Tuesday, February 22, 2022

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


Sunday, February 20, 2022

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
which you had borrowed years ago from your twin . . . 

Leila Fores



Saturday, February 19, 2022

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


Friday, February 18, 2022

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

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

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)


Wednesday, February 2, 2022

 

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.