Screen Dump 863

This piece will have to do for now . . .
There should be enough in it to keep you busy
especially the second movement
with its surprising reprieve . . .
There will be coffee of course
and days squandered

before confusion enters the room

and bolts the door . . .
Again this year the soil will be turned
hours set in motion against the dwindling light
yielding memories like meaty tidbits
picked at by gnarly-clawed
Rhode Island Reds, eager for freedom . . .

Screen Dump 862

There's the anvil again

and the rythmic strikes of the hammer

on the red-hot steel

re-shaping the drill point

while the road crew chills with smokes

next to their idling rig . . .

And the Rhode Island Reds

with their strange, soft, drawly clucking

filling the air

milling about outside the coop

scratching for worms

with gnarled, yellow claws . . .

the clotheslines . . .

attached to the telephone pole

squeak in harmony

with a push mower

and with the bell in the cherry trees

shooing away Robins . . .

You're trying to connect the dots

hungry for meaning

now with age more interested in narrative

as the bell lap sounds

in the roll and stretch of a dream . . .

the same dream . . .

the same black and white dream . . .

fearing so many things

a terrible kind of proof

so as not be crushed

by the stupid or the vacant  or the void . . .

There's this scene in Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

with a young woman sitting next to a stove

with its pot of boiling potatoes

looking out the window at the dust storm

imagining other worlds . . .

The Turin Horse (2011)

Screen Dump 861

The argument collapsed and you were left

sifting through the shape of water . . .

The can of spray paint

used to highlight the separate steps

was found and dusted . . .

with odysseyites analyzing the has-been . . .

A beautiful mind was awakened

to walk among and comment on

the plantings . . . a horticultural escapade

for those in the know . . .

Counting worked wonders

and in no time the path to the argument

was uncovered and made presentable

which seemed to have been part of the plan

from the get-go . . .

Paolo Roversi

Screen Dump 860

You're asking about the doors

and why they're opening and closing

and why Kafka's path - beginning middle end -

had to have been put down simultanously

as corroborated by footage

that didn't exist . . .

So a walk in the garden among the peerless

the moment you realize

the connections that the writer/director

had diligently worked out

in the late hours of their mind . . .

It's not so much the expansion

of thoughts as it is the extension . . .

the detritus of the day-to-day

with meanderers choosing happiness . . .

aloud no less so that others might appreciate

their impulsivity and the seedlings

scattering in time to the second movement

of the drama unfolding in your backstory

despite the missing pages . . .

Where to go next? . . .

But there's time . . . yes, there's time . . .

Paolo Roversi

At the Transfer Station

Rain sheets the windows of the black Dodge.

There’s a young guy in the passenger seat

and he’s giving you the thumbs up.

His grandfather is unloading the Dodge.

You're getting soaked, wrestling trash bags

out of your SUV, but you stop, put down the bags,

and give him the thumbs up.

From my Proust's New Eyes

Albertine Simonet is Marcel’s mistress . . .

Marcel is the narrator of Marcel Proust’s

seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu . . .

In Search of Lost Time . . .

Marcel is Proust . . .

Marcel is obsessed with Albertine . . .

He wishes to possess her . . . to own her . . .

Albertine appears in three of the seven volumes . . .

Her name occurs 2,363 times . . . on 807 pages . . .

Albertine is first seen pushing her bicycle

on a beach . . . skirts billowing . . .

Marcel will return again and again to this image . . . 

Albertine is asleep in 19 percent of the novel . . .

Asleep, she becomes a plant . . .

her hair like crinkly black violets . . .

Proust uses plants as metaphors

for female sexual desire . . .

In The Albertine Workout the poet Anne Carson

notes that plants expose their genitalia . . .

Marcel observes that sometimes in her sleep

Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked . . .

Hence, Proust’s fascination with sleep . . .

Fade to black . . .

Screen Dump 859

But more often it has to do with

insecurity or the desire to impress . . .

So they copied the painting

signed their name

and sold the painting . . .

Is this a problem? . . .

Hybridization opens a door . . .

The confluence of theory

and autobiography . . .

a no-brainer as you walk off

to look for America . . .

Would you care to elaborate

on the unique building blocks

of your interiority

all magically held together

with Elmer's Glue? . . .

But these trifles

will suck the living daylights

out of your fabrication

leaving you picking nits . . .

rearranging the colors on your palette

with ultramarine blue

in the twelve o'clock position . . .

Read the draft

as if it's the first time

to see if you've veered too far

off the yellow brick road . . .

If you want to remake a point

just go for it so to speak

in the moment

regardless that all hell

will break loose . . .

The normativity of stringing words

is choreographic . . . the listener

playing catch-up and enjoying it . . .

You were here . . . We were here . . .

just a moment ago . . . and now we're gone . . .

vaporized . . . poof! . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

Screen Dump 858

A voice warns not to sweat imprecision . . .

It's easy to drop names

gaslighting the insecure

into interpreting grocery lists

for identity thieves

posing as Alice . . . in Wonderland

sacking drivebys

doubletalking wordplay

cluttering walkups . . .

Just think makeshift or landlubber

and you'll be fine and dandy . . .

Numbering your thoughts

will doubtless serve the same purpose

until the Uber arrives

to take you to the neighborhood

medical pop-up for a quick look . . .

And what’s with the local chapter

of hand wringers? . . .

They seem exasperated . . . but why? . . .

Imagine everyone elsewhere . . .

What then? . . .

Overdubbing the verbal miasma

will open the floodgates

to a double header

where you'll be able to enjoy

the warning track

without hitting the wall . . .

Calling out for pizza

has again jammed the works

of this run-around-in-circles

kind of day . . .

Addenda have lost

their sense of purpose . . .

You are sliding off the edge

of the looking glass

while documenting rapid physical changes

transformative changes . . .

curiouser and curiouser . . .

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You're freighted with imaginary concerns

highlighting text for tomorrow's comealong . . .

Someone called in a lockdown . . .

Confrontational aesthetics is today’s special 

with teams of horses circling the wagons . . .

The stop-and-go is standing down . . .

You are stop-actioned by the congestion

at the roundabout and throw the dice

out the window . . . A voucher for a turnaround

has been duly noted . . . Now tell me again

what led you to this . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 856

You're calibrating a Bloch sphere

highlighting symbols in an aspiration space . . .

Cartoon characters are on deck

disturbing the peace

hammering the latest modifictions

you signed off on . . .

So it's good I guess that you've called in

for a personal day

the outer crust, the parched surface . . .

Nothing can be said

about the rhyming dictionary

that elbowed its way in

with detached conversations . . .

Someone just threw in the towel . . .

A long period of adjustment is about to launch . . .

Variable cloudiness is pouring in

with locals awaiting direction

like kites slipping along ramps of air . . .

an open-air theater

the fourth wall under construction . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 855

You are released with a nametag

and operating instructions . . .

The Best of . . . leaks cantankerousness . . .

The opening was abysmal

with a smattering

of almost but not quite . . .

Reliving the future, yes?

with outtakes stuffing the iCloud

counting on Number Theory

to turn the tide of indifference . . .

What's the ETA? . . .

You had better plan for a rewrite

in cuneiform loaded with appositives . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 854

Isn't it about time to finetune

the lawn tractor for a trip

to the seven wonders

of the neighborhood? . . .

The days when Oreos sandwich in . . .

The peeling paint on this two-story

hides a medieval mural with cryptograms

awaiting decoding . . .

You're enjoying a beefsteak tomato

from the neighbor's garden

thinking cello lessons

with the retired music teacher

down the block . . . back home

after a stroke . . . Your autofiction

pops up in a snow globe

on a piano in a doilied parlor

where a tabby kneads a dream

between bouts of stripping wax

at the elementary school

while visitors to the cemetery

across the road

place pebbles on the headstones

of little-known castrati . . .

The full catastrophe is on standby . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Gone

You have faced the final storm,

and now float, high above the seas,

guiding fellow sailors,

your last words, Goodbye, my love.
The days have begun to lighten;
the nights are open windows.
I turn the soil for a vegetable garden:
tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.
Rhode Island Reds appear
scratching for worms

with gnarled, yellow claws.
My grandfather, a blacksmith,

is here, too, from the dead,
a stubby Philip Morris

dangling from his lower lip.
He speaks to me, in Polish, about happiness.

Catherine Connolly (July 7, 1969 - April 5, 2012)

Screen Dump 853

You revisit memories

knowing that soon some will be overwritten

permanently deleted . . .

Several refuse to come out . . .

Others waffle . . .

A long ball into the right field bleachers

the runners advancing

too late now to rethink the gameplan . . .

You too had to be dragged in here

by the scruff of the neck

pockets turned out, shoes and socks removed,

trying to buy time, incoherent . . .

and then, of course,

the room you pretend doesn't exist . . .

Sorry, but the title has been reworked . . .

The scene rewritten . . .

Someone had to do it, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 852

Voiceovers of dress rehearsals

with you in the wings

running lines for passersby . . .

the moment fanning out

to memories of desire . . .

And so it returns . . .

the insistence of wind

in the guise of the lost . . .

players cast about for alternatives

losing themselves in the paroxyms of reason

grief segmenting the past

making it more interesting

than it possibly could have been . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 851

Why this urge for clarity? . . .

for lucidity? . . .

A Range Rover bloated with conceit

edges onto a logging road . . .

Shapeshifting bemusement

as you drop a bucket into the stream

and piece together the polyphony . . .

Begin at the beginning? . . .

You have traveled the island

collecting peculiarities

picking the actual over the real . . .

spending your allotment

thumbing up-close and personals . . .

The moments float by on a continuum . . .

Ducks in a row, yes? . . .

This self-preservation mode is a how-to

bordering elsewhere

like everything . . . in need of revision . . .

giving of yourself with no turning back . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 850

You inhabit fragmentation

the ins and outs

ups and downs

going through the motions

taking notes

revising scripts . . .

Everything obscured . . . obliterated . . .

layered over, as Hockney would say . . .

Matthew Brady, moving the Civil War dead

instead of the cameras . . . making it more . . . 

You talk about likes . . .

and the drama:

Call me Ishmael and all that

through however many chapters

until the Rachel appears, and finds you clinging

to drowned Queequeg's coffin . . .

A theater of lockdown drills

students huddling in the corners of rooms

doors shut

shouting sirens gunshots drones whistles engines . . .

A Day in the Life . . .

I read the news today oh boy . . .

But what of the reliability of retrospection? . . .

The eyewitnesses' embellishments . . .

unintentional yet instrumental . . .

How you enter the frame and alter it . . .

Enter the room and the conversations change . . .

You're not surprised, are you? . . .

The Doobie Brothers' Takin' It to the Streets

and you on lunch break from the bureaucracy

with a reference librarian

and they're doing a sound check

and people are beginning to segue

into the weekend . . .

he said . . . she said . . . muddied . . .

Wait . . . let's run through that again . . .

Warmify it this time, please . . .

Manipulate the image . . .

Move the dead . . .

Later, comparing notes

for the retrospective report due Monday morning . . .

In search of . . .

recording days

with a small 70's style reel-to-reel tape recorder

the loud silences

the ambient buybacks

the magic of a perfect day

convinced that there is such a thing

that it's not a fiction . . .

that there is in fact a perfect day 

not unlike the perfect day

in the film directed by Wim Wenders

about Hirayama, a janitor

who finds beauty in the world

cleaning public toilets in Tokyo . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 849

Semantic drift leaves you stuck mid-thought

on the slippery slope of your backstory

with corners folded . . .

In the last scene you redact emptiness

on the deck of a steamship

ferrying steampunkers

to an island of breakdown lanes

echoing the cacophony for multiple voices

when midnight matters little . . .

Particulates contaminate the River Styx

with the pushback taking on a life of its own . . .

Soon a moment of silence . . . Have you AI'd? . . .

Screen Dump 848

You're filming the in-between moments

with a hand-held camera . . .

You're pretty sure they mean something . . .

The power grid of your memory

is not a black hole

nothing like that at all

with crumbling facade along an overgrown path

sprouting shoutouts of Data Breach

expecting somersaults at inopportune times

begging for an unpacking of subject matter

thrown out in the last downsize . . .

It's the in-between moments, again, yes? . . .

the in-between moments

that have to be filled

with something, anything? . . .

How about the box of loose ends? . . .

The latest opening was cringeworthy

made more so by the late start . . .

You were perfect for the backlot scene

before you went underground with hobblers

following a trolley loaded with ho-hums

reimagining how it might have played out

if happenstance hadn't happened along

with innuendoes roaring over you

like an unscripted mudslide . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Outtakes

(reposted from Friday, June 15, 2012)

I am not now that which I have been.
          - Lord Byron

You befriend a Chinese Puzzle Box,
walk through scenes of over-rehearsal and exasperation.
The (mis)direction is good for both of you.

This time without the backdrop.
You begin to lose interest, yes?
Nonetheless, proceed as if smearing paint on canvas.

Forget the image. There is none.
Wing it.
Let yourself be enveloped by the drama

of the moment, the spontaneity
of the lens, the elements of time captured.
Bemoan the loss.

Again, this time with tension.
The method is beside the point
resurfacing as binaries

which down the road will have their say
striking a chord with many.
(Pretend an audience.)

See how far you can take it.
The surprise will be costumed in the next chapter
however oppositional.

Antonio Palmerini