Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Screen Dump 824

Memories, a form of imagination or indignation,
I'm not sure which, continue to trod the corridors
of backstories, a renewed connection
to a lifetime of incidentals
demarcated with wax pencils
as the elements of style voice irrecoverable
from Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis,
with Brigitte Helm doing a robot's
seductive power and the dangers of AI . . .
juggling chapters as a portal into the imagination
of time's loosey-gooseiness
the manor house ringing iffyness . . .
Shockingly blatant . . . the indifference
feathering far too many nests
flopping around in culverts
trying to alert gandy dancers
and knock-knock jokers to the reality
of flesh-eating bacteria invading
kettle holes and streaming services
causing massive fragmentation
and higher-than-high rates of confusion and dementia . . .
Pick a flick or enter the water with care
and be sure to arm yourself with a designer duffel bag
though I'm not sure why . . .



Monday, July 28, 2025

John Ashbery, who would have been 98 today, had this to say about understanding poetry: I don’t quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.

John Ashbery by Allen Ginsberg


Friday, July 11, 2025

Screen Dump 823

Voices bounce off buildings slated to be razed
punctuating thought bubbles
in the latest episode of your theatrics
about the one that got away
pieced together and understood, yes? . . .
The tape rewound back to the backyard
and the stairs leading to the basement
where words accompanied costumes
in arrays that spun into constellations
of engagement . . . We were young . . .
The age-old drama
with you waving your magic wand
because if they can I can, yes? . . .
when all this and more were dished out
on paper plates with plastic utensils
that the resident hoarder insisted on keeping . . .
his life aclutter . . .
You have since applied for a sabbatical
to study abroad the waywardisms
of the porcelain-skinned . . .
a Proustian moment as indifferent as the runoff
riding a scattering of crumpled-up
brown paper bags . . . the instant Doppler
technology out to lunch . . . crossing a creek
on moss-covered stones, slipping into the current
with words resurrecting the events that shaped
the moments reopening the cold case . . .

Tim Walker


Monday, June 30, 2025

Screen Dump 822

You imagine another life of almost transparent blue
filled with small, unexpected hopes
eclipsing your impatience if nothing else . . .
Like the time you negotiated a bouquet of confusion
for the pundits at the gate
entering the scene, spiriting time, reclaiming mobility . . .
your memory expiring upon faux rocks
before moving onto yet another intellectual joust
coarse and aflame . . . impressive in its vacuum . . .
Odysseyites flattened . . . the arm subduing all passion . . .
Not a moment to spare . . . countdown flickering
in the distance . . . the hand paler still . . . until
your naked neck rose against happenstance . . .

Merry Alpern


Saturday, June 28, 2025

Screen Dump 821

You had hoped to compile a Table of Contents
but your digressive sidebar blew that out of the water
so you returned to a consolation
of memory jacks . . . everything longer and thicker . . .
less rethinking the vatic moments you played
while streaming your backstory . . .
rewound and precipitous . . .
mornings to afternoons to evenings to nights
into eternity . . .
auditionees waiting with parted lips
as the rain came and went . . .
the night kaleidoscopic . . .
The shell of coziness did not fracture
as partakers looked past their own reflection
in the pool of happenstance
filling with the hopes and dreams that had made the deadline
while you waited in the wings . . . costumed and ready . . .

Merry Alpern


Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Screen Dump 820

You mean like a tracer round
to illuminate the path of the engagement
with odysseyites doing close reads
and you insisting it's time to pony up
as if the porosity is to be ignored? . . .
But there's no depth
just a going-through-the-motion sort of embellishment
as a feasibility run . . .
Exciting, yes, but restropectively, I don't know . . .
Then the pushback . . . coded as inuendo . . .
Why are you reviewing your notes? . . .
You've encountered this managerie before . . .
It's a Pick Up Sticks type of ploy . . .
The question of whether you will take up residence
in long-term memory . . .
in their Notes To Myself whiteboard
that they will return to, again and again,
as they prepare to enter the waiting room . . .

Anna-Liisa Liiver


Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Screen Dump 819

You're talking to the images of people
in the mirror behind the bar . . .
Are these people you know . . . or knew? . . .
People who play - or played - a role in your delicate life? . . .
The delicate lives in the empty storefronts
in this maelstrom of a mall
known for its catchy soliloquies . . .
Isn't it all about the metaphor of a waiting room? . . .
Still hiding behind your assumptions, yes? . . .
The clock quid pro quos questions . . .
What? . . . You know, the questions . . .
The questions you will have
after you enter the waiting room . . .
Isn't there another way? . . .
What do you mean? . . . like . . . rewinding the tape? . . .
rewriting the script? . . . googling? . . . AI? . . .
Just regurgitate the lines you were given, OK? . . .



Monday, June 16, 2025

All the world’s a stage

by William Shakespeare

                                        All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Will (by AI)


Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Screen Dump 818

Hide-and-Seek at sunset in the cornfields
of your 20s . . . those almost moments
where everything was so right yet so wrong . . .
Then the particulars of your life
covering Simon & Garfunkel's America . . .
the moon rising over an open field
hitting you in the eye like a big pizza pie
with options grayed-out for odysseyites
crowding into the Scarborough Fair
to snap Mrs. Robinson
who hid it in a hiding place where
no one ever goes after removing it
from the pantry with her cupcakes . . .
Life's geometries, yes? . . .
Does it matter? . . .
Do we have a say in the matter? . . .
I mean maybe at least . . .
But didn't we expect that
with darkness just around the corner
distilling spirits for trainspotters
looking for America . . .
identity thieves sucking-up passcoders
behind the wheel of a retro VW bus
in search of Joltin' Joe's America? . . .

The Graduate (1967)


Tuesday, June 3, 2025

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
          - Frank O'Hara



Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Screen Dump 817

The flippancy that greased the wheels of memory
laid bare a seductive dissonance . . .
There was no avid about it . . .
The app collapsed unremarkably
followed by a flurry of texts to the otherwise . . .
A cafe racer enjoying a coastal route
dotted with encounters
sprouted words to fill your journal . . .
the inconsistency puzzling, yes? . . .
You could have imposed a pattern
but instead ressurected the elements of then . . .
You left no trail . . .
Applying color takes up space
which is, I suppose, your way of doing things . . .
especially with morning trotting out its daily ritual . . .
There were hordes of others . . .
many in and out of dreamscapes
with all the accoutrements you could have imagined . . .

Anka Zhuravleva


Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Paging Through Jung's Red Book

(reposted from Tuesday, December 27, 2011)

She was young, of course. . . .
          - Siri Hustvedt

You've misplaced your archetype and now
your unconscious is collecting itself and leaving.
You thought you had it all worked out
but every minute brings a change.
Restate your case.
You bought into the line breaks and realized too late
that the enjambments were a joke.
Your trust has made you untrustworthy.
I've heard it from you before:
I had to protect myself.
OK, are you now free to be the self you see
or are you clubbing onlookers
with that old - and very tired - I'm confused.
You're lucky you have time.
Those you've blindsided refuse to pick up.
I can't blame them.
Jung broke with his pal Freud over scrambled eggs
built a scale model of his childhood village
then with gaslamp proceeded to search for his self
carve it out so to speak
renew membership in the Square One Club.
You too can be an event horizon.
You too can block hostile takeovers by those
laying claim to your inner beauty.
It's all here in the pages of Jung's Red Book.


Friday, April 18, 2025

Screen Dump 816

You decide for sanity's sake to climb
into a different dream
your costume feathered
to ensure a lyric feast of words
spinning the mind beyond language . . .
You have come to enjoy
the catapults of edits
lobbed by holdovers
along the borders of the  margin . . .
The seduction of the blank page pins you . . .
The unrecognizable new awes you
the misconnection of dots
miscalling the nothing-really-here . . .

Paolo Roversi



Monday, April 7, 2025

Screen Dump 815

But it wasn't everything always
the lines more different than alike
appropriated from Greek tragedies
by skeletons awaiting the call . . .
There are others in the wings . . .
There will always be others in the wings
finessing their choreography
with alphabetical certitude . . .
Outswimming your self
with devil-may-care strokes
you push identity-theft
to boggle the minds
of scaredy cats and leaf-rustlers
with grayed-out options . . .
Everything . . . and more . . .
within reach . . . in theory . . .
The slapdown bulks-up beyond the mirror-image . . .
You think it odd? . . .
Life out of balance . . .
The moment to moment is not the same . . .
The words . . . not the same . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Screen Dump 814

You hold the magic to an alternate reality
engaging passersby
with the opening lines to The Odyssey:
Tell me about a complicated man . . .
how he wandered and was lost . . .
And so the drama:
the camera, hand-held, tightens the frame
the fuzziness dissolves
at the edge of a beach softened by watercolor
soundtracked with trance . . .
Do you mean, nothing with nothing? . . .
No, surreptitiously . . . re-entering silence
as an arm enters a sleeve . . . 
Insisting on . . . what? . . . endless endings? . . .
The mute mouth to the deaf ear . . .
the camera panning the crowd . . .
Mayhaps in time
you will chance the lives you've imagined
trying on a different metaphor
to become who you are by not knowing . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, March 31, 2025

Screen Dump 813

Deconstructing scripts in a restorative way
through Four-Star George's
glass, and darkly
the age-long strife I see . . .
proofs unfolding . . .
patterns and colorways of labyrinths
seductive equations
stepwise progressions with benefits . . .
Your grandmother's to-do, I suppose? . . .
A better way to open, maybe? . . .
I am become . . . whatever . . .
The answer? . . . Blowin' in the wind? . . .
Counters zeroed-out
I Am Curious (Yellow) . . . and in walks Myth of Man
an odyssey for your disbelief . . . suspended as it is . . .

Laura Rauch in Myth of Man



Friday, March 21, 2025

Screen Dump 812

No less marginal than a cover
of Strawberry Fields Forever . . .
You with a fortnight
of multiple choice questions
sticker shock
collapsing into pasteboard invitations . . .
the weather again unsure
of what to do . . .
The unsavory coupling, yes, that too,
meeting in dreamscapes . . .
inquisitive . . .
Drumming a little life into the countryside . . . 
Scads of to-dos . . . little matter . . .
There was a moment when you were sure
it would all come together
but it didn't . . . and you were OK with that . . .
comfortable with the unknown
en plain air . . . right down the middle
a come as you are kind of invite
especially now
with endgamers threatening tell-alls . . .

Bruno Dayan


Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Screen Dump 811

Afternoons with straw figures
cavorting in delightful emptiness
in a surreal haven
with the unseasonable obtuse . . .
Where does your property begin again? . . .
Where do you begin again? . . .
At the spring? . . .
With the barn and its many matrices? . . .
Inasmuch as differences
clip the wings of understanding for some
you are welcome to settle in . . .
Tea? . . . a book, perhaps? . . .
Feel free to chill
before the requisite summing-up
propels messengers of redaction
back out onto the backroads of many . . .

Antonio Palmerini


Monday, March 10, 2025

Screen Dump 810

You're binging a miniseries about reincarnates
trapped in the blunt pretense of chance
not unlike those you've encountered
on your daily walk along the canal . . .
Connoisseurs of oblivion have at it
in brittle best sellers . . . patched together
with stepwise amplification . . .
The soundtrack to The World To Come, yes? . . .
I know it's on your list . . .
You awoke to a bath in the middle of the night
which put to rest your restless legs
and opened a door to an urge
to sit for a portait by the medievalist
who hawks indulgences in the virtual piazza
two towns over . . .

Antonio Palmerini




Friday, March 7, 2025

Screen Dump 809

The future catwalks an ultramarine puffer jacket . . .
Fast forward to destabilization
adjusting the required rhymes apart from the action . . .
You have immersed yourself in totemism . . .
Copies of postproduction notes
have been distributed to those on the brink . . .
So it's back to the basics, I suppose . . .
In no time, ashes . . . at the wellhead of a dream . . .
You don't want to call, trust me . . .
Confiding to a few intimates
will stem the tide of what, I'm not sure anymore . . .
Once captivating, now drudgery . . .
There are far too many shifts in this faux drama
meandering across the busy boulevard
spotted with coding samples from the latest release . . .
Take the funny and run, yes? . . .

Laura Zalenga






Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Screen Dump 808

So Double-Double-Toil-and-Stubble
takes the stage to assure the Academy
that he won't be egregious
acknowledging with record-setting windbaggery
that it can all go away . . .
His chewing gum thrown into a bath
of lemon and eucalyptus catalysts
begs a raging crisp outlined situation room . . .
uprooting doomed lovers
slumpingly caressing each scene
at the ruins of Ramesses II . . .
The red carpet frayed . . .
Acceptance speeches vaporized . . .
You too seem unsure of your lines
which regrettably is not all that uncommon
in these days of AI scripting
with writers and editors and influencers
tripping over one another
to comply with those signing their per diems . . .

Ramesses II


Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Screen Dump 807

You spent the morning scrubbing histories
of suburban notifications which seemed to have popped up
overnight in network logs . . .
AI spillage and then again what was it? . . .
You could have queried the odysseyites
who were eager to feather their maps with minutiae
spellbinding summit seekers . . .
You unfriended a chat by recounting the experience
of closing various gaps awash with celebratory shifts
to the astonishment of those in the antechamber
queuing up for the virtual red carpet . . .

Ellen von Unwerth



Monday, March 3, 2025

Screen Dump 806

Despite the after-hours rehearsals
there was never an overnight
just a quick wherewithal
and you were out . . . and about . . .
The flesh overrated, yes? . . .
And with that a different costume
supporting an expression of calm . . .
Surreal of calm, perhaps? . . .
No hint of disbelief . . . nope . . .
good, I suppose if you're determined
to argue a rewrite . . .
At least that's what was intimated . . .

Ellen von Unwerth


Sunday, March 2, 2025

Screen Dump 805

And now they've returned to their respective lives . . .
The dry brush technique may save the canvas
and open a door to a more genial interpretation of events . . .
Over and over again, the enchantment
brought everyone together . . .
You worry the bluntness of your new bob
but those arguments are insinuations
foreshadowing a sequence of ups and downs . . .
And what about the yellow tux? . . .
Such a shame to have jettisoned the BLT . . .
Was it part of your weight-loss mantra? . . .
I think your proportions marvel exactitude
of whatever was implied by that intrusive handle . . .
Forewarned, you stopped just short
of the nomenclature waiting in the siding
for the perplexed locomotive
to accept the consolation prize . . .
Take it, yes, take it . . .
Now you're back in front of the class
with your trigonometric underpinnings
which have a history of wowing counterinsurgents
on leave in the high peaks
managing silence with admirable refrain . . .
Yet another cardboard castle nestled in the wood . . .

Ellen von Unwerth



Saturday, March 1, 2025

Screen Dump 804

Excerpting obituaries might yield a clue
to the ornamentation favored by those
who think they're in the know . . .
The dry illumination will not help
despite what you've heard . . .
Sadly, they are no wiser for it . . .
You want to cut short the conversation? . . .
That could compromise the data
you've agreed to share . . . but I suppose
that happens more than we'd like to admit . . .
Falling as it does into the infinitesimal hole
in our consciousness, to plummet headlong
into the twenty-thousand leagues of notes . . .
A Captain Nemo type was found floating along
in an alphabetical undercurrent . . .
This has to be yet another wake-up call . . .

Hannes Caspar


Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Screen Dump 803

The fray resumes the fray
inundated with submissions for redactions . . .
It reminds you of everything
as if honing in on DNA
will unveil yet another double helix
in your backstory . . . 
At the feeders, black-capped chickadees,
whited-out, remain untroubled . . .
Autodidacts pay homage to autofictions
slanted autofictions
redacted autofictions
dripping in time to the musical notes
of someone else's autofiction . . .
The wizard . . . the wonderful wizard
spurns happenstance with remorse . . .
his almost comic anti-otherness
from the burnished depths
of his life as an accomplice
unfolds with complicity . . .
Missing persons clutter mental walk-ups
trying to insinuate themselves back
into your one wild and precious life
while Them-That-Got agree to convene
a solution . . . but there is no solution . . .

Noa Bachner


Tuesday, February 11, 2025

So I dumped my screen dumps into ChatGPT & got this reDump:

Worrying the linearity of it all . . .
Yet why embellish, twist the truth? . . .
Alright, so we’re all in on the trickery
of collapsing the distance between screen and self,
where nothing is truly as it seems -
as declared by those observing from the shadows . . .
the frozen breath of autumn clinging to the world . . .
But this puddle of prose still makes its way, yes? . . .
You see it, I see it, we all see it . . .
The fox moves easily through the frost
its coat, sleek and well-suited for winter’s bite . . .
Yet your voice, though layered, is fragile
tending to crack . . . much like Proust
dreaming of madeleine crumbs on the edge of memory . . .
Perhaps a subtlety hidden deep within
the algorithms of the next app update
or perhaps it’s the recurring rhythm of something else -
a subway car grinding through the quiet tunnels
hauling your restless thoughts from stop to stop . . .
Naturally, it’s all about perspective -
the point of view shifting like Joyce’s stream of consciousness
where words drift, ready to withdraw their invitation . . .

Will (by AI)

Friday, February 7, 2025

Screen Dump 802

Troubling yourself over the chronology of events . . .
But why the embellishments? . . .
OK, so the use of fourth-wall-pulverizing techniques
currently in vogue . . . bare bones judged idiomatically,
as announced, by the watchers at the gate . . .
the mortuary silence of winter . . .
But this cesspool of a script squeezed through, yes? . . .
You know it . . . we all know it . . .
Deer don't seem to mind the snow much
since their hair is hollow and a very good insulator . . .
But your words, camouflaged, are spindly . . .
prone to slippage . . . not unlike Mallarmé
holding a cigar in his hand
for Manet's portrait of him . . . 
Doubtless, a subtlety in Microsoft's latest release
with the clickety-clack on the trestle
of the train with its nightmarish boxcars . . .
Of course, the focalization or fragmentation
in Woolf's To the Lighthouse . . . words bobbing along
eager to terminate your membership . . .

Antonio Palmerini






Friday, January 31, 2025

 Screen Dump 532

(reposted from Thursday, November 26, 2020)

In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again
as my life is done in watermelon sugar.
          - Richard Brautigan

The iterations in needle towers lining the streets
trouble redundancy with their button-downess
and lucrative curbs . . . You sought monasticism
and safety and time off . . . eschewing the chatter
of masked players mired in the foibles
of middle and end games . . . escorting regret
at a moment's notice . . . Shocking, yes? . . .
the mess of moves that arrived with the pizza . . .
a meals-on-wheels sort of gig . . .
about to hold forth when your bishop pinned my queen
in watermelon sugar . . . and that was that . . .
We could consult the tale of the tape, I suppose . . .

Queen's Gambit Anya Taylor-Joy

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Screen Dump 801

As if traversing Wordle's words
on a walking pad
through a supermarket's aisles of innuendoes
all life long . . . all life long . . .
An ancient pipe organ with meantone tuning
insinuates
all stops pulled
encrypted with comforter
and mug of Kuchika tea . . .
a passing fancy seeps into the day
drifting into the free-floating white . . .
The fray awaits your arrival . . .
The Late Middle Ages? . . .
The revamp? . . .
Why now? . . .
The shakedown . . . a faded fiction . . . explanatory . . .
The opening scene . . . muted, yes? . . .
The Director's cut . . . a fashionista's foreplay . . .
with outtakes no less
to make do with the trancelike snow . . .
Indeed, the polyphony suits . . .

Kali Malone