Screen Dump 578

And at dawn, armed with fiery patience, we will enter splendid cities.

          - Arthur Rimbaud, A Season In Hell

You are the perfect subject . . . rehearsing

monologues of introspection . . . flip-flopping

intuitive . . . costumed . . . in an enigmatic "don't ask me how" way

as if inhabiting a meandering fortune cookie

managing chance . . . hoping for the best . . .

Your incomprehensible gestures tag folly

and make for an exquisite shoot . . . little matter that

the limo's tires are flatted fifths

documenting your ebb and flow . . .

No worries that you will not get your due

that you will miss the opening

and be set adrift with an uncharted script

that the unprimed span of canvas

will not give you enough room to breathe

to stretch out, get air, vet your place in the sun

without a mime's sounds of silence . . .

The gates to splendid cities open to you . . .

There have always been . . . and always will be . . . illusions

fertile destabilizations . . . like a disordered collection

of yellowing snapshots from your celebrated future waking life . . .

Irma Haselberger

Screen Dump 577

Like an MRI of your alphabet asking for seconds . . . and thirds . . .

There are options . . . always, options

selecting players randomly using machine language . . .

Your 50-minute hour mutates into a mini-doc 

of 20 faux pas . . . with odysseyites flown in for a re-enactment

that has nothing to do with anything . . .

You have become enamored of place . . . this place . . .

The way it was . . . The way it is . . .

Your distant closeness colors the world . . .

Your periscope however stubborn locks on the loneliness 

of marionettes . . . whose strings are tied to rehearsals

of twelve-tone musical compositions in forsaken music halls . . .

DiFilippo Marionette Theater Company

Screen Dump 576

And their stories of course . . . sometimes two three four deep

too deep? . . . their riddles . . . idiosyncrasies

their egos . . . following the dotted lines . . . boringly

always the same . . . costumes googled . . . gestures formulaic

predictable . . . yet humorous . . . entertaining . . .

So you do whatever you do to step up to the plate

to placate them . . . tease them . . . with movements-a-plenty . . .

Is this getting old? . . . Is it? . . .

Quickly . . . cover it with books, envelopes, yesterday's mail . . .

I can do this . . . yes, I can do this

and get something out of it . . . the gold ring

of the merrier-than-thou-merry-go-round . . . 

A flash of your father at an amusement park lifting you

onto a wooden horse . . . the Trojan Horse of your adolescence

stuffed with horns-a-plenty

when you stepped out of your chubby self

and into the lights and drama of the fashionistas' world . . .

You should have seen me then? . . .

But I did . . . and I was stamped with pleasure which ran up and down

and through me like wolves on a hunt . . .

The slack waves listed . . . deconstructed . . . like nothing else . . .

Irma Haselberger

Screen Dump 575

Not unlike the churning poor . . . the begging-off

too small to bother with

to remove from the back seat

like a short story or piece of flash fiction

as if waddling along the wood's edge

the weariness, yes, the weariness

of driving through rain

to reach the end . . . of the scene . . .

Deadbeats mastering backbeats

waiting for the waiting for . . .

the ramifications thereof . . . the sidewalk

middling midterm midday midtown midsection . . .

I am become Godot . . . engendering happenstance

the nomenclature of pigeonholers on break

when the urge becomes as overpowering

as kayaks through whitewater . . .

Collecting the memes of arias . . .

There is much to be savored

on the screen at a weed-choked drive-in

the struggle with the speaker on the window recalled

the choreography of the tenacious front seat

then the stimming accompanied by

the truth taking stare state of mind

that precedes a breakdown/breakthrough? . . .

Marta Forsberg, Composer