Screen Dump 697

Voices from the air elbow in with the insistence

of Crayolas pocketed from the early days

when naïveté colored your renderings

with eyes wide shut

dumbing down the circumstances

for palatability's sake . . .

A breeze through an open window

with images of past lives

swells thought bubbles into the full catastrophe . . .

You as confused as I . . .

Yes, add that to your write-up . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 696

Seasonal hymns carry you aloft

the small print assuring you that the exaltation

in the fuzziness of the rearview mirror

is evidence of your coming-of-age . . .

Reams of prayer repurpose happiness

on the street where you live

and alter the topography of your brain . . .

You day-trip backstory practice

mimicking the chamber group in Pictures at an Exhibition . . .

the momentum enough to spearhead you into the beyond . . .

Isn't it magical? . . . intimacy's joggle? . . .

The candles flickering their excitement . . .

puzzling amusement . . . dynamic

in their medievalism . . . in their ability

to quell supermarket stalkers

comparing notes on extended techniques

with odysseyites dabbling in noise . . .

The snow is indeed over the top

but, look, the wonderment of this winter wonderland

is a dotted line to the divine

prompting players to sort through their collections

of unfinished symphonies

sorted on imaginary number . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 695

Odysseyites curry favor with Johnny-come-latelies

homeless in email . . . palming handouts

and a free pass to the Lone Star Steakhouse

where buy-ones get-ones feature . . .

A Shakespearean interface perplexes you far and away

your memory skewed by the cacophony

of the signal-to-noise ratio

filling the first movement with incomprehensible snow . . .

You have come to appreciate nautical wherewithals

and manage to navigate the second movement

mindful of the snow whose melodic drifts

you later learn was what everyone

had slogged through the snowstorm to hear . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 694

Sometimes in her sleep Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked.

          - Anne Carson, The Albertine Workout

Hence, your fascination with sleep

and with Proust's Questionnaire

alluded to in the opening scene . . .

This, of course, made to seem inconsequential . . .

Alone now in the wilderness

in a blizzard . . .

OK, a good start . . .

Tweak it a bit to fit

into the Islets of Langerhans . . .

That can't be right . . .

Nonetheless, continue . . .

Act Two is much the same

prompting your comment on the formulaic . . .

The cluster fills with posers . . .

That it works is insidious, I mean, incredulous . . .

Are you sure you want to proceed? . . .

If you do, you'll have to walk us through

the proof specing falsehoods within

a narrow margin of error . . .

Think an endangered Snow Leopard

in one of the most remote areas on earth . . .

You are with yourself

you are within yourself

not unlike the unnamed monster

in Mary Shelley's novel

with Victor Frankenstein near death

on an ice floe relating his terror

to explorer Robert Walton . . .

this excursion into horror

by an 18-year-old's nightmare

two years after she became pregnant

with her first child, also unnamed . . .

The monster like all seeks love and recognition

but suffers misunderstanding, rejection, hatred . . .

Enter TikTok:

a world out of balance scored by Philip Glass

whose teacher Nadia Boulanger

arguably the greatest music teacher of all time

fueled his one-upmanship

with fellow composer Steve Reich . . .

and so the world as House of Crazy

forcing us to dip our quills

into rose-colored liquid

to palatabalize appropriating a one-way ticket

to elsewhere . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 693

He has left nothing to say about nothing or anything . . .

          - John Keats

Images of your former self fill the air with commiserations . . .

Videos spiral into collages of departure

and go viral . . . assembling words to say something

about something you know something about

but then stop . . . This happens, yes? . . .

It's as if you were told about the last time . . .

It's as if you were told this will be the last time . . .

It's as if you were told this is the last time . . .

Imagining the confusion when the code bombs

and regs are swapped out for neologisms . . .

You have tried to set the record straight . . .

There will be no setting the record straight . . .

Who told you you would be able to set the record straight? . . .

The record is gone . . . last seen entering Hannaford . . .

You have tried to pick up where you left off . . .

Just where did you leave off? . . .

Too much information . . .

You have submitted the paperwork, and rejoined your age-mates

who pump air and will continue to pump air

into the silence of anechoic chambers . . .

It's as if you were glued to YouTube . . .

It's as if you knew all along you would be muted . . .

It's as if you were recognized for who you are . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 692

Maybe they're coded into the graphic versions

of Stephen Hawking’s Time

hawked by junkyard dogs and other ne'er-do-wells . . .

Or Proust? . . . maybe Proust? . . .

Regardless, time passes . . .

Fashion plates spin . . .

Turntablists go on record to transfuse vinyl . . .

Anything to keep out of hock . . .

Anything to stave off the due date . . .

The life of a court jester juggling, what,

five, six, seven balls

in the days of bungee jumps

accelerates the metabolism

sets loose change jingling

pockets fluttering with delight . . .

This is good, yes? . . .

Dishpan dilemmas melt away . . .

You wake in a Beckettian diorama

locks unchanged, doors ajar

showcasing reticence, ambiguity, and

humorous deflationary counterpoint . . .

Who said that? . . . Did you say that? . . .

Dusty volumes doze on podiums, awaiting magic fingers . . .

Everyone is in fine fettle . . .

And after? . . . Who knows? . . .

At the very least you’ll be penciled in

somewhere ages and ages hence . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 691

You do your best to weather a strange ineptitude

the discoloration of the senses

that follows a fragmented conversation

but before you know it

a triviality arrives

with its own list of demands . . . 

Later, several strangely-costumed leads

appear seemingly on cue from installations

and reappear one by one

as if in an infinite loop

offering monologues and soliloquies

odds and check-out times

well-wrought and well-received

thorough in their encryption

yet lacking in payback . . .

while outside an out-of-sorts vehicle

makes its way along the narrow one-way street

depositing memories

on one chipped stoop after another . . .

Antonio Palmerini