Screen Dump 733

You've misplaced the opening scene

where you in silhouette

disappear into an apartment building

in a late-night snow storm . . .

Inside the vacant apartment

miniature glass slippers

arranged paradoxically

speak to you extemporaneously . . .

You entertain the notion

of a dentist's appointment

for a loose crown . . .

or an afternoon feeding the bears

that wander onto the knoll

looking for evidence . . .

Nothing can be done about this . . .

Nothing should be done about this . . .

The light will change

but isn't that usually the case

especially when ordering takeout? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 732

That the magicians left

is a rain-soaked late December morning

in a glut of jaundiced checkmates . . .

Your late night posturing

has opened a cabinet of Caligari moments

flooding a willingness

to split the session for odysseyites

miming on a gessoed stage . . .

The world will begin again

and again

with contemplatives appending

for appending's sake

while you, delightfully costumed,

will be seen through the half-inch

of a window left open

by one of your entourage . . .

moving seductively to Mahler's Fifth . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 731

Your dream sounds a diminished seventh

in a wine-soaked gritty eatery

with you wearing your want in bib-overalls

inventorying the dissonant conversations

that once filled the long, narrow, high-ceilinged

hallway to nowhere . . .

A chance encounter, the makeshift profile

a deluge of lines that grows tired

as you excuse yourself

onto a parallel stage

colored with red collared Maine Coons

big enough to intimidate . . . a perfect fit

for your inscrutable autofiction . . .

How often did standins speak their tongue? . . .

anticipation flooding their ludicrous logic . . .

a takedown by a passing mathematician

whose game theory panoply just out in paperback

leapfrogged to the top of some obscure list

of academic best sellers . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 730

You worry you're spending too much time

within the mirror in the mirror

of your one wild and precious life

memeing Proust's madelaine . . .

burned-out AI memory chips

spewing the anger and anguish

of living in The House of Crazy . . .

You're trying to capture the colors of the 13 moons

but the composition bullies down

the Rothkovian palette . . .

You decide True Blue will do

knowing Michelangelo bailed on The Entombment

because he couldn't afford ultramarine . . .

its extraction and production so prohibitive

that the semiprecious color was restricted

to the Christ and the Virgin Mary . . .

You fear the clock's relentless ticking . . .

Will you return now to the easel with snow forecast? . . .

Will your image remain long enough to be captured? . . .

Antonio Palmerini