Screen Dump 594

Your uneducated palette makes haste

and so itself belies . . . snow creasing consciousness

as when lost in the stacks

you made the most of words

the clock flipping the storyboard

awaiting yet another invasion

this one more contagious

outmaneuvering makebelievers

pulled in to make space for makeshift whirligigs

atop unmarked cars . . .

Bells ring unendurably . . . as if entombed . . .

Many try to stay the four-credit course

with a lab from one of those

insufferable unaccountable kennel farms . . .

Those in the wake of your wandering to what end . . .

Just enough cover to be visible

the tracks of odysseyites

cunningly contrived by the unfulfilled . . .

Shannon Hartman in Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (2017)

Screen Dump 593

You took umbrage out for a quick question

entering a labyrinth . . . the idea sprung from the Middle Ages . . .

Impenetrable to intruders . . . yes, that's it . . .

But what about the audience? . . . those accoutered in chain mail? . . .

Mostly opera buffs

incidentalists who looked after the impossible

years and years . . . and years

when those contemplating bigness stepped forward

drawing lines in the sand

leaving odysseyites with next to nothing

and strange tales of the forgotten who were beside themselves . . .

Isn't it wonderful to feel the first soft flakes? . . .

I mean, prepare yourself for an extended commitment

to combat boots . . . some bearded . . . wearing overcoats

not knowing when to stop and take it again from the top . . .

Marie de France (1160-1215)

Screen Dump 592

Haunted by the weird aftertaste of the word-drunk

you proceed to fill in the blanks

only to arrive like a rumor at the tail-end of a long train running . . .

Costumed out of desperation for three scenes hence

in no time you run out of words

tweaking the coordinates

and move into a double-wide consciousness . . .

You begin visiting on odd-numbered Saturdays

logging innuendoes for TikTok

celebrating incidentals

parsing the friendship of a conundrum as if it were celebratory . . .

You are fit to be tied to your lit-life

rescripted by scholars emeriti brought in with field recordings . . .

A door is left ajar by odysseyites

who flee Zoom's parameters . . .

The world keeps ending on Netflix . . . but it doesn't . . .

You thought you had deleted your account . . .

You were sure of it

but a glitch appeared in the middle of your nightmare . . .

Screen Dump 591

You commit to dreams-a-plenty

to an allotment of time

to delusion

to a slightly skewed morality tale . . . interrupting the moment . . .

You gather dust when you least expect it

when the penultimate scene fails to engage

the magical mystery tour of the apartment

where your erotic other waits . . . hands bronzed . . .

One must have a mind of . . . and so it goes . . .

Bundled against the sharp wind

your childhood friend becomes the Joker

following a plastic surgeon's dotted lines . . .

Dreams-a-plenty, yes? . . .

Pushbacks threaten . . .

You TikTok the day away with addled wine obsessives . . .

Outside, jays hit the feeders with an arrogance

that scatters seeds to the ground . . .

You become a ground-feeder, gathering the seeds . . . waiting . . .

There are rules and regs for all

our parts edited, updated, polished . . .

To relinquish nothing . . . to take no prisoners . . .

Screen Dump 590

Mirror in the mirror.

          - Arvo Pärt

You read the lines in the face in the mirror in the mirror . . .

The bird has flown away . . .

Iambs carry you into a spare, unoccupied room:

odysseyites tethered to where you were most . . .

Retracing your steps, your moves, the players in your play . . .

Not the one you wrote . . . labored over for how many years? . . .

but the one you picked from a stacked deck 

when the dole was doled to the doles

and you disembarked . . . bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

to play their game . . . because, hell, why should it be

only their game? . . .

Indeed, it was fun . . . manipulating the scene

sparking the moment . . . seducing the seducers

clocking the clock . . .

All the while the lion watching . . .

You were costumed in the skin of a lion

having scraped and cleaned and soaked and salted

and smoked and dried it

according to the voices in your head . . .

Always the voices in your head . . .

How often? . . . How many? . . . How now brown cow? . . .

Inquiring minds want to know . . .

You had mastered the rounded vowel sounds

and found them enticing . . .

Oncomers came on and in no time fell under your spell . . .

Come one . . . Come all . . . Come hither and yon . . .

Of course you'll have time to return in time . . .

But the cupboard is bare

despite the cornmeal con with legs-a-plenty . . .

Odysseyites spent time in the mooring of starting out

were written up and released into their own rom-coms . . .

Gaming tables laughed to see such a sight . . .

Discos spooned . . .

Enter again the lion

the elephant raising and lowering his trunk in time to the magic . . .

A house in glass . . .

Occupants in invisible ink . . . held up to a lightbulb . . .

You cannot escape yourself! . . .

Leaving before the credits with Max Schreck aka Count Orlok

all tricked and treated out in 1922's Nosferatu

clickety clack on the sidewalk crack . . .

The lion in a delivery van far from the madding cow . . .

Screen Dump 589

Those days when both of us are on different wrong pages

or different wrong sides . . .

I know you thought it was a dream

or an instant replay . . . but no, the morning

was elbowed out by some startup's beta version

all promises and what have you

new and improved . . . supposedly better

the relativity of GoFundMe better . . .

Nonetheless the streets have been prepped

for something . . . yet another dethroning

of  politicos? . . . The incumbent impediments

and control of the center of the board . . .

Please don't hope for the best . . .

Who me? . . . I don't think so . . .

The weird thing is I've misplaced the passcode

to your voice

and now I'm in the throes

of  reconstructing the front end from memory . . .

Why the itinerary of thoughts? . . .

Is it time to go? . . .

Yes, wake up, get dressed, it's time to go . . . I am smitten

with to-dos and can't wait to see how today plays out . . .

Lydia Roberts