Screen Dump 605

The sun insists on rearranging your costumes

trying out different colorways to complement the swirl

of coffee from the corner kiosk . . .

Is this an aside . . . or something less? . . .

a digressive, non-essential chunk of junk text

that in the rearview mirror is just plain fun? . . .

You would like to think that it means something -

or will mean something - after it's nested . . .

and maybe it does . . . or will . . .

maybe a jolt to force lunch

with a remaindered novel's author? . . .

But no life is so simple, yes? . . .

Take the lurkers with their magic wands

festering this and that and then skipping out

without paying homage to someone or something . . .

So many arguments bounce . . . yet the words remain

chomping at the bit to take another shot . . .

Bystanders looking askance at the lineup of ghosts . . .

Leila Fores

Screen Dump 604

It was time to disembark . . . but the clock struggled

with insinuations . . . You knew there had been a mixup

and soulmates seemed a dime a dozen

but that didn't stop the insurgents

who were just as insecure with the gameplan

as the attendees who in no time were paired up for the shoot . . .

The moon seemed untrustworthy

but then they rolled out the Hammond B-3

with its magical brooding deepness . . . and you forgot . . .

You insisted on yellow for the split screen outtake . . .

No one voiced an objection . . .

It looked pretty good, in fact . . .

Extras were brought in for the table read . . .

You sat in the dark . . . loving it . . .

risking the allegation of selfishness . . .

Later your walk along the beach

was soundtracked by the hooped earrings . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 603

Your fingers, stuffed with pages, end-run

to reconnect with the day which has taken a knee

in the excitement of a whiteout . . .

The knock at the door . . . again . . . again . . .

Backstory Alice wonderlands the snow

which threatens to crash the system slowly

up the mountain with flatbeds of discards . . .

Rearranging the chapters as work

you revisit a half-finished dwelling with a false floor

in the woods of your dream . . . the soundtrack . . .

loud . . . perverse . . . remainders of your past lives . . .

Leila Fores

Screen Dump 602

You begin collecting words from the air . . .

Someone leaves a lukewarm coffee

in the dressing room

and things topple . . . you are ticketed

for unresponsiveness and held

without bail reworking the second chapter . . .

the chapter that opens with the unkempt . . .

Isn't this more of the same? . . .

Haven't we visited this so-called

House of Mirrors before? . . .

Safety protocols lax . . . and many know . . .

Wanting to wait it out while streets fill

with underappreciated phenoms

on leave with pay

citing The Book of the Dead

may not be the best way to go . . .

So you cave . . . or something . . .

insisting on bothering less . . .

Later the doors open . . . a translation enters

in a modernist suit held high

by surrogates hawking weak passwords . . .

You resort to a play on the word schism

to get the goats of  latecomers . . .

A PSA chimes in with an update  . . .

Leila Fores

Driving Home After My Last Prostate Exam

My Harvard-trained urologist

straight black hair yet to be peppered

whom I’ve been somewhat intimate with

for ten years now

enters the examination room

looks at the test results

types something into his computer

and says You’re good.

Unless you have a problem, we’re done.

But the shoe will drop . . . someday.

Yes, it will, he says, but not here.

And I’m a bit saddened

not because his words portend my shelf life

but because . . . strangely . . . I will miss him

and my annual visit

to this sad room

with its sad faces

and sad words.

Driving home after my last prostate exam

David Bowie, dead at 69,

sings This Is Not America on the radio.

Head bandaged

buttons for eyes

he lies on a rickety chipped hospital bed

in an empty room

in Lazarus, his last video.

When the cancer spread, he stopped treatment.

David Bowie, Lazarus (2016)

 

One hundred years ago today, Sylvia Beach, a Paris bookshop owner, published James Joyce’s "Ulysses," a 732-page novel about a day in the life of Dubliner, Leopold Bloom. Joyce used every trick in the English language to portray the journey we each take from the womb to the tomb. "Ulysses" was banned in several countries and quickly became one of the most important novels ever written that most readers have never read.