Screen Dump 300

Is perspective a hedge against the mutually observed? . . .
The omniscient third partiers
with their notebooks and keys
and smartphones
act out scripts
bridging fact and selfie . . .
Improvisations of the odyssey, yes? . . .
In the red . . . always in the red . . .
clutching write-ups . . .
hamstrung by the limitations therein . . .
Stocking shelves at 3 AM
you pick through trash for archived posts . . .
mounting pieces by amanuenses
for gallerists who begin their day
with texts and double espressos . . .
The eyes in your bedroom mirror
are the eyes in the photos that once populated its edge
leaving sentences for lifers . . .
documenting the odyssey as it unfolded in real-time . . .

Marcin Szpak

Screen Dump 299

Does any of this ring a bell? . . .
Does it matter? . . .
Is it the illusion of re-entering a scene . . .
or paging through a program
to fetch the name of the pleasure principle . . .
or principal? . . .
long-listed . . .
somehow personal . . .
smiling an insomniac's dream . . .
a moving violation of neck bites
and other seductive mishaps . . .
Your unwritten poem is blabbing away . . .
over there in the corner . . .
saying yes to Noh . . .
checking into Door #2 . . . with #37.5 . . .
You were ticketed for tailgating . . .
and pled not guilty . . .
to entering a club . . . on stilts . . .
dispatching patrons clucking and hand-wringing . . .
The shortest route to then
eyeshadows an archived player
trying to make it into the finals . . .
It's all in there . . .
In where? . . .
In the script of video regrets
from casual partners
on rainy days and Mondays
and from onlookers earmarked to cameo
in the penultimate edition
of your back story . . .
catapulting across dust motes
with therapeutic touchups and oral delivery . . .
demonstrating the divine
in sex toys . . .
poems that rhyme . . .
retired librarians . . .
after-hour tongue-lashings . . .

Ahmet Polat

Appropriating Myself

(reposted from Thursday, June 16, 2011)

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.
          - Buck Mulligan quoting Whitman in Ulysses by James Joyce

The dogs are in the trees again. And they're barking. I am escaped from the pages of Dickens, my words nestled all snug in their beds. A black and white segues from my past. A symbolist jumps in insisting on the last word. He is dressed down. Woe to those befuddled crossword puzzlers or those courting constellations on rooftops with the satisfaction of a meandering brook. This dealership is known for its BLTs. My place in the sun layered in dust is appropriated by a Jay Gatsby lookalike living on the edge with a certain je ne sais quoi despite the bulging lines at soup kitchens. Footsteps echo off buildings scheduled to be razed before change punctuates the thought-balloon - ghosts on the spur of the moment waiting for the lost to stumble, entering their shadows, cartographers linked in time. The baguette did come in handy as you said it would. But how did you know? Without blackbirds in the trees I wouldn't have the mind of summer. Why don't we rent a little bungalow on the water this summer where each midday we can crayon in our missing persons? The artichoke under glass dances to Mahler's slow movements rising from a wax cartridge in front of a great fire brimming with wooden arms and legs. The menus here are blank, the newspapers' words missing but with a trace of a message that tricks us into thinking it can be pieced together and understood. Your free run wooden horse has run away. It was her heels - neon yellow spikes clickety-clacking though the intersection, charging gawkers a fee for a free ride - a free ride that would take them to the palisades of their dreams, leaving them winded with enough pocket change for the meter maid. Many are puzzled and await word from above. It will come. I want to be transported to an earlier time filled with jawbreakers stamped with phrases of affection. I suppose I too want it all. You called in for takeout. We selected items from two columns. That’s when I decided it was time to refill the rapidograph with red ink and begin a series of one-liners in red - the red saturating the eye with disbelief. You audition for the part of Iago, thinking this would be a great way to spend the summer - a summer of unrequited doubles. It was a throwaway, I had to admit, that unsettling feeling you get as the bath water departs, counterclockwise, leaving you, toweled, thinking about the final scene in that film whose title is slipping away. The name Wichita could happen to any of us. Now what? Now what do we do? . . .

Screen Dump 298

The double bassist on my to-do list speaks Jelly Roll . . .
Excuse me, but what color is your window? . . .
Off-duty plagiarists in deerstalkers
litter the putting green of my REM sleep
with run-on sentences
with incomplete sentences
with life sentences
with blah blah blah sentences . . .
Why lose momentum with archived ne'er-do-wells? . . .
Counting sheep as cheat sheet . . .
Moving your queen into a safe position on the board
will buy you enough time to run to the corner deli
for a provolone on sourdough and green tea . . .
Your full red pierced lips . . . work overtime
on my ink
pushing the envelope
out of my dead letter cubby . . .
Hey, I'm trying to fill my dance card here! . . .
You've managed to retain your enigmatic persuasion . . .
on stage . . . in a sundress . . .
sending the game into extra innings . . .
I don't know how . . . but . . .
like you the boulevard continues to mimic
those in the know of art nouveau . . .
Let's step outside for fascination's sake
and rub shoulders with real-time dance marathoners . . .

Irina Dmitrovskaya

Screen Dump 297

Are words good enough?
          - Anon

You seek sanctuary in a grammatical cul-de-sac
worrying pronouns
and the proper syntax for love . . .
The wind knocks down a tree . . .
You begin chainsawing the drops
carving out a lean-to
for the idea that
words are not good enough . . .
despite your thinking
that the inexpressible is contained
inexpressibly
in the expressed . . .
A caricature of Wittgenstein
designing door handles
for his sister's cottage
arrives in an email
which you consider forwarding
but then delete . . .
It's a way of talking yourself . . . out . . .
into the sunshine . . .
into the color of particles . . .
as thick as snowflakes . . .
connecting the dots . . . to the afternoon . . .
imagining a carousel of alchemists
with you stretching for the silver ring . . .

Ellen von Unwerth

Screen Dump 296

What happens after three or four days, months, years
of directing traffic into the spread
of a polygamous morass? . . .
What happens when then becomes now
and you begin gesturing charismatically . . .
souls of past players with the gift of tongues
step out of the rangefinder
and begin lining up at the back door? . . .
It's complicated, yes? . . .
I am prior the movement . . . then stillness . . .
the hoopla of crossing Brooklyn ferry and all . . .
the hum of sunrise . . .
of sunset . . .
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd . . .
dotting the eyes . . . costumed with promise . . .
the parties of then . . . and now . . . thick with lines
lip-syncing Mad Shelley's words
as he faced a perfect storm . . . in the Gulf of Spezia
in the seaworthy Don Juan aka Ariel . . .
only to be cremated on a beach near Viareggio
a small Keats in his pocket . . .
Tell me about the heart of the story . . .
or the story of the heart . . .
the attachments . . . real and imagined . . .
which is which? . . . little matter . . .
the accoutrements . . .
ashes reinterred in Rome
with Mary and clan relocating
to a cliff-top manor in Boscombe, Bournemouth . . .
Tell me about the time when days were open books
and chapters were modular
and your cheeks were full of sightseeing
and your heart was a wild child that had only just begun . . .

Kristin Atherton as Mary Shelley

Screen Dump 295

Our life is a dream.
          - Ludwig Wittgenstein

A dream about a mannequin who dreams about Pinocchio . . .

The conjunction qua has left the building . . .

He doesn't work here . . .

Pinocchio? . . .

We continue to worry language . . .

The way words work . . . sidetrack . . . strut . . . fade . . .

play games . . .

miss the turn . . .

get hung out to dry . . .

hang us out to dry . . .

Wittgenstein wannabes designing door handles . . .

Last night doing cardio at the gym . . .

the word conjointedness popped up in the free weight room . . .

Six-packs and six-packs . . .

You . . . lycra'd and sweaty . . .

in the first sentence of a short-short story . . .

about Pinocchio . . .

Intimidating yet intriguing . . .

Later in the parking lot . . .

you obsess over the loss of muscle mass . . . the loss of self . . .

the attribution . . .

the appropriation . . .

asking yourself if paling is inevitable . . .

Klaus Kinski as Paganini? . . . as Nosferatu? . . .

Perhaps . . .

I too am stoked by the films of Bela Tarr . . .

especially The Turin Horse . . .

which picks up where Nietzsche left off . . .

Klaus Kinski qua Nietzsche qua Wittgenstein? . . .

Beeban Kidron