insistence! . . .

Leila Fores

Twenty years teaching psychology condensed . . .

Wolfgang Kohler's ape, Sultan, snaps together two sticks and snags a banana from the ceiling of his cage. The whole in Wolfgang's theory is greater than the sum of its parts. Pavlov's dogs drool to the tintinnabulation of bells, happy they won't be rocketed into space for at least 40 years. Fred Skinner's pigeons play ping pong for food pellets during the day, launder money at night in the school's photography lab. John B. Watson, Behaviorism's father, beds down his lab assistant and is given his walking papers. He stumbles into advertising and rises to VP, writing copy for cigarette ads. One of his grad students, Mary Cover Jones, counterconditions four-year-old Peter's fear of animals using scoops of ice cream. She sells her idea to Ben and Jerry. Sigmund Freud smokes cigars, collects Egyptian artifacts, wears out 306 couches, bifurcates humans into those who wish for a penis and those who fear for their penis. He sees no happy medium. Clifford Beers jumps out of a fourth floor window into a mud puddle, foiling his suicide and priming his pen for a "A Mind That Found Itself," while Gustav Theodor Fechner's opus "The Mental Life of Flowers" withers and dies. Harry Harlow tricks rhesus monkeys into falling in love with stuffed animals. They hide his booze, sending him over the edge of a visual cliff. Alfred Binet puts together a test to measure intelligence. He should have stuck to law. Hermann Rorschach spills a bottle of ink and markets his accident for countless James Joyce wannabes. Karen Horney argues that basic anxiety is the root of mental illness. A stick of dynamite drives a crowbar through Phineas Gage's frontal lobe. He becomes a sideshow sensation, and prefrontal lobotomies become the therapy of choice for society's square pegs. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini compare notes with Mary Shelley, use an electric current to induce epileptic seizures in patients with mental illness, opening the door to electroshock therapy. Erik Erikson studies art, comes to America as an art therapist, and promptly loses his identity. Leta Hollingsworth gifts us giftedness. Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder chart the growth of logical thinking and abstract reasoning. Philippe Pinel unchains the insane in La Salpetriere; they join SAG, and get bit parts in J. L. Moreno's psychodrama, "King of Hearts." R. D. Laing maintains that the world, not people, is mad, drops acid with patients, dies of a heart attack playing tennis in Saint Tropez. Mary Calkins helps us remember memory. Tommy Szasz argues that mental illness is a destructive social construct, a myth and nothing more (or less) than “problems in living.” Carl Jung has a midlife crisis, explores the occult, publishes "The Red Book"; Alfred Adler strives for superiority; Carl Rogers remains nondirective; Abraham Maslow actualizes himself in full view; Tom Harris assures us we're OK; Kubler-Ross stages death snd dying. The sixty-minute hour turns out to be fifty-minutes long.

Screen Dump 828

The religiosity of the morning coffee

spills onto hexagonal bolts in the hardware store

as if the street were cupping

under the weight of cringeworthiness

with you again out there . . . elsewhere . . .

vetting an assemblage of somnambulists

drowning in cartography

while sommelier-wannabes detonate

algorythmically-generated stoppers

slapdash in effect 

inadvertently deployed for schlock value . . .

then the hybridization of clippings

encased in resin

paleontology's breadwinner

form following form following form unmitigated . . .

a rendering . . . without transposition or apologia . . .

Ruven Afanador

I buy lots of books. I begin lots of books. Finish some. Maggie Nelson's Pathemata is one. OK, so it's only 80 pages, but - uh oh, cliché - I couldn't stop! See what you think?

Screen Dump 827

But what if it's all made up? . . .

Yeah, that too, I suppose,

as if the time spent doomscrolling

during a funeral service

for an ex-something or other

is a gambit for a throwback

to your elementary school

where a paperback writer

is hawking Endurance

gazing over Edwina's shoulder

to peek at her page numbers

while Sister Edward

bedridden but not brainridden

insists Growing old is for the birds . . .

your cremains sit on a mantle

in a silver vessel

staring down the vultures filing through . . .

then the moment refills

and the class visits classmate Billy

in his albatross of an iron lung

and later that summer,

handing over a quarter

to a carny in a side show

to walk through a trailer

for a look at a young woman

in her own iron albatross . . .

eyes wide open

upside down in the mirror . . .

the day slamming air brakes

on the momentum of life

in a one-horse before dawn's early light . . .

Gabrielle Rigon

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Moment-to-moment wheeler-dealers

intent on closing

argue Two-Factor Authentication . . .

But what's your plan

bulks up innuendo

despite the lowing of livestock

in fields of AI . . .

You had it all . . . well, almost

but at this iteration,

it doesn't matter, yes? . . .

Think volunteer sentences . . .

banal placeholders

for the actual thought

you wanted to express . . .

Disengaging social media

while assessing the pies

of local pizzerias

on crust, sauce, grease, cheese,

and holistic impressions

will buy you more than time

but is it worth

the loud, cavernous, out-of-sync brewpubs

you set foot into? . . .

And don't forget

the self-pitying pessimists

whose cynicism blankets all . . .

Costumed, you choreograph highs and lows,

ins and outs

redefine the niche,

juxtaposing hodgepodge

for transgressors on sabbatical . . .

Mario Stefanelli

Eight years ago today, a little over a week before his death at 90 on September 3, in his home in Hudson, NY, John Ashbery handwrote this poem, his last:

Climate Correction

So what if there was an attempt to widen

the gap. Reel in the scenery.

It’s unlike us to reel in the difference.

We got the room

in other hands, to exit like a merino ghost.

What was I telling you about?

Walks in the reeds. Be

contumely about it.

You need a chaser.

In other words, persist, but rather

a dense shadow fanned out.

Not exactly evil, but you get the point.

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Your dreamscape, littered with cots

for pedestrians from the 1870s,

circles ovals to the delight of the nosebleed section . . .

A gargantuan hydrangea

fills your head with words . . .

You board a bespoke shuttle with questions . . .

The morning splits into high and low

for skateboarders of different ilks

cresting airwaves in anticipation . . .

An aria would be nice . . .

Pensioners in rent-stabilized apartments

join newsworthy influencers

to discourage weekend narcissists

from bullying nature with cairns for selfies . . .

Rent-a-dove sees it all . . .

Katerina Plotnikova

Screen Dump 824

Memories trod the corridors of backstories,

a renewed connection to a lifetime of incidentals

demarcated with wax pencils

as the elements of style voice irrecoverable

from Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis,

with Brigitte Helm staging a robot's

seductive power foreshadowing the dangers of AI

as a portal into space-time's loosey-goosieness . . .

Shockingly blatant . . . the iffyness

feathering far too many nests

flopping around in culverts

trying to alert gandy dancers

and knock-knock jokers to the reality

of flesh-eating bacteria invading

kettle holes and streaming services

causing massive fragmentation

and higher-than-high rates of confusion and dementia . . .

Pick a flick or enter the water at your own risk

and be sure to arm yourself with a designer duffel bag

though I'm not sure why . . .

John Ashbery, who would have been 98 today, had this to say about understanding poetry: I don’t quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.

John Ashbery by Allen Ginsberg

Screen Dump 823

Voices bounce off buildings slated to be razed

puncturing thought bubbles

in the latest episode of your theatrics

about the one that got away

pieced together and understood, yes? . . .

The tape rewound back to the backyard

and the stairs leading to the basement

where words accompanied costumes

in arrays that spun into constellations

of engagement . . . We were young . . .

The age-old drama

with you waving your magic wand

because if they can I can, yes? . . .

when all this and more were dished out

on paper plates with plastic utensils

that the resident hoarder insisted on keeping . . .

his life aclutter . . .

You have since applied for a sabbatical

to study abroad the waywardisms

of the porcelain-skinned . . .

a Proustian moment as indifferent as the runoff

riding a scattering of crumpled-up

brown paper bags . . . the instant Doppler

technology out to lunch . . . crossing a creek

on moss-covered stones, slipping into the current

with words resurrecting the events that shaped

the moments reopening the cold case . . .

Tim Walker

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You imagine another life of almost transparent blue

filled with small, unexpected hopes

eclipsing your impatience if nothing else . . .

Like the time you negotiated a bouquet of confusion

for the pundits at the gate

entering the scene, spiriting time, reclaiming mobility . . .

your memory expiring upon faux rocks

before moving onto yet another intellectual joust

coarse and aflame . . . impressive in its vacuum . . .

Odysseyites flattened . . . the arm subduing all passion . . .

Not a moment to spare . . . countdown flickering

in the distance . . . the hand paler still . . . until

your naked neck rose against happenstance . . .

Merry Alpern

Screen Dump 821

You had hoped to compile a Table of Contents

but your digressive sidebar blew that out of the water

so you returned to a consolation

of memory jacks . . . everything longer and thicker . . .

less rethinking the vatic moments you played

while streaming your backstory . . .

rewound and precipitous . . .

mornings to afternoons to evenings to nights

into eternity . . .

auditionees waiting with parted lips

as the rain came and went . . .

the night kaleidoscopic . . .

The shell of coziness did not fracture

as partakers looked past their own reflection

in the pool of happenstance

filling with the hopes and dreams that had made the deadline

while you waited in the wings . . . costumed and ready . . .

Merry Alpern

Screen Dump 820

You mean like a tracer round

to illuminate the path of the engagement

with odysseyites doing close reads

and you insisting it's time to pony up

as if the porosity is to be ignored? . . .

But there's no depth

just a going-through-the-motion sort of embellishment

as a feasibility run . . .

Exciting, yes, but retrospectively, I don't know . . .

Then the pushback . . . coded as innuendo . . .

Why are you reviewing your notes? . . .

You've encountered this menagerie before . . .

It's a Pick Up Sticks type of ploy . . .

The question of whether you will take up residence

in long-term memory . . .

in their Notes To Myself whiteboard

that they will return to, again and again,

as they prepare to enter the waiting room . . .

Anna-Liisa Liiver

Screen Dump 819

You're talking to the images of people

in the mirror behind the bar . . .

Are these people you know . . . or knew? . . .

People who play - or played - a role in your delicate life? . . .

The delicate lives in the empty storefronts

in this maelstrom of a mall

known for its catchy soliloquies . . .

Isn't it all about the metaphor of a waiting room? . . .

Still hiding behind your assumptions, yes? . . .

The clock quid pro quos questions . . .

What? . . . You know, the questions . . .

The questions you will have

after you enter the waiting room . . .

Isn't there another way? . . .

What do you mean? . . . like . . . rewinding the tape? . . .

rewriting the script? . . . googling? . . . AI? . . .

Just regurgitate the lines you were given, OK? . . .

All the world’s a stage

by William Shakespeare

                                        All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Will (by AI)

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Hide-and-Seek at sunset in the cornfields

of your 20s . . . those almost moments

where everything was so right yet so wrong . . .

Then the particulars of your life

covering Simon & Garfunkel's America . . .

the moon rising over an open field

hitting you in the eye like a big pizza pie

with options grayed-out for odysseyites

crowding into the Scarborough Fair

to snap Mrs. Robinson

who hid it in a hiding place where

no one ever goes after removing it

from the pantry with her cupcakes . . .

Life's geometries, yes? . . .

Does it matter? . . .

Do we have a say in the matter? . . .

I mean maybe at least . . .

But didn't we expect that

with darkness just around the corner

distilling spirits for trainspotters

looking for America . . .

identity thieves sucking-up passcoders

behind the wheel of a retro VW bus

in search of Joltin' Joe's America? . . .

The Graduate (1967)

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

          - Frank O'Hara

Screen Dump 817

The flippancy that greased the wheels of memory

laid bare a seductive dissonance . . .

There was no avid about it . . .

The app collapsed unremarkably

followed by a flurry of texts to the otherwise . . .

A cafe racer enjoying a coastal route

dotted with encounters

sprouted words to fill your journal . . .

the inconsistency puzzling, yes? . . .

You could have imposed a pattern

but instead ressurected the elements of then . . .

You left no trail . . .

Applying color takes up space

which is, I suppose, your way of doing things . . .

especially with morning trotting out its daily ritual . . .

There were hordes of others . . .

many in and out of dreamscapes

with all the accoutrements you could have imagined . . .

Anka Zhuravleva