Screen Dump 488

Those least suspected moments are real page turners . . .
A blank space appears. . . teasingly . . .
Each night grayed-out . . . the same . . . the same . . .
I could be wrong but for all intents and purposes . . . frozen solid . . .
The unreliability quotient . . . quite obvious
in the face of things . . . as laid out . . .
Stopped and patted-down . . . you no longer matter . . .
as if one road rage led to another . . . and another . . .
with letters of introduction missing . . . from the alphabet . . .
Some debaters bail, decked out in madras thigh-highs . . .
no doubt to spark controversy . . .
Insignificant patter fills the aquifer . . .
adding insult to injury . . . just for the heck of it I'm sure . . .
After Dear Johning entry-level supplicants
pedaling backstory emails, you wallow . . . encrypted . . .
It's the kind of thing some would translate
but certainly not anyone from our neck of the woods . . .
Twelve stone four something . . .
The takeaway piss-poor . . . perma-grinned . . .
Allegations of usurpation shadow you . . . making it into the finals . . .
The square root of a chessboard? . . . If only . . .
Whoa! . . . That was . . .

Screen Dump 487

The hem of your story is enough
to color the afternoon . . .
but then you run . . . out of the blue . . .
eliminating the need
which becomes a metaphor
for days that pass
like false starts
on cold winter mornings . . .
You mumble cardio . . . and leave for the gym . . .

Anne Carson's Antigonick

Screen Dump 486

Your words hurry past auditioners at the gate
sidestepping bus stops bottlenecked
by Academy Award Winners Emeriti
facebooking once-upon-a-long-time-ago performances . . .
A dress-down Friday with garbled voicemails . . .
Lifespans rarely exceeding Jack Benny's 39 . . .
Unlikely sex disguised as unlucky sex . . .
Of course those who acclaim the best is yet to come
are hit with a pie in the sky . . .
You commence yet another together-once-again meal . . .
community bowls brimmed with re-stuffed fortune cookies
a train chuffing at a station
a clock running with scissors
scriptwriters blocked
keyboards smoldering
insinuators banging on the back door
demanding revisions for lapsed best sellers
whose monochrome covers speak to the mundane
and want nothing to do with blurbers
from some sideshow that blew through town
when most were out to lunch . . .
Did anything resonate with the party of the first part
whose fuel filter seems to have been clogged from Day One? . . .
Talk about backseat deadbeats
with one-way tickets to Whereverland . . .
Beginning again . . . and again . . . and again . . .
Forget about reading the palm . . . as scripted . . .
There are rhymes-a-plenty waiting for you
somewhere over the rainbow . . .
A recapitulation of the ins and outs of Eurydice
might work . . . might be just enough to jettison the one-tricks
cluttering your walk-up and maybe help you pick up
where you bailed in the opening scene of tomorrow . . .

Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice

Screen Dump 485

To ritualize the moment . . . possibly code it
for a performance piece that includes excerpts
from poems by Anne Carson
the Canadian poet who teaches
Ancient Greek for a living . . .
Silence is important . . .
In her translation of Antigone, Carson
took inspiration from Cage's 4' 33"
who said he built it gradually
out of many small pieces of silence . . .
An insinuation backburners
the whole thing . . .
When you return to it months later
you begin to obsess over line breaks . . .
An old friend calls
and you meet for drinks
at a small neighborhood bistro
filled with actors who have just finished
a dress rehearsal . . . Can you imagine? . . .
A dress rehearsal? . . .

Lilian Oben in Anne Carson's Antigonick

Screen Dump 484

Drive-by do-it-yourselfers BOGO alternate lifestyles
harking back 40, 50 years to the Age of Remotes
when you would hang with bipolars and pay homage
to the big-haired . . . Did you feel intimidated? . . .
articulated? . . . Today is not . . . it never was! . . .
Return to the eight-day grandfather clock . . .
I mean the line has been crossed . . . many times . . .
so many times in fact that the queue has begged to differ
from costume mavens nitroglycerined with dreams of Fulbright's . . .
I Want To Hold Your Hand? . . . Seriously? . . .
Making do with the cunning psycholinguist
whose foot was caught in a sidelong glance . . .

Paolo Roversi