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Wait, there's more . . . it'll come to me . . .

that elusive construct that opens a dialogue

and you're off and running

with depositions about the hazards of following suit . . .

I know you know what I mean

having been interrogated again and again

about the meaning of meaning . . .

You said as much in discovery

and now you're living in a yurt

with midnight puppets

editing autofictions with invisible ink . . .

mirror images reflecting after-hour hookups . . .

It's not so much the tabbing . . . but flipping out

over the admittedly loose adaptation

of a fragmented backstory . . .

And this was elsewhere, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You thought you had the journey all mapped out

dividing days into passionate melodrama or befuddlement . . .

napping in transit as resident fashionista . . .

Ubers and Lyfts at your beck and call . . .

Upgrading short stacks from a Dance Macabre . . .

odysseyites promenading with corpses along the boulevard

only to be messaged stack overflow . . .

That you decided at that point to shuffle the sequence

ballooned the palatability to the delight of standins . . .

You could have danced all night . . . and you did . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Disconnecting the Dots

(reposted from Wednesday, August 16, 2017)

Sometimes I left messages in the street.
          - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress

And then Frank O'Hara stopped by.
He's living in a yurt . . . in the 'Dacks
doing this . . . doing that
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
And how about Gustav Mahler channeling Frank O'Hara . . .
bicycling Bavaria
I seem to be absolutely born for the cycle!
deconstructing Moby's Porcelain
disconnecting the dots
as if it matters . . . and it does . . . but not to
his gorgeous, alcoholic, hearing-impaired,
superflirty, 19 years his junior, wife and muse, Alma,
whose bedpost is mottled
with the notches of affairs.
Billed as the most beautiful girl in Vienna
she believes several men are better than one
and spills as much to Freud one afternoon on his couch.
Never a fan of her husband's music
she chooses none of his for her funeral 50 years after his death.
And here again is Frank:
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, . . .

Laura Mentink in Wittgenstein's Mistress (2017)

Early this morning, bicycling Route 28 to Inlet:
unforgettable . . .
meandering past pristine lakes, deep woods,
and rustic little towns, someone wrote.
I know a moose when I see one.
And I've seen several . . . at Hoss's General Store in Long Lake.
Everything anyone would need . . . or want.
Everything.
Books . . . some read, some unread . . . on my shelves.
OK, so I've skipped a few chapters
and skimmed others
and disregarded enjambments.
Who hasn't?
But really . . . what is this thing called PO-ET-RY?
Without coffee, I mean . . . or, I mean, of course.
And what's with that?
Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends:
A photograph's all that's left of you.
Must we write from prompts?
Or from furniture music, à la Satie?
I am now trying . . . to write upon nothing, Swift said.
Someone keeps elbowing in with irregardless.
Where, oh where, are the grammar police?
Can you spell donuts?
How about potato?
How about VP Quayle's version of potato?
By the way, it's now called Dunkin'.
Dunkirk is showing at Bow Tie Cinema.
Try this . . . but not at home.
This is a text.
I'm embedding pics in a text.
Putting pen to paper . . . sitting on the fence.
Trying to write right
and other absurdities for understudy
by standins . . . and passersby . . . and wannabes
saddled with odysseys.
Three rows over, 60 years ago, in Latin Class
this girl - an upperclassman - in the school uniform

imprisons me in Dr. Caligari's Cabinet
while Julius Caesar divides Gaul into three parts.

Latin Class

Coming Into the Country with John McPhee
who memorialized big rigs and other uncommon carriers
in Uncommon Carriers
after shadowing truckers for a few months.
Something about momentum
and air brakes
and commercial breaks
which speed delusions
with Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man.
I'm out here waiting for the answer with Soren Kierkegaard
the other Dane who loved the rain falling mainly on the plain
in full view of Either/Or
written after breaking up with his fiancée Regine Olsen
using the pseudonyms A for Either, B for Or,
and Johannes Climacus for The Diary of the Seducer.
I can well understand why children love sand, Wittgenstein said.
It's all about castles . . . my home is my castle, yes?
With you bundled with apps . . . one day in the foreseeable . . .
An algorithm walks into a bar . . .
This too will be tweaked . . . and tweeted . . .
to fit the model to the facts
or the facts to the model . . . whichever . . .
before Cicero's 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?

Lucius Sergius Catilina

Sound familiar?
This, by the way, is an example of trichotomy,

in full habit Sister Anna Roberta said.

And why the Fates red-carded Caesar
in the middle of the Rubicon
and why Hannibal joined the circus and mastered elephantese.
It comes full circle . . . all of it . . .
the dots connected . . . disconnected . . . fading from view . . .
with paybacks and fallbacks

playbacks and callbacks

wetbacks and drybacks
and boxes of ephemera
near the counter of the old, lamented
Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston,
Dan Chaisson wrote in The New Yorker
brimmed with
mangy postcards
wedding announcements
lobby cards
vinyl LPs
hippie stickers and patches
Civil Defense pamphlets and evacuation maps
poker chips
Old Maid decks
and skinny dogeared self-published PO-ET-RY chapbooks
filled with messages in the street.

Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop

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Rehearsing lines for detox where talk-talk is restrung

with unwords for transposition . . .

rearranging the furniture of the mind

to extract the right answer by rewording the question . . .

Of course, the drama of the get-go

with the feel of a silent movie . . .

eyes darting around the corners of the room

as if a mouse had sped past

slamming down chunks of cheddar

trailed by a reconfigured tabby . . .

The flattish physiognomy of the perp

under the cold, bleary sheets of confusion

opens the key to eventual deformity . . .

To hear the little click for another season of reruns . . .

is OK . . . even par for some of the players

chomping to borrow a phrase

for when the lake freezes over

with you dotting the horizon in yet another rewrite

of your one wild and precious life

bought and sold by plagiarists

shoplifting future episodes for junkyard flaneurs

in search of thought bubbles

floating above orphaned backstreets . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Content providers are providing content

for weekend do-it-yourselfers . . .

Why did you walk off the set? . . .

The troubling aftermath of parsing the logic

long listed drip-dried

up and out . . . into and out of the tropes

clutching the elusive, the untranslatable . . .

chopping and framing the sum of its parts

to evoke the essence of absence . . .

You're drowning in word soup and loving it . . .

backstroking to Nothing Compares 2 U

while down-time and emptiness haunt the backstory . . .

Wouldn't you rather smirk the passcode

reminiscing short stacks in the greasy spoon

of one of your past lives

when odysseyites stood on their heads

and busied themselves

assembling paraphernalia

for your next expedition

into a supermarket's labyrinthine aisles? . . .

Antonio Palmerini