Thursday, October 31, 2019

Screen Dump 478

In nomine Patris mixes with pinot
the whole thing out of whack
sadly phenomenal with
Frankie (Relax) Goes to Hollywood
as if opening a door
and you wish for a silver bangle
to dispel the ennui so reminiscent
of comedown mornings
at archaeological digs
before being earwormed back
to the present with scenes
from Body Double tweeting
your climb up a silk rope
in some club du jour . . .
Hostile (eye)witness accounts
blur the truth . . . but it's there . . .
it always was . . .
in invisible ink . . .
under yellowing legal pads . . .
diagramming disclaimers
from headstone rubbings . . .
letters of the alphabet randomly
regrouping into images
of your odyssey
as your selfie pouts,
loses footing, tumbles headlong . . .
he said . . . she said . . . they said . . .

Body Double (1984)

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Screen Dump 477

Your costume walks out in the middle
its voice climbing to falsetto
as the mechanisms of relationships reach that point
where yesterdays audition for tomorrows
and you begin to lose track . . .
pining for buybacks
reposting blank pages
leaving everything to the imagination
while outside an Uber driver lays on the horn . . .
The table of contents grows silent
despite the book's shortlisting . . .
its labyrinth gutted . . . replaced by a dayglo condo . . .
Sideshow castrati are again using . . .
can you blame them? . . .
You know all the 3x5" index cards by name
and are smug in the commonplace
but not sure about the mapping
or where the choral group left the planchette
for the ouija board . . .
You agree to become a Ticonderoga #2
to have a go at drafting an intro
for the next installment . . . of your life . . .
Meanwhile you lose yourself in cascades
of coloratura . . . Who are we to deprive
the outer limits where players stationed elsewhere
engage overheated proofs
meant to placate the giddy? . . .
This too as if the body were a deliberate portion
charged with finalizing the recorded remarks
of those with magic lanterns
tattooed on their triceps . . .
The momentary arrives and will be with us shortly
its voice not unlike the cathedrals
of childhood where every nuance was bronzed
as a piece of the puzzle . . .

Wendy Bevan





Friday, October 11, 2019

Screen Dump 476

The inability of all the king's horses and all the king's men
to stay within the lines of code . . .
the lines . . . encrypted . . . taunted . . . tainted
by a rainbow of Crayolas . . .
Insensitivity defaults inept players . . .
and landscapes . . . and peoplescapes . . .
as frontal lobectomies mix dread with inconsequentials . . .
Bezos's Are you lazy or just incompetent? . . .
continues with It's really nothing . . . refusing
to be taken down to the sea
with the Ahabs . . . of Coney Island . . .
as if the shoe has yet to drop . . .
laboring . . . again . . .
under the conundrum . . . 8 / 2 (2 + 2) = ? . . .
Procrustean? . . . Daniel Day-Lewis's My Left Foot . . .
The lines as written . . . are drawn . . . delivered . . .

Mathematician Emmy Noether (1882-1935)

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

Here's my winning entry in the Hudson Valley Writers Guild Dear Herman Contest, celebrating Herman Melville's 200th birthday. The four winners - Susan Carroll Jewel, Mark W. O'Brien, Dianne Sefcik, & I - will read our winning entries Saturday, October 12th, from noon to 2 PM, at the Melville House in Troy, NY:

Melville's Sister

I'm talking with Melville's kid sister
a scrappy towhead
with eyes like deep water
who signed on for a tour of the high seas
with her brother
but ended up here
in New Bedford
pierced, inked, in mauve coveralls,
slathering mustard and meat sauce
on footlongs for hard hats
from a shiny aluminum vending cart.

She communicates with great whites in trees
tends a small garden of hooded flowers
whose petals hold charts of whale migrations
collects harpoons she uses as pokers.

She talks about her brother
writing a novel about a mad hunt
for a fearsome whale
in a room on the second floor
overlooking distant mountains
in a farmhouse
on 160 acres in the Berkshires
that he named Arrowhead
after the relics he dug up
with his plow.

Her eyes darken as she mentions his demons
the locks on his writing-room
his pacing to escape the mind’s maelstrom
the ungodly boredom
his endless digressions
his obsession with privacy
that led him to destroy nearly all his letters
his dislike of photographers
(“to the devil with you and your Daguerreotype!”)
the so-called “failed” scribbling –
“The Whale” . . . too ambitious, too long, a leviathan –
despite its marks of “unquestionable genius”
the accusation of madness
prompting his postscript “I ain’t crazy.”

She chuckles as she tells me
how much her brother likes to watch
the farm animals eat,
especially taken by what he calls the “sanctity”
of the way the cow moves her jaws.

I too am taken, with this strange woman
whose costumes mimic the South Seas,
whose toenails match the color of noctilucent clouds
whose hands are music.

Off hours, she fulfills fantasies

her voice like billowing sails
guiding Ishmaels through narrow canals
spellbinding them
with the sounds of humpbacks
note for note
measure upon measure
before releasing them
drained yet sated
into the morning commute.

Herman Melville