Screen Dump 557

The problem is not the linebreaks . . .

The problem is the testimonies that are about to begin . . .

Odysseyites wait for words

from a drone streaming hilltowns

covered with backstories . . .

You return to the library's 800 stacks

and experience a momentary lapse . . . relapse? . . .

Why the break in continuity as if a dead zone? . . .

Redundancy resurfaces with flashbacks

of spring afternoons when you tried 

to let your fingers do the walking with études

on the Bösendorfer

in your piano teacher's front room . . .

There was an allotment of sorts

the otherworldlyness of Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert

the innocence of a walk on a tightrope . . .

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Low-keying the doggerel day with indie riders

made-for-TV floaters

notwithstanding nothing

you chat up the circumstances . . .

Costumes tell stories . . .

You stopgap disengagement

with eyes on the guise

as if by happenstance a reshuffling . . .

words guaranteed to trigger images

or your money back, yes? . . .

Ruth Bell

 

Screen Dump 555

Then I went off to fight some battle

That I'd invented inside my head

          - Sting, Fortress Around Your Heart

You tongue the moon . . . and revisit the porcelain day

when you did nothing . . . could do nothing . . .

but move forward into a maelstrom . . .

the initial fascination stripped

compressing the algorithm

which bumbled along

with Wiz Khalifa's Black and Yellow:

Everything I do I do it big . . .

Indeed . . . the door opening to a windowless room

on the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge

soundtracked by Sonny's tenor . . .

You tried to cut the verb free

but you remained Faustian below the surface . . .

a green glow as if from a disemboweled tanker

which began life in the name of the father

as part of a re-enactment in a hotel room

accoutered with sparkling cityscapes . . .

You counted ripples from swim fins in the East River

but managed to enjoy most of the close encounter

ears stuffed with cotton à la Tarantino

as if under the ruins of a walled city . . .

You spent the afternoon riding the L train

rehearsing your lines in French

to embellish the mystery of the audition . . .

Jan Scholz

 Screen Dump 554

You skip the review class on Skunk Hour

move into a yurt in the Adirondacks

and assail the seasons

with a hulking ribbonless Remington . . .

The days of wine and roses jacknife . . .

Note-taking turns illegitimate

so you make up what you think

the fourth wall wants to say . . .

It's all about The Art of Losing . . .

losing yourself again in a mirror

losing yourself again in a house of mirrors

listening to her voice echo

through the barbaric frat house . . .

the privileged unhinged . . .

The House of Crazy welcomes us . . .

welcomes overcorrection

where menu options are grayed out

but little matter for the unstoppable

who are seldom stopped . . .

The watchers at the gate continue to look the other way

as Jung's collective unconscious vacations

between the lines of this poem . . .

Try not to let it all bother you? . . .

A judge will be the judge of that . . .

given a script and asked to assume the position

of elementary my dear Watson . . .

Jarek Kubicki

 Screen Dump 553

But what of the depressive realism of social scientists

suggesting that depressed people see the world more clearly? . . .

The dunes hustle geometry

vacillating between high and low

overthinking the moment instead of living in it

as if claustrophobically trapped inside yourself . . .

Again, Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes . . .

You have come to enjoy the space between thinking and doing . . .

The odyssey . . . once exciting now cacophonous . . .

trains and boats and planes

opening to the carefully choreographed . . .

Your notes . . . illegible . . . but you knew that . . .

You blew them off

and Facebooked the afternoon

trying to control the center of the board

lip-syncing Benjamin Clementine's nemesis

after binging The Morning Show . . .

March on

March on

It's complicated . . . or it's too complicated these days . . .

You're bogged down to a near standstill . . .

critics arm wrestling odysseyites

go-betweens taking notes . . . their faces a rictus of joy

continuing to take notes because they have nothing else to do . . .

March on

March on

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari opens with a re-do

of the last scene in The Last Picture Show . . .

the story-within-a-story

about your own Paris, Texas in upstate New York

the unreliable narrator spinning Canterbury Tales

from the looms of Mohawk

with a walk among the clouds

after a Saturday afternoon 25-cent

creature double feature in all three theaters

Mohawk . . . Tryon . . . Rialto

a head-on crash course for clubbing

with inside-outs mimicking trailers

from Alt Cin 516's

visual texture and brooding menace assignment

due Monday . . .

The Creature From the Black Lagoon

teases Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents

bemoaning the convenience therein

for backseat drivers into and out of the City

excepting those staying after for extra credit . . .

the morning after coffee

from the corner Dunkin'

comparing notes and how-to's

using the Law of Small Numbers

to randomize call-backs . . .

The fun-filled auditions were indeed fun-filled

yet when the real runway called

you ran away with your Regents Review 2.0

mouthed the words that fell out

and tried to adapt to Ivy Leaguers . . .

the groves of academe morphing into the graves

with a segue to a second tour in Viet Nam

taking a shrapnel while on reconnaissance 

dying 35 years later at 57 without a memory of a parade

because there were none . . .

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Everyone's desperate for a foothold in this huge, wild conversation.

          - Alena Smith, showrunner, Apple TV+'s Dickinson

You enjoy a kind of invisibility as if you had never existed . . .

a stand-in for the person-of-disinterest

an Emily Dickinson shadowing Lady Madonna

legitimizing your essential strangeness by respecting boundaries . . .

Outside your bedroom window agoraphobes

pitch headstone rubbings capturing

what had once maybe slipped through the cracks . . .

A transformational grammar for pilgrims, yes? . . .

Odysseyites shelve quips in the cereal aisle at the supermarket . . .

eyeballing masked auditioners wielding shopping carts

with the naiveté of neighborhood know-it-alls . . .

Recognizable voiceovers nix invitations to the dance . . .

the sun wakes to discarded dance cards written up as nuance

an opening to squeeze through whenever

with your doctored script for next season's miniseries . . .

ideas appropriated from unreliable narrators . . .

Return to the photograph of the wedding party . . .

The rehearsal was an empty place setting . . . more or less . . .

 

Screen Dump 550

Produce carts drive the day . . . in streets painted over

with matte Rothkovian black on grey

and someone somewhere with Ticonderoga #2s

etch-a-sketching their way through a biopic

streaming on Netflix for I'm not sure what

jots notes to be archived and auctioned off . . .

You appear pocketed wearing Palladiums

insisting on retracing the backstory

which held promise for temps forecast in the 50s . . .

Indeed, spring is springing . . .

Renewal advances with drum and bugle

while odysseyites toes spooning mud enter with arms waving

as if fist-bumping butterflies flown in for the shoot . . .

Schiele's Ghost

After he died from the Spanish flu in 1918 at age 28, the ghost of artist Egon Schiele, whose painting "Houses With Colorful Laundry (Suburb II)" sold at Sotheby's London in 2011 for $40 million, moved into my neighbor’s pigeon coop. The pigeons were racing homers. My neighbor would let them out every day to exercise. They would fly in circles above the neighborhood. Schiele would sometimes help. On race days my neighbor and Schiele would transport the pigeons to the starting location, release them, drive back home, and wait for them to return. When a pigeon returned, my neighbor would remove a band from its leg and insert it into a time clock. Finishing times would be recorded and compared to determine the winner. The pigeon coop had a coal stove. Schiele would warm his hands over it. I liked to dribble spit onto the surface and watch it bounce around. This would annoy Schiele. Schiele lived on blueberry pop tarts and Austrian sausages. He spent most of his time drawing female nudes. A book I looked at in the library said that Schiele's art was noted for its intensity and raw sexuality. That was good enough for me. I liked Schiele’s nudes. So did my neighbor. Schiele gave my neighbor one of his drawings in return for rent. My neighbor said that Schiele could stay in the coop for as long as he liked. My neighbor's wife didn't like Schiele. She said he was not welcome in the house. She wasn't happy about him living in the coop but tolerated it because of her husband. She said Schiele's drawings were disgusting. They were the work of the devil. I would visit Schiele most days after school and on weekends. He was usually happy to see me. He would say "Welcome to my studio." He didn't refer to it as a coop or loft. He called it a studio. He would offer me some leftover blueberry pop tarts and Austrian sausage. We would chat for a bit but not for long because it was hard to hear one another over the cooing of the pigeons. Then he would get back to drawing naked women. I would keep one eye on the naked women and the other on the lookout for my mother who didn't like me visiting Schiele. Like my neighbor's wife my mother didn't like Schiele either. She too thought his drawings were disgusting. She said that if I looked at Schiele's naked women drawings I would go blind. That didn't stop me. Schiele loved magic markers. He had tons of them in all colors. He would use them to draw the naked women. He would draw on a drafting table, on top of his small refrigerator, on a shelf, on the floor. He would sometimes climb onto the roof of the coop and draw there. He usually drew from memory but would occasionally bring a woman into the coop. When he did he would say that he had to concentrate, and politely ask me to leave. He once invited three women into the coop. It got really crowded. The pigeons got really excited. They got really loud. My neighbor came out of his house and knocked on the door of the coop. He said something to Schiele. The women left. That was the end of Schiele's life studies. After that he drew only from memory. A few weeks later a circus came to town. Schiele became smitten with the bearded strong woman. He drew her day and night. He was fascinated by her triceps and calves, her facial hair styled in a Van Dyke, and her baritone voice. He loved to watch her "pick things up and put them down." Schiele joined the circus and left town. After my neighbor died, his widow got rid of the pigeons and paid me fifty bucks to knock down the coop.

Egon Schiele

 Screen Dump 549

Serialization began in Anderson and Heap's The Little Review

on the Quaker Weaver's dime . . .

A good day? . . . two sentences . . . woo-hoo! . . .

Within reach . . . or so it seemed . . .

bespoked flatware for HCE . . .

digress to the window shade that nearly did Trismegistus in . . .

Imagining Emily's frigate . . . and then some . . .

Hi from brother's brother in the weight room . . . waiting . . .

translated from the short-short The Night Of . . .

then, on to today's virtual with open to

as images of reps of what might have been flood the gym

leaving odysseyites stranded in the stacks at Barnes & Noble

paging through How To's as if words could rewrite history or his story

deflected because Anna Plura

espied a tête-à-tête among the free weights . . .

Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby & Widow Wadman

 Screen Dump 548

The rendering captured the rift quite compellingly . . .

No one was being promoted

on the breakers at all hours hoping

for a green light

from the series of quarantine streaming on Amazon Prime . . .

Stop with the punctuation already . . .

Take a moment to paint by numbers . . .

Making progress despite the animosity

in the shredded documents . . .

How did you know? . . .

Was it that apparent from the color-coded Venn diagrams? . . .

What about that time you followed the green footprints

painted on the floor and were forced into a toll booth

strip-searched and released into a short circuit

upsetting the cart comparing apples and oranges . . .

Or those moments in time when foreplay was unnecessary

yet desirable despite being blue-penciled

and stuffed into marble composition tablets . . .

Jarek Kubicki

 Screen Dump 547

It didn't matter . . . the shifting of your tectonic plates

leading to a blind alley with a blind singer with a menu . . .

There once was a crooked cat

but she skipped Chapter Three

and held out for more . . .

as if walking through a wall and resurfacing

with the closing credits . . .

I was happy not to be there although I didn't know it

with the outage and all . . .

It's not unlike anything else . . .

trying to fit into the costumes dictated by a half-eaten script

just enough dialogue I suppose . . .

You were able back then . . . but now with the wearing away

it's doubtful that the resumption will be approved

by the self-appointed trigger-happy usurpationists

with their philosophy of blah posting remarks made in haste . . .

Jarek Kubiki