You Come Too

I shan't be gone long. You come too.
          - Robert Frost

Parabolas plaster the culvert
plucking passersby
like olives from reminiscent trees
in dot com groves.

There are moments in everyone's life
when a clear shot is possible,
when things improve
despite having to be redone.

The farther reaches, and you in the distance.
I didn't get that.
OK, that will be (insert dollar amount).
Regrettably, I won't be able to join you.

Scrimmage. A game of scrimmage.
A pickup game
like those in the old neighborhood
when we were always ready

at the drop of a hat.
A drop in the Dow. And now
it's time to unveil your latest masterpiece.
I almost said lasterpiece.

Lasterpiece Theatre.
Reset the screen dump, and examine the fallout.
That was off-putting. Pudding?
On the second page of the dessert menu.

One order with two spoons, please?
A tall, dark extra enters the scene
muddying the plot
making it impossible to follow

the cairns.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. 
Well, which is it?

Press the release button
and you'll be ejected into the new season
with new anchor stores
and the kinds of things you like to browse

with or without the right stuff.
Your obsession. An osmotic reaction.
Yes, that's what it was,
and that's what it is.

I've told you to leave
well enough alone.
I tried to do what I thought was right
but somehow things got botched

and we were left with dilemmas
which fell from the heavens
like there was no tomorrow.
You've got to be kidding!

ILY (your name here).
Unoriginal yet immense. Intense.
Immensely intense.
Winterson: Why is the measure of love loss?

What the hell was that all about?
Look, just follow the instructions to the letter
and you'll be done before you know it.
Before anyone knows it.

Francesca Woodman

Life in the Pits

The present tense is being rehabbed
and the creek rerouted to hear the trickling at night.
This will be held for you at the reservation desk.
The latter-day impostors were given walking papers.
They were last seen on the brink.
Elaborate, please? My pleasure.
I'm trying to keep my options open,
in other words, I'm trying to offset the strange way
they have of choking when I least expect it.
Kind of like certain types of printing?
Ditto for me. Forget life in the pits. It's a drag.
There are far more fascinating ways to make music.

Cut and Run

Now look what's happened: the party
of the first part bailed - Styrofoam Starbucks in hand,
warm-up suit looking the part.
And what part is that, exactly?
Whatever the contract calls for.
The foreplay wordplay served up with air guitar
and spiffy website hawking attitude apparel;
the three act play chopped to one.
A short run to the corner eye-candy store.
To begin again, yes?
What? You mean nothing more?
Do the math.
Opening day closed: your life discarded,
kicked to the curb, moments of passion cooling:
your weeping counterpoint
to the water music shadowing you.
No stranger to cutting and running,
you now reap what you sowed,
pack mules in the street hustling Post-its of dreams.

Francesca Woodman

Gone

          for Catherine Mary Connolly (1969-2012)

You have faced the final storm, and now float,
high above the seas, guiding fellow sailors.
The days have begun to lighten;
the nights are open windows.
I turn the soil for a vegetable garden:
tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.
Rhode Island Reds appear
scratching for worms with gnarled, yellow claws.
My grandfather is here, too,
a stubby Philip Morris dangling from his lower lip.
He speaks to me, in Polish, about happiness.

Off-The-Shelf

Off-the-shelf placeholders know the Secret of the Dance and at least three or four Romance languages which they like to use off-season with aimless wanderers behind closed doors. They also like to play gin rummy on overcast days when most of us hide beneath piles of blankets counting the hours between bouts of blue. They dislike the sweltering heat that cuts through the calm like the hedge clippers of those marshaling efforts to test the waters of love. Insistence is key. In an eye-blink the tide can turn and wash the careless out to sea where, if lucky, they will be able to re-connect with long-lost ilk-mates and begin again. Making the most of tragedy is what it's all about, n'est-il pas? Like Rothko with his unframed color fields of dreams, or 20/20-ers with their panoramic views, unfettered by wire rim or tortoise shell, embracing the natural confluence of primaries and secondaries, giving them a foot in the door and a leg to stand on.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Without

You audition for the part
parading your naiveté as freshly-laundered linen sheets
the bed made with dreams of first times
around the block alien -
all perspective
all logic
out the window.
Your 180? Inconsistent
and undeniably out of character.
But then, perhaps not.
The recipient? Conveniently guilt-ridden
(Would do me in!) - 
a placeholder
a stand-in
a once and future insignificant other
the security camera's fuzzy evidence a TKO in the first round.
And the disruption?
Appalling. Nothing to be done.
You nailed it. The part. The opening curtain, though, snagging.
The audience, hushed, now whispering,
clearing their throats, shuffling their feet.
The unwritten novel of a passion
crumbling, falling away,
replaced, most assuredly, by dry-eyed re-entry
into the world of the living.

Fabio Chizzola

Redemption

In the final scene of The Scent of Green Papayas
Mui sits in a yellow kimono, reading aloud, pregnant.

It began long before the inkling.
The Magical Mystery Tour with Cell Phone

carried you into yellow, then blue,
two trains passing, you a passenger on both,

staring at your receding image,
trying not to deliver the lines you chose to ignore.

Trân Nu Yên-Khê