Screen Dump 360

Auditioning for the part of valet on the street
of unparked cars
you spin tales of wild nights . . . wild nights . . .
silencing intimaions of parochialism . . .
taking back memories of back seats
on bridges seen at dawn
from windows in apartments of unknown comics
whose eye contact is part of their shtick . . .
One-liners dressed to the nines . . .
on stages set exponentially . . . in powers of ten
by the enormously well-read
clutch one-way tickets
to what some call Palookaville . . .
just off the boardwalk in Atlantic City . . .
a city tied to your DNA with lemons
ripe for squeezing beneath camo'd trench coats . . .
Are you still struggling with clarity? . . .

Katarzyna Dembrowska

A Piece of Nothing

(reposted from Friday, September 21, 2012)

That's all there was to it. No more than a solemn waking to brevity.
          - Mark Strand

And then, again, you decide to look at the sketches of domes in cities you've never visited, and probably never will, the domes having insinuated themselves into your reading and into your life. You don't even know the names of the cities and towns but they're pleasant to look at, and spark images of travel. There are moments when the armchair you're sitting in by the window overlooking the park seems to lift off and float above the canals in the cities. You strike up conversations with strangers in languages you don't even know. This could be a wish, or a piece of nothing, connecting you to the world.

Screen Dump 359

Of course there are other matters . . . but that's for later . . .
Right now I'm not sure . . . where . . .
If anything you can continue with pin spotting . . .
A minor miracle has come to the fore
and with it several outlandishments . . .
There's always room for more, someone said . . . I'm sure . . .
Look . . . you're the one for this . . .
The clandestine underpins will go undocumented . . .
and unnoticed . . . for the most part . . .
It's someone else's bailiwick, anyway . . .
someone else's Pilates routine . . .
Just the other day, in fact, if I'm not mistaken . . .
Indeed, you've been snapping pics for decades . . .
as unparalleled moments monopolized your unique features . . .

Kate Barry

Screen Dump 358

You are ticketed for going all the way on a one-way street
in Chapter 18 of Finnegans Wake
channeling Here Comes Everybody . . .
a borderline personality . . . happy only when pissed . . .
You hail an Uber and begin recording . . .
hurrying nothing into memory . . .
backstory pushing through the glass ceiling
dumping you into a seance
with Emily Dickinson . . . voiceover'd by Terrence Davies . . .
Why do passersby do that? . . .
Do what? . . .
Insert sleeved DVDs . . . barcode windowed . . .
into envelopes for return? . . .
No idea . . . closure, maybe? . . .
afraid to leave something undone? . . .
You spend too much time in an atelier
taking the wheel from court-appointed best-selling
ceramicist Edmund de Waal . . .
Even the Silk Road to clubs in Staten Island
has traps, pitted as it is with indiscretions . . .
and jabberwocky . . .
But I do so like to grope . . .
Yes, . . . and? . . .
And I cameoed in Chapter 3 of Psychopathology for Dummies . . .
giving head notes to a phrenology prof . . .
I aced the course . . .
You need to take a few days off . . .

Mary-Averatt Seelya in Finnegans Wake (circa 1970)

Screen Dump 357

Again, the denominator rears its hazy head . . .
A toxic flamboyance . . . waving a pinwheel . . . approaches the stage . . .
where lines will be drawn with mechanical pencils
by mannequins in see-through outerwear . . .
The problem of translation, yes? . . .
Zeroing-out the counters . . . that sort of thing . . .
while just above the fill-line you spot the missing pieces . . .
the missing persons . . . and play through the midpoint
with nothing in mind but the failed endgame . . .

Katarzyna Dembrowska

Screen Dump 356

Plotting the next stage of your odyssey
jump-starts ring-tailed fantasies from your days
in the driver's seat when you squiggled
for all you were worth . . . minus shipping . . .
Rent-A-Mime remains an option, yes? . . .
Spit-shining Crocs on those days when your tinnitus
chimes in may bring relief to those signed up
for your tour into the heart of darkness . . .
which continues to beat more than
one hundred thousand times a day . . .
in an ongoing quest for the eternal sunshine
of the ambient mind . . . where partying morphs
into a stone-faced commitment
on the deck of the Nellie and you toggle
understudies . . . trading tasty tidbits
for the something-or-other of strangers in full view . . .

Katarzyna Dembrowska

Screen Dump 355

Moments like these when you feel adrift:
you're here; you're not here . . .
your life . . . a novella . . . or flash fiction . . .
soundtracked by dissonance
as if beguiled by harpies
in the palms of pallbearers . . .
You wake with the urge to use
the phrase in the know . . .
As misdirection, perhaps? . . .
Consolation? . . .
You enter the fray
disabling the tried and true
with the words of oglers
vying for redacting . . . and blueness . . . again . . .
Which would you rather be? . . .

Screen Dump 354

The day . . . overcast and strangely industrial . . .
armpit saddlebags
with full-blown cholesterophobia . . .
tipping the go-between to encapsulate time and attendance . . .
rehearsing the commonplace
three standard deviations above the mean . . .
Have I been duped into thinking there will be another? . . .
All this posthumous posturing, pshaw . . .
Back then, I suppose it mattered . . .
But now with deadbeats in ascendance, forget it . . .
An octopus-in-training inking nonsense syllables
itching with false promises . . . Instagrammed with time-outs . . .
insinuating itself into the best of times
when no one is looking . . .
How so, you ask? . . .
I am filled with the music of DakhaBrakha
a Ukrainian group I first heard on an NPR Tiny Desk Concert . . .
The preferred costume of flâneurs? . . .
Flannel shirts of course flapping on clotheslines . . .
Could be the beginning of a novella . . .
where readers cut to the chase . . . and regret doing so . . .
Reading between the lines . . . you backstroke beyond the breakers
as if in a scene from Beneath the 12-Mile Reef . . .
CinemaScoped and soundtracked with a little help from Terry Riley's In C . . .
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the last line . . .
the one-trick pony has vanished . . .
with just enough time on the clock for some to call it a miracle . . .

Screen Dump 353

I've been Kerouwhacked!
          - Anon

A fly in my eminent domain . . .
or a cockroach . . . or a pole-sitter . . . or dog-walker for that matter . . .
I suppose it would take a village, yes? . . .
Kiosks awash with how-tos . . . and instructions
for un-dancing . . . tipping the valet
who tripped on his way back to the Wayback Machine
with lines from Proof:
Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X.
Let X equal the cold.
It is cold in December.
Gwyneth Paltrow trading eights with Hannibal Lector . . .
Armpit hair be damned . . .
it all boils down to goop, yes? . . .
He/she got Kerouwhacked brainstorming . . .
or barnstorming . . .
or talking through the walk-through or walkabout or walkout . . .
The steps of a proof are murky.
The steps of a proof are snarky.
The steps of a proof are nestled all snug in their beds.
Let X equal their beds.
And then someone took a shine to someone
and that someone opened it up to someone else
and now someone will have to take the hit . . .
Always looking the other way . . .
as if a periscope popped up in the Middle Ages . . .
your middle ages . . . when your juke joints
began stiffening with a creaking
that shook you awake at 3 AM
to speed dial your doc
who was on the third hole . . . teeing off . . .
thinking about Lexi,
his daughter's jodhpur'd friend from riding class
but first, do no harm . . .
You're not waiting for the phoniness to end, are you? . . .
Please tell me you're not . . .
Please tell me you've handed in the assignment
and that you're OK with the seating chart
and with Einstein's definition of insanity
instagrammed by iGens or Y2Kers or GenZs or whatever they're called . . .
many of whom sport Muffy's Lean Cuisine gap-toothed grin
after she was bad-touched by Dilbert,
the animated crossing guard . . .
super heavyweight Xboxer . . . regular contributor to Emojipedia . . .
awaiting the release of his feel-good single,
I Just Wanted to be Friended on Facebook . . .
And now what? . . . The neighborhood clown
has just trotted out his/her yoga mat
and is about to contort in full view of a selfie stick
which have been shown to transmit STDs
when you ignore your mother's warning
to never leave the house without wearing clean underwear . . .