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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 as such . . .

A voucher for a turnaround has been duly noted . . .

Now tell me again what led you to this . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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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

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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

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Isn't it about time to finetune

the lawn tractor for a trip

to the seven wonders

of the neighborhood? . . .

Oreos sandwiched 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)

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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

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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

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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

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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? . . .

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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

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The edge of a conversation

a word here a word there

trying to piece together the fragments

trying to follow . . .

Then in the courtyard

somnambulists exchange dreams

but again you're out of the loop

so you retreat to the next chapter

of an instruction manual

filled with asemic writing

but the way in is the way out

adding to the mixtape

with tattlers exposing Easter eggs

for ventriloquists

in the throes of a talkout . . .

It's the same old same old infinite loops

from the first act breaking stride

sending the dappled engagement

off on its own golden goose chase . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 846

Has reading between the lines helped? . . .

What about the blank page? . . .

Is it the intimate interiority

of a different life floating in

at all hours . . . covered with snow

that keeps you young, yes? . . .

keeps you moving across

the mind's moors . . . visiting

metaphysical what-ifs, haystacks,

brick-and-mortar clock towers

the inevitability of the postponed

as you try to fit into place

the last piece of the puzzle . . .

The dropdown menu of possible endings . . .

The wherewithal coming into view . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Can anyone die without even a little bit of poetry?

          - Mark Strand

A sudden anticipation . . . this routine of words

portending immortality . . . however fantasized . . .

A dialectic with obscurity and belatedness

participating in various dreamscapes . . .

weather mounting . . . offshore . . . rain moving in . . .

Apollo clutches Daphne . . .

You clutch a mug of morning coffee

and you get it, yes? . . . this parallel dimension

where you appear . . . unannounced

in dress rehearsals for your present waking life . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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The rustic earworms of your fantasies

storyboard Paradise Found

as you review choices made

in your past shuddered life . . .

eroticisms whispering Etch A Sketch images

infusing your DNA with new ways

into your days . . . without which

but that would be what? . . .

impastos unshackled? . . .

the clock continuing . . .

this unnecessary cupping of hands, yes

awaiting a sign . . . on this snowy night

traveling through the secret air

down the steep, down the stops, down the deepenings

until asleep . . . dreaming . . . mirrors, faces, all . . .

Kelly Boesch

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The answer in question awaits

costumed and ready . . .

There's little sense

in mapping the route

or in reconstructing the argument . . .

The cat has escaped the bag

with dissertations

waiting in the wing

to move in and have at it . . .

Just look at it differently . . .

Kierkegaard's rotation method, yes? . . .

You have passed the Driver's Test

and are finally roadworthy . . .

Advisors are at your beck and call . . .

Soon you will be off and out . . .

No need to be squeamish . . .

Kelly Boesch

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An unkindness of ravens stalks you

with forked-tongue misdirection

pulling labels, stalling the machine . . .

You fear for your inertness,

intimidated and defensive . . .

the question, How Should A Person Be?

drops with forged watercolors . . .

And now word salad is being served

as placation . . . but the bigger story . . .

yes, the bigger story . . .

Abecedarian assemblages are no exception

with beauty the answer

and not just that . . .

so thoroughly disrupting

the urge to impose,

through a sense of your evolving self

despite the irrepressible narrative . . .

Sheila Heti

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A closed timeline curve plasters walls

with canary flyers opening to the fluidity

of dreamscapes . . . Everyone is inked . . .

in solidarity . . . the word out is beyond scary

looping back onto itself . . . painstakingly

slow black-and-white panning

squeezing scripts to fit the moment . . .

the experience . . . a thousand voices . . .

You raise your hand and are dropped . . .

Kelly Boesch

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Painting with a muted palette . . .

the foreboding promiscuity head-butting

to tempt happenstance

but how to do it

without intentionality, yes? . . .

Trails groomed by AI . . .

Objects of desire vanishing . . .

There is no joy in Mudville . . .

A Magic 8 Ball rolls in

with Ask again later . . .

Now what? . . .

Are you ready to click Resume? . . .

OK, maybe go with the cosplay? . . .

but what if a much of a which of a wind

{in fact} gives truth to the summer's lie? . . .

Kelly Boesch