Screen Dump 748

You concede a strange bunch of circumstances

abutting a consolation of sorts

nothing to complain about . . . yet

but someone's interior monologue is about to sound . . .

It could be UPS

in the guise of medievalism or innuendo . . .

You're tizzied over an early arrival . . .

Try not to get hammered again . . . there's no need . . .

not that there ever was . . . at least according to the transcript . . .

It could be just what the doctor ordered

not unlike when your development was muted

and you were on your clovenly way . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 747

Your rhyming dictionary is off the grid

cluttered with words

you meant to Uber . . .

Buybackers stream . . . yet another example

of wardrobe anxiety from your out-and-about days

of celebrity passcodes . . .

This will begin . . . and this too will begin . . .

dreamscapes overshadowing your vintage items . . .

Regressing to some well-worn route

leading to a floor-through apartment

filled with the clarity of your mirror image

warms on the back burner . . .

Nothing is ready for you . . .

Nothing will be ready for you . . .

Appointments are backed into double wides . . .

This is not new . . . consolation prizes

leak language barriers . . . a throwback to the days

you shopped for muffled noises

only to be disappointed by more days of exceptions . . .

or expectations, whatever . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump  746

Your costume mishap is a trailer park

and the horses in Patti Smith's

debut studio album are having none of it . . .

eating and drinking their shortlisted lives

in the orchard that went viral

while you studied your reflection

in a glass bead game not unlike Ahab's

he's dead but he beckons . . .

And here comes everybody's electronic music

with Moby whose middle name is Melville . . .

Patti Smith

Screen Dump 745

And now you're cutting and pasting . . .

exiting through the gift shop

with Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For? . . .

An uncertainty about how to live? . . .

A turning like the turning of the seasons? . . .

An image of a face from long ago

but the entanglement is like a train

leaving a station recalled

for a phrase rethought . . .

Enough to cross the bridge

with street cred and sky-high interest rate . . .

Not that you haven't been warned . . .

It's the unremitting arrogance

of a violist da gamba stopping by woods

on a snowy evening quoting from

a remaindered copy of How Should a Person Be? . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 744

The tiresome bobbing and weaving

obliterate the string of pearl days

basking in the unseasonable 50s . . .

What you thought you heard

is what you heard . . . at least

according to hearsay . . .

Emptying a bottle of invisible ink

to the Big Pharma of resolution

is an AI monologue composed

not from images but from words . . .

Objections disallowed by dissonance, yes? . . .

How can masterworks survive

in this forensic undercurrent? . . .

A din drifts in from the back room

where pleas are bargained

before headlining virtual tabloids . . .

Your lines riskng enjambment

will doubtless make the six o'clock news . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 743

Lately you've been lapse . . . and why is that? . . .

The intricacies of intimacy

with you elsewhere retooling your philosophy . . .

Nietzsche's We have art so we don't die of reality? . . .

Is that it? . . . OK, I'll play along

with the casual dress code

but now what? . . . now you're complaining

because you're telling me

that complaining kickstarts creating

and isn't that what we're all about? . . .

Like listening to someone's words

as if on the noisy soundstage of a silent film

or listening to a serial open mic reader

whose words supply a different narrative

every time someone texts

or listening to your own words

dress-coded for undertow with boxy takeaway . . .

Illusory, perhaps? . . .

Reupping with the help of an intimacy coach should do it . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 742

Thinking a reshoot of the end game

is one way to pass this late season snowstorm . . .

The hiking paths wait . . .

This pincushiony dynamic is offputting

to say the least . . . it can't help but raise a flag

to the 365 days of summer . . .

It's something to think about, I suppose,

especially when considering footwear

and the miles and lines to be traversed . . .

I hate to remind you but those cyberdays

keep coming back, their moves color-coded

for easy turnstiling . . . and more . . .

Flat screens are a turn on . . .

Reminds me of Miles cranking out however many hits

to fulfill his contract and join Columbia . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 741

You're turning the room inside out

looking for the missing link

you forgot to include in your email . . .

Rhode Island Reds cluck news feeds . . .

the regulated symbol in art

smearing your dreamscape lakeside

with the cinematography grammatical

to showcase your outré demeanor . . .

It's nothing . . . really, this imagining

as if one were willing to retreat

to a safer pop-up monastically . . .

even with everything curated, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 740

You're collapsing the story . . . but why? . . .

Why this segue into alienation

with voices at the back door? . . .

No, not gallows humor, not just yet . . .

You have come too far to fear the end . . .

of course, it's all about coming

at the drama from a distance

all stops pulled out

the perspective just that

and, what, you're trying to reel it in? . . .

You do recall the reshoot

after several lines had been cut

leaving you at loose ends, yes? . . .

a kind of detachment

even about the most intimate of details

fanning out like a stacked deck of cards

with the magician asking you to pick one . . .

There's more to it, sure, but let's not, not now . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 739

Fat Tuesday kicks off a super bowl of Cajun gumbo . . .

Cybersecurity mavens schedule colonoscopies

with iCloud colorways

as if keyboarding members of the alphabet

to guide a 20-wheeler through the woods of words

would be enough to maintain a daily stepcount of 10,000

for a buy-back from the gods of uncertainty . . .

Repurposing confidential information next to a dogbed

is a bullet train back to the future

where rehearsals are more rehearsals

and the game afoot raises the stakes

to a sub two-hour marathon

fixed on the window of a Magic 8 Ball . . .

The drama resurfaces in water under the bridge

quenching no one's thirst . . . with you

leaving the table of random numbers without a word

without finishing the song . . . driving away

into sheets of sound . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 738

You're riding the shapes of the books you have read . . .

the geometry of stories

etymological underpins

backstories

late night walks - real and imagined . . .

Self-mythologizing life's path or paths

however logical or reverential

may seem, if pressed against a whiteboard,

a mapping of your encounters

etched from bootleg tapes

whose words fill thought bubbles

alphabetizing utterances

from the street, the media, internet feeds . . .

It's not just that though is it? . . .

But what of hopscotching the ongoingness of paradox? . . .

A trifle? . . . the intoxicating trance? . . .

the blindness of happiness? . . . I mean

you seem to be coming into the country of the end game

as it is, or better, as it will be . . . an alternate stage

upon which you can enact or re-enact 

your one wild and  precious  life  . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 737

You're shadowing Kafka . . . with pointe shoes

spinning . . . spiraling . . .

into the tremendous world

inside his head 

then it's on to the drone

with the speed of a grizzly

but not whose woods these are . . .

the plaintiff continuing despite admonitions

with someone alleging misappropriation . . .

Again, the unbearable whiteness

before the conductor

raises her baton to begin

reeling-in the orchestra . . .

letting them know

where she wants them to go . . .

giving the impression

they're behind the beat . . .

But they know . . . yes, they know . . .

not unlike the time you waded into the water . . .

baptismally, perhaps? . . .

quoting Gilgamesh

the unbearable heaviness . . .

the emptiness of the endgame . . . moving . . .

wait, not moving, no longer . . .

A matinee . . . but not . . .

flip it . . . to a rendering of the terrain . . .

Leila Forés

The Ghosts Among Us

Death bench-presses a cosmos of darkness . . .

a friend's wife . . . a poet's partner . . .

The clock smirks . . .

It's not only life's etch-a-sketches

or the diagrammables

in the Kafkaesque cul-de-sac

but more . . .

which will play out . . . regardless . . .

Acknowledging re-acquaintances will buy time . . .

especially now with the truth-or-dare-isms

repotted in the guest room

where someone's once-and-future . . .

once waited . . .

There will be an ungodly number

of happenstances carried aloft

through the streets . . .

white chariots drawn by white horses . . .

The Trojan Horse will appear . . .

weighing history heavily . . .

And in the final moments of the final quarter

extras as ghosts will fly in

to make it all seem real . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 736

Having discarded the template-a-minute app

as an unbearable lightness

confused by impersonators

you engage the drudgery of filling in the slots

while polishing stones from a not-so-hidden cache . . .

Altogether now with meaning, yes? . . .

You're drifting off-course . . .

the day's minutia fogging the lens

to say nothing of wannabes warming up . . .

The little green room is plantless . . .

an amalgam of exchange

without dawn's pristine view

reaching back for a foothold

or facsimile

which in time will revisit this memory . . .

This is not without precedent

but the moment-to-moment displacement

is hard to accept . . . let alone confront . . .

Your call-ins have been duly noted . . . and archived . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 735

As if using a prepared piano

you explore the fringe between music and noise

experiencing emotions

as you write about them . . .

Is that something you even think about? . . .

Meaning? . . .

Cavorting with unbearables? . . .

Not sure . . .

but there always seems to be less to go on

especially when films echo the wavelengths of the lost

sitting with ferals napping on stoops . . .

Confronting silence with veiled undertones? . . .

Interpreted as joy? . . .

It's the presence, yes? . . .

That's it . . . the presence . . .

Questioning the call of odysseyites

inserting  pronouns to enhance palatability . . .

But didn't you say you were confused

by the struggle to make it all fit

into a nice little takeaway? . . .

OK, maybe elsewhere . . .

Forget the trends . . . rampant on the boulevards . . .

There's more to it than that . . .

the pounding at the back door, for example,

or the voided wishes of inoccupants in dilapidated storefronts . . .

It's probably worth the bother . . .

besides we all know you enjoy winging it

with the monochromatic subtones of early morning drivebys . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 734

The mesmerization of the airbnb . . . a loophole

to magic your audience into hypnotic submission . . .

scripting the maelstrom of your wiles

with alternative mysteries

leading to the decreation of egocentrics

who are left to wander the empty boulevards

of Walmart Supercenters . . .

Your promiscuity alchemical . . . its weird threads

seducing those on the edge of aftermaths

as if feeding an inner mindscape yet to be embraced . . .

Leila Forés

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

Screen Dump 729

Blue-lined notebooks fat with FAQs sideswipe

with indifference . . .

You deconstruct backstreets

and hang out at a kiosk,
the one with BOGOs of pics

of your former selves -

some then . . . some now -
sorting through fragments

of what might have been . . .
the read-through pristine yet unconvincing
as if bell lappers knew all along

your retreat into the backdrop . . .

There will be additions which you will fail

to anticipate . . . gorging yourself on hasbeens . . .

captivating onlookers with pretense

your costume re-engaging the opening masterfully . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 728

Is this why you rise early, brimming with alterations? . . .

Little matter . . . no one will be duped . . .

Nothing incidental here in the foundry of stamped emotion . . .
You can examine it, dissect it, take it for a walk . . .
without recrimination . . . without regret . . .
leaving indelible - and very real - turnabouts
for those who feel nothing about feeling nothing . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 727

And you in the ungraspable somewhere

flopping down on a couch

grabbing the remote
channel-surfing
leaping intuitively to the ending you must have . . .
these mere players playing their parts
their table-reads off the grid
between the lines
improvisational

winging-it
flying by the seat of their pants
scenes colliding, mounting to confusion . . .
The moment to moment . . .
Drafting the incense of homecoming
as you follow the directions . . .
the rights and lefts
climb the stairs, review your notes
one last time before entering . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 726

Your younger self on a dirt bike pulls up to a light

and the cameras roll into the next decade with ins and outs

tumbling through the paper drifts of assignments . . .

That was when you repainted your room

with your altered ego

leaving a memory of special effects in a milk truck

before dawn's early light . . .

The cavalcade of costumes was well worth the tag team takedown

when eyes wide shut for unknown reasons

stepped in from another season of reruns . . .

The confusion addictive

but then we were all in the mix of Mother Jones . . .

the Dickinsonian obliquesness

conducive to auditioning for different roles . . .

a shoo-in for this and that . . . this and that . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 725

Your spectrum of entanglements

continues to tickle comings and goings

Roman numerals stacked

fleeing into an anxious canyon

of choral meanderings

memories flooding the stairwell

evoked by the tracks on your mixtape . . .

You're checking out playlists

trying to throw light on the passage of time . . .

fragmentary dreamscapes

draw you in . . .

You've been tagged for a workgroup . . .

the behind-the-scenes incidence of intimacy . . .

It happens, yes? . . .

The days into weeks into months into years . . .

grasping at fillers to avert the inevitable? . . .

Sitting there,  smiling,

your tongue unleashed from its moorings . . .

unctuous in its wake . . .

as if regression took the wheel from some roadie

when, at the last misstep, you decide

to stay a while . . .

Antonio Palmerini