Screen Dump 716

A long hauler paging through the elements

and with that, the scene shifts

summoning a fact-checker

to fact-check the epigraph on tippy-toes

when all seemed taken by the virtual bridge

you had conjured the morning after . . .

Where were you on the night in question?

You seem never to tire of that . . .

Approaching it as if this is it

as if this time is it

as if toggling the options . . .

The events in the just-released transcript

by the just-released who had long been forgotten by most . . .

But that was long ago

to say nothing of your selfish devotion to your art . . .

And then this happened

with the weird-ass energy of the woebegotten

and you bejeweled with scrimshaws

sitting among the antique furniture in the atelier

blue-penciling diatribes . . .

Was there no other way? . . .

What was that anyway? . . .

The dynamics of engagement, perhaps? . . .

The regrettable choices? . . .

The nomenclature of streaming seems to have caught on

as a contender for an individual's legacy

revealing the contents of the steamer trunk hidden in the attic

having been asked on facebook chat what's important . . .

Weathering love's inconsistencies

you may want to consider the language of divinity schools

where the shades of gray are Wac-A-Moled into submission

to the delight of those on the wait list . . .

Antonio Palmerini

That Was Then . . . This Is Now

That was then . . . and it was good, yes? / But this is now.

          - anon

When is one finished?

When does one know that one is finished?

A repurposed wasteland appears.

The walls whitewashed.

The floors swept.

But the rooms remain empty.

Meanwhile, stories . . .

~

It's 1967. The Summer of Love.

You're living in a VW Bus

trout fishing in America with Richard Brautigan

drifting along like an easy creek

trying to follow the words of Carl Rogers

to become the self that you really are.

~

What is it all about?

What are you all about?

You get what you put into trout fishing in America

stepping in the water

feeling the cool drift

taking it with you.

Taking what?

The otherworldly contours of love.

The spellbinding angularities.

The waking-in-the-middle-of-the-night inconsistencies.

The ups and downs . . . the ins and outs . . . the wicked game.

~

Your daughter dances to Strauss's Annen Polka,

floating with the wide-eyed innocence

of a nine-year-old who has yet to glimpse

the world of the backstage.

Look at her taut sureness, the steadiness and poise,

the promise of her young movements

as they transcend choreography with a joy that,

you can only hope, will buoy her through a life

filled with huge pockets of uncertainty.

~

You cross over and find yourself in a choral group

performing Arvo Pärt’s The Peace.

This is good. This is really good.

The puzzle at the foot of your bed?

You try to recall the connection.

The mystery of happiness without remorse

or something like that. You’re not sure.

Here’s how it’s done, the caped magician told you

after your eighth birthday party.

Misdirection. Misdirection.

~

At 42, she faced her final storm,

and now floats, high above the seas,

guiding fellow sailors,

her last words, Goodbye, my love.

You turn the soil for a vegetable garden:

tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.

Rhode Island Reds appear

scratching for worms with gnarled, yellow claws.

Your grandfather is here, too, from the dead,

a stubby Philip Morris dangling from his lower lip.

He speaks to you, in Polish, about happiness.

~

K. H. Brandenburg tweaks an algorithm

for compressing audio files to birth MP3s

using Suzanne Vega's a cappella, Tom's Diner.

~

You return to a post

about a rhino poacher

who was stomped to death by an elephant

then eaten by a pride . . .

~

She checks herself out of detox

chugging rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer

and into an ICU where a voice says

You're not going anywhere

but to a psych ward

and a 28-day program . . .

and the Monkey laughs

and rides shotgun

through late-night streets.

~

It's good that grandma's here

on this early July morning

on the beach

in her housedress

with her beach chair

and it's good that she's invited you

to sit on her lap for a while

watch your cousins in the water

and slowly wade into the day.

~

On reconnaissance in his second tour of Viet Nam,

he takes a shrapnel

dying 35 years later at 57

without a memory of a parade

because there were none.

~

Looking at the lobsters in their watery cells

awaiting execution by boiling water

reminds you of David Foster Wallace

clinically depressed for most of his life

who one day stopped taking Nardil

walked out onto his back porch

threw a rope over a beam and hanged himself.

Wallace was an abusive assaultive explosive misogynistic

gifted alcoholic and drug addict.

Looking away from the lobsters

you think of Consider the Lobster

Wallace’s essay highlighting the unethical abuse of animals

in which he asks

Is it right to boil alive a sentient creature

for our gustatory pleasure?

Knowing that the so-called scream

of the lobster being boiled alive

is not its voice but air rushing out

of the holes in its shell doesn’t help . . .

nor should it.

~

You've stopped by again today
to see how your father's doing.
It's August and he's eighty-six.
He's asked for some blackberries,
so you're out here,

in the blackberry bushes,

in shirt and tie,

picking.

~

You get lost with Chet Baker

replaying the opening bars

to All Blues from The Last Great Concert 

recorded two weeks before he fell

out of a window in Amsterdam . . .

because you can't stop

because it's one of the realest things you've encountered

and for a few moments . . . nothing else matters . . .

~

She breaks into her counselor's office

at the therapeutic community house

drinks a bottle of hand sanitizer

and is taken to the emergency room

where she drinks more hand sanitizer

then sneaks out of the hospital . . . wasted . . .

She's picked up by the police

taken to a homeless shelter

on Christmas Eve

then back to the community house

the day after Christmas

where she apologizes to her counselor

and the other residents

and is put on probation . . .

binging . . . purging . . .

She is given the option of treatment for bulimia . . .

She refuses

and is discharged to a cot

in a warming center

where the lights go out at 9 . . .

Next day . . . she's back on the street . . .

~

Do you believe in magic?

Of course you do.

~

March 28, 1941, a little before noon

Virginia Woolf

with hat walking stick overcoat and large heavy stone

wades into the River Ouse drowning herself.

She was an escape artist

who mapped the extraordinariness

of our interiors . . .

~

Elizabeth Bishop catches a tremendous fish.

~

It's 1960. Latin Class.

Julius Caesar divides Gaul into three parts.

Three rows over, an upperclassman, in the school uniform

imprisons you with her long legs

while Marcus Tullius Cicero addresses the Senate

with the trichotomy of his Third Oration:

How long, O Catiline, will you tax our endurance?

How long will that madness of yours escape us?

To what end will your unruly boldness hurl itself at us?

~

You fritter away time and space.

Goalposts splinter.

Your goalposts splinter.

No one believes the converse.

At one time the b-ball shoe of choice

but then on the seventh day

of the seventh month in the seventh year

you fall asleep at the wheel

drift over the double line

and the winged goddess of victory

teams with Aldous Huxley

to open the doors of perception . . .

an aha moment.

~

The mixing of your lines bear the awesomeness of youth.

The imperfection is imperfect, perhaps,

yet as perfectly as possible

as perfectly as you know how

with the almost-imperceptible mistakes

making it delightful.

Let disorder triumph along the boulevards of redaction

where the ifs ands and buts barter transfusions.

Adjusting your sightline along the monochrome,

you resemble a look-alike

from one of your favorite films

the wake of which is a which of a which

but my advice is not to wait it out.

You will know, trust me.

And it will be good.

~

Late at night when you lie awake,

tell yourself that you love who you are,

that your half-concealed life

is not without promise.

Antonio Palmerini