Screen Dump 500

The room you are in fills with words . . . big words small words
color-coded . . . but the colors change as you collect the words
in your bucket for delivery to the empty marketplace . . .
The mooring of starting out . . . as good as any
while crossing Brooklyn ferry
with other swingers of birches . . . no more . . .
A line of people stretches out of view . . .
you recognize some . . . past players . . . here . . . not here . . .
fabricators of the now old New Next . . .
as well as extras for roles in a future film
that may open someday at the Bijou
in Wherevertown . . . its frayed seats having hosted
your journal entries . . .
and several of your play-by-plays . . . Becket's Krapp
listened to tapes recorded over the years . . .
mining his life . . . excavating his life . . .
with big words small words color-coded words

that became earworms . . .
mental Post-its for how a person should be . . .
Indeed, not wanting for things, yes? . . .

Screen Dump 499

You are masked and gloved . . . and socially distant . . .
orbiting the silent film Orphans of the Storm . . . gingerly
navigating the crapshoot of grocery-shopping . . .
An essential to the soundless
you eat the loss of the future tense
with its enigmatic typescript captioning
It's a Wonderful Life
for those in search of closure . . .
Someone somewhere is about to pull a ripcord
to float shamelessly and selflessly into the enveloping ether . . .
There will be others . . .

Jarek Kubicki

Screen Dump 498

There was nothing you could do
about it . . . then or now . . . as if
the back door had become unhinged over
its inability to understand . . .
The comfort of connections . . .
the connections we seek . . . and need . . .
the wet, heavy snow igniting
cardiac episodes . . .
Grocery carts roam empty parking lots . . .
Spring unsprung . . .
everyone - well, most everyone -
masked, gloved, giving
wide berth . . . not unlike
ships at sea . . . Michael Moore's
Planet of the Humans shakes you awake
at 3 AM . . . big-shouldered
extraction companies overharvesting
resources . . . to page through
yellowing notebooks . . .
for Hawking's uninhabitable . . .
This was done . . . then, nothing . . .

Jarek Kubicki

In April's Chronogram:

A Piece of Nothing

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.