Screen Dump 690

Long haulers reconfigure goodbyes . . .

There is no other life . . .

Promises are scanned . . . some shredded . . .

Irrevocability is tabled . . .

The difference jolts you awake

in the middle of your soliloquy

filled with hounds

nipping at the darkness . . .

Your lines recall with impunity

late night walks through scripts

costumed in OCD . . .

baiting your next subject . . .

reporting the outcome to the moms and pops

infiltrating the neighborhood

after word got out

that the sidewalks are paved

with deleted TikToks . . .

The world fills with dubious auditionees . . .

 

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 689

You're onstage translating blue book innuendos . . .

Graffiti artists recruit Zamboni drivers

for the latest in homespun contortions . . .

Every day you write down a color for emphasis . . .

It sometimes works . . .

especially with underdeveloped photographs

and smokeless candles

from Bed Bath and Beyond . . .

You admit to appropriating yourself . . .

About the dog's dutiful permanence

within the purview of the cat's tall tail

wedded to your spot-on translations

you reluctantly relinquish reserve . . .

The day is recalled for safety violations . . .

Knowing full well desire's amplitude

fuels your compassion

for one-armed bandits with performance anxiety . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 688

The day quibbles intensity

climbing in a hot air balloon . . . belching symbols . . .

the same 32 symbols with few exceptions

scribbled by ancients on cave walls . . .

Your visions incubate playoffs

as odysseyites seek shelter

from misappropriations . . .

A free ride with Thanksgiving looms . . .

There is something about something, but . . .

the dumplings, ah, yes, the dumplings

continue to steam . . .

You return remarkably from your incision

into hubris which unchecked

could forego Chromebook's immensity . . .

Blueness strolls elsewhere

while a disaffected second assistant director

toggles a capacity

for resilience against despair . . .

He too will . . . eventually . . .

Rinsing your mouth after using a puffer

impresses a starlet known for her brake pad bails . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 687

You're using a random text generator

to fill in memory gaps . . .

How back from  elsewhere in blue suede shoes

you loitered to grab caffeine

with a camera obscurist lost in plate tectonics . . .

Misplacing the memo

you practiced night sweats

with a minor leaguer

who had to follow an instruction sheet

for stonermasons . . .

Fast forwarding 40 years you find yourself

among the original cast members

bloating come-ons for moving-up day

in a city of somnambulists . . .

The sky cloudless (which here means nothing) . . .

Memorable hamlets . . . and ink . . .

quid-pro-quo under the skin of a woolly mammoth

mooring across a Russian novel

with a grandmother inviting you in

for voodka and borscht . . .

Your high heels catch-as-catch-can . . .

your hemming and hawing

make it into the finals

with a jump shot paradigm shift

while sniggling softly in tantric rapture . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 686

It was time . . . but time for what? . . .

There are too many times

and the clock is of no help . . .

You don't know what to do . . .

You fill with indecision . . .

A keyboardist taps for a return to Wordstar . . .

You find yourself waiting in a waiting line . . .

You decide to throw caution to the wind

and go food shopping . . .

The aisles speak to you in foreign tongues . . .

You feel alien . . .

Free samples are thrust upon you . . .

You begin reciting aloud a monologue

you thought you had forgotten

but then it popped into your head

just now in the condiment aisle . . .

a monologue from your faux halcyon days

when you looked forward

to nights of how-tos and what-ifs

in storefronts stuffed with tchotchkes

piled high by functioning hoarders . . .

You love the pig mug . . . and the designer toilet paper . . .

There's more but it won't let go

of the tip of your tongue . . .

Shoppers stare at you . . . aim their iPhones at you . . .

The supermarket begins to close in on you . . .

an experience reminiscent of your time served

in boostered state office cubicles . . .

You press the Escape key . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 685

You displayed inscrutable dexterities

in the moment and thereafter . . .

isolating the ambience for later study . . .

dating entries as a method

of keeping track

of where you left off . . .

There was little sense in doing the math . . .

Enough came too soon . . . the pleasure

climbing but falling off before peaking

as incomplete as the scribbled code

bobbing in the runoff . . .

Your experience with choral groups

seemed endlessly renewable

endlessly enjoyable

as rare as colorways in bipolarity . . .

Your attempt to encounter afresh 

the waveform action of syntax

led to a diatribe of dead ends

directing you to return to the streets

marked One Way with all the trappings

of cutting, splitting, and stacking wood

impressing the making and unmaking of sense,

the how not the what of knowing . . .

Antonio Palmerini