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Everyone's desperate for a foothold in this huge, wild conversation.

          - Alena Smith, showrunner, Apple TV+'s Dickinson

You enjoy a kind of invisibility as if you had never existed . . .

a stand-in for the person-of-disinterest

an Emily Dickinson shadowing Lady Madonna

legitimizing your essential strangeness by respecting boundaries . . .

Outside your bedroom window agoraphobes

pitch headstone rubbings capturing

what had once maybe slipped through the cracks . . .

A transformational grammar for pilgrims, yes? . . .

Odysseyites shelve quips in the cereal aisle at the supermarket . . .

eyeballing masked auditioners wielding shopping carts

with the naiveté of neighborhood know-it-alls . . .

Recognizable voiceovers nix invitations to the dance . . .

the sun wakes to discarded dance cards written up as nuance

an opening to squeeze through whenever

with your doctored script for next season's miniseries . . .

ideas appropriated from unreliable narrators . . .

Return to the photograph of the wedding party . . .

The rehearsal was an empty place setting . . . more or less . . .

 

Screen Dump 550

Produce carts drive the day . . . in streets painted over

with matte Rothkovian black on grey

and someone somewhere with Ticonderoga #2s

etch-a-sketching their way through a biopic

streaming on Netflix for I'm not sure what

jots notes to be archived and auctioned off . . .

You appear pocketed wearing Palladiums

insisting on retracing the backstory

which held promise for temps forecast in the 50s . . .

Indeed, spring is springing . . .

Renewal advances with drum and bugle

while odysseyites toes spooning mud enter with arms waving

as if fist-bumping butterflies flown in for the shoot . . .

Schiele's Ghost

After he died from the Spanish flu in 1918 at age 28, the ghost of artist Egon Schiele, whose painting "Houses With Colorful Laundry (Suburb II)" sold at Sotheby's London in 2011 for $40 million, moved into my neighbor’s pigeon coop. The pigeons were racing homers. My neighbor would let them out every day to exercise. They would fly in circles above the neighborhood. Schiele would sometimes help. On race days my neighbor and Schiele would transport the pigeons to the starting location, release them, drive back home, and wait for them to return. When a pigeon returned, my neighbor would remove a band from its leg and insert it into a time clock. Finishing times would be recorded and compared to determine the winner. The pigeon coop had a coal stove. Schiele would warm his hands over it. I liked to dribble spit onto the surface and watch it bounce around. This would annoy Schiele. Schiele lived on blueberry pop tarts and Austrian sausages. He spent most of his time drawing female nudes. A book I looked at in the library said that Schiele's art was noted for its intensity and raw sexuality. That was good enough for me. I liked Schiele’s nudes. So did my neighbor. Schiele gave my neighbor one of his drawings in return for rent. My neighbor said that Schiele could stay in the coop for as long as he liked. My neighbor's wife didn't like Schiele. She said he was not welcome in the house. She wasn't happy about him living in the coop but tolerated it because of her husband. She said Schiele's drawings were disgusting. They were the work of the devil. I would visit Schiele most days after school and on weekends. He was usually happy to see me. He would say "Welcome to my studio." He didn't refer to it as a coop or loft. He called it a studio. He would offer me some leftover blueberry pop tarts and Austrian sausage. We would chat for a bit but not for long because it was hard to hear one another over the cooing of the pigeons. Then he would get back to drawing naked women. I would keep one eye on the naked women and the other on the lookout for my mother who didn't like me visiting Schiele. Like my neighbor's wife my mother didn't like Schiele either. She too thought his drawings were disgusting. She said that if I looked at Schiele's naked women drawings I would go blind. That didn't stop me. Schiele loved magic markers. He had tons of them in all colors. He would use them to draw the naked women. He would draw on a drafting table, on top of his small refrigerator, on a shelf, on the floor. He would sometimes climb onto the roof of the coop and draw there. He usually drew from memory but would occasionally bring a woman into the coop. When he did he would say that he had to concentrate, and politely ask me to leave. He once invited three women into the coop. It got really crowded. The pigeons got really excited. They got really loud. My neighbor came out of his house and knocked on the door of the coop. He said something to Schiele. The women left. That was the end of Schiele's life studies. After that he drew only from memory. A few weeks later a circus came to town. Schiele became smitten with the bearded strong woman. He drew her day and night. He was fascinated by her triceps and calves, her facial hair styled in a Van Dyke, and her baritone voice. He loved to watch her "pick things up and put them down." Schiele joined the circus and left town. After my neighbor died, his widow got rid of the pigeons and paid me fifty bucks to knock down the coop.

Egon Schiele

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Serialization began in Anderson and Heap's The Little Review

on the Quaker Weaver's dime . . .

A good day? . . . two sentences . . . woo-hoo! . . .

Within reach . . . or so it seemed . . .

bespoked flatware for HCE . . .

digress to the window shade that nearly did Trismegistus in . . .

Imagining Emily's frigate . . . and then some . . .

Hi from brother's brother in the weight room . . . waiting . . .

translated from the short-short The Night Of . . .

then, on to today's virtual with open to

as images of reps of what might have been flood the gym

leaving odysseyites stranded in the stacks at Barnes & Noble

paging through How To's as if words could rewrite history or his story

deflected because Anna Plura

espied a tête-à-tête among the free weights . . .

Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby & Widow Wadman

 Screen Dump 548

The rendering captured the rift quite compellingly . . .

No one was being promoted

on the breakers at all hours hoping

for a green light

from the series of quarantine streaming on Amazon Prime . . .

Stop with the punctuation already . . .

Take a moment to paint by numbers . . .

Making progress despite the animosity

in the shredded documents . . .

How did you know? . . .

Was it that apparent from the color-coded Venn diagrams? . . .

What about that time you followed the green footprints

painted on the floor and were forced into a toll booth

strip-searched and released into a short circuit

upsetting the cart comparing apples and oranges . . .

Or those moments in time when foreplay was unnecessary

yet desirable despite being blue-penciled

and stuffed into marble composition tablets . . .

Jarek Kubicki

 Screen Dump 547

It didn't matter . . . the shifting of your tectonic plates

leading to a blind alley with a blind singer with a menu . . .

There once was a crooked cat

but she skipped Chapter Three

and held out for more . . .

as if walking through a wall and resurfacing

with the closing credits . . .

I was happy not to be there although I didn't know it

with the outage and all . . .

It's not unlike anything else . . .

trying to fit into the costumes dictated by a half-eaten script

just enough dialogue I suppose . . .

You were able back then . . . but now with the wearing away

it's doubtful that the resumption will be approved

by the self-appointed trigger-happy usurpationists

with their philosophy of blah posting remarks made in haste . . .

Jarek Kubiki

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In the film you return to the temple

where an Egyptologist decodes the symbolism

in the placement of lines in this poem . . .

The dig fills with tana leaves

for a confusion of mummification . . .

You begin counting hidden chambers

crowding meaning off the grid

the elements of your Honors English style

tossed out the window

along with friends with benefits

at six degrees of separation

or five degrees of freedom

the statistics course from your first semester

troubling you with symbols

from the professor who wanted you desperately

to publish and perish

after leaving academia

for the bright lights, big city

of Alice's Wonderland

where socially-distant rehearsals

for an adaptation of King Lear in mime

took on a life of their own with wolves

howling silently like crazy for Cordelia . . .

Andrea Riseborough in Luxor (2020)

 Screen Dump 545

The reader peering out of the lines

of this poem filled with happenstance

steps back 60 years

to a wiffle ball game on a dead end street

in an old neighborhood . . .

A viewer pausing the stream

to raid the fridge . . . reminds us

that syntax creates tension . . .

backpedaling on a polished surface

as players shaking in their

Chuck Taylor All Stars

step up to the plate . . .

It is a time of ambiguity . . .

episodes tumble out helter skelter

for analysis by anchors

broadcast live in fuzzy black and white . . .

The wiffle ball game began

in the heat of noon

and continued into twilight . . .

Stoop sitters . . . with drinks . . . watched . . .

among them long-legged Trudi

who lived alone in a first-floor flat . . .

a regular . . . cigarette in one hand

Zippo in the other

in curlers, mascara, and white short-shorts

zippered in back

who later slid into the back seat

of a black DeVille

leaving the players with two men on

and a full count of 14-year-old wet dreams

sucking on plastic-tipped Tiparillos

pilfered from May's News . . .

a front for numbers

on the corner of Hibbard and James . . .

the backstory left sitting alone

beneath the dim dead end street light . . .

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976)

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The day . . . drenched in AI . . . opens with intermissions . . .

Someone somewhere over the rainbow perhaps is soliloquizing . . .

This shift in paradigm is busting out of jail . . .

The omniscient one . . . elsewhere . . .

continues to worry the lightening-fast script changes . . .

needless . . . by most accounts . . .

Your text flips the conceit of strangers passing you around

in the language of tractor trailers with assigned seats . . .

Big rigs . . . come and go . . . flustered . . . idling the early morning fog . . .

The ice rink looms . . . festooned unexpectedly . . .

You will attempt a pirouette sometime today and get YouTube'd

and your aside will begin . . . trapped in imperfection . . .

It was here . . . yes, here . . .

Roberto Kusterle

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Why bother with the acquisition list? . . .

The pixilation is out of control

last seen heading north on Main . . .

We can try to maintain the pretense of dumbfoundedness

but that might backfire . . .

Remember the incident with the globalists

who insisted on pawn to queen four

as a way into the Annuls of Memes? . . .

You were always good at connecting the dots

using that app you had introduced

to the excavators when they were called in

to bid on the burial mounds that you insisted

had appeared overnight . . .

Carey Mulligan & Ralph Fiennes in The Dig (2021)

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The kitties have had enough of that meteorologist

enamored of Kelvin . . .

Funny but the third quarter is where it's at

or at best where it was . . .

Shouldn't we release the system stats? . . .

I mean we're talking the second floor here, yes? . . .

Those fortunate enough to read the Snellen Chart

have a foot up on the competition

giddily floating in acqueous humor . . .

Combining a beret with lugged combat boots

is awesome . . . the ensemble filled

with short stories of artsy types

inhabiting cliffside villages . . .

I can see a skiff in the blue Mediterranean of your eyes . . .

Let's head into town before the snow

for a glass of red . . . masked of course . . .

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The disclosure clause upended terrestrial inhibitions

carrying us through the hump day

with its inane number of edits . . .

You'll know something perfectly well

and it will drive insinuators crazy with its fill in the blanks . . .

It too was created by looking back . . .

But don't try that at home . . .

The endpoint visited many times over the years . . .

Now what? . . . Appending a blurb to the latest? . . .

The past, as thick as chowder, clings

especially when the image staring back at you is scary . . .

There once was a way around . . .

and its accomplices knew the ins and outs

as well as the bluesy flatted third played at the audition . . .

Liliana Karadjova

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The graying grave of dawn plays undress

rehearsal . . . costumes pretty much black . . .

impossible to rock the magical mystery tour

as the snow deepens . . . muffling the lines

of odysseyites penciled in to break

the ennui buffering an a capella . . .

the religion of the flesh vaporizing

the loneliness of cancelled trampoline Q&As . . .

You enjoy the tease of a hungry eye

the person-of-feigned-disinterest sideways

in an eChair . . . your erotic other

suspensefully suspended

taking notes for up-and-comers

who appreciate the coziness of UGGs

before engaging a KenKen puzzle

not unlike Scheherazade's 1000th story

wherein players applied essential oils

to glide their choreographed arms and legs

glistening in a mirrored room . . .

The disrober again as sage . . .

while in the dimly-lit hallway you play

cat-and-mouse with the ease of a stroll in the park . . .

Liliana Karadjova

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Is it simply a question of repagination

or a readjustment of logistics

a tweaking of the inbetweeners

pirated from Pixar? . . .

The thrumming of errors . . . the backrooms of denial. . .

silenced momentarily by the ecstasy

of Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa . . .

Walking on the beach . . . dipping dangling curls

in the surf . . . comparing biopics

without fear of fallout

from clashes . . . or clichés . . . despite

the rampant insomnia . . . however interpreted

by different metrics . . .

exemplars off the charts . . .

No worries . . .

The missing five easy pieces have reappeared

and are ready for their audition

as the chicken salad sand held between your knees . . .

Have you again misplaced the script? . . .

How not to undo the override . . .

the misdirection way more than it's cracked up to be . . .

more than the lockdown days of COVID . . .

binge-watchers glued to screens

of two roads diverging into The Twilight Zone . . .

The Twilight Zone

Here's the poem our sixth and youngest inaugural poet Amanda Gorman delivered at President Joe Biden's inauguration:

The Hill We Climb

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry.

A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:

A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

Our blunders become their burdens.

But one thing is certain.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sun-baked South.

We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

The new dawn balloons as we free it.

For there is always light,

if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Amanda Gorman

Emptiness

by Hana Sheedy-Corrado

For three days

I have been unable to put my thoughts

into words.

My mind is loud

but I remain quiet.

It runs in circles.

It makes me feel small

worthless

pathetic

but most of all, hopeless.

My mind feels like Times Square -

busy loud . . . and scary.

Yet here I sit

in my own head

screaming

crying

begging for help

as everyone walks by

as if they're unable to see how close I am

to the edge.

All I feel is emptiness.

But the silence . . . the silence

is loudest of all.

The silence is what will push me

over the edge.

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The seventh circle . . . violence . . . ugliness . . .

examining the evidence . . . reviewing the images . . .

shapes and sizes and disparities

in what we remember (or choose to remember)

until memorialized in the fuzziness of language . . .

You think back . . . and experience the urge . . .

For what? . . . Happenstance? . . .

Suddenly, the labyrinth . . .

They were dropped into labyrinths, you said . . .

labyrinths of suffocation . . .

of  anomalies of closets filled with costumes

balancing the compositions of others from those years . . .

those far back years . . .

Gustave Doré

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You are inundated with incomprehensibles

while stand-ins flown in for the insurrection

make do with backyard gymnastics . . .

texting backups for the inevitable underpin . . .

It seems unsafe to pick up where we left off . . .

the peacefulness kicked in the groin

by known assailants sucked-in by promises

of fields of dreams . . .

Rhetorical questions hold the answers . . .

The Fall of Rome

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The why of long haulers . . .

Everyone is hunkered down . . . and masked

as craziness plunders the world . . .

You wake to unawares

without notebook or pencil . . .

wearing a cold . . . worrying compassion . . .

What is the most we can hope for? . . .

January 6, 2021

Closings

(revised & reposted from Tuesday, March 1, 2011)

The impastos and gouaches

in the small gallery on the third floor,

the long-limbed bronzes

crowding the poorly lit hallways,

the after-hour departures

rehung as an homage to the lives

of the long coats and wide brims

that filled the spaces between the shows

before fleeing the city

are not unlike the masked visitors

who drifted through,

pausing occasionally for a closer look

at the work of the brush or painting knife,

the blending of color,

the play of light and dark,

scribbling their lives,

page after page,

revision upon revision,

against the collage of bare branches

in the courtyard

moving to the rhythm of the wind

amid the color fields of seasons

with their unmet promises,

their empty rooms,

their orphaned boulevards.

Chris Abani

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The heart at the heart at the heart, yes? . . .

You knew this . . .

There should have been more . . .

Again, please? . . .

OK, what about the empty box at the entrance to your dream? . . .

That should have been enough . . .

What? . . .

Death rolled through . . .

You escaped into the peaks and valleys of immunization . . .

It's not like I didn't warn you . . .

I don't know . . . scammed and spammed shadows of PCs

crashing Windows plug and play players

waiting for the New Normal . . .

The endgames . . . the betting parlors . . .

iPhones aimed at unmasked stoners smoked out of hiding . . .

The last one out insisting it would all come in handy . . .

As? . . .

To unlock the door to the library where you spent

your early years perfecting the turning of pages . . .

That too sparked interest . . .

especially your work as barista

preparing orders . . .

serving eyes filled with anticipation and dread . . .

And later the conjoinment . . . fictitious yet detailed . . .

while outside snow flaked and accumulated . . .

Again, please? . . .

Why? I don't see the point to this . . .

To what? . . .

You whispering an emotion to me and I'm supposed to translate it

into a facial expression? . . .

There's really no need to resubmit your application . . .

No need to recolor your shapeshifting former lovers . . .

pockets filled with midnight passes . . .

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If on a winter's night a traveler

enters an empty room

and sits on the floor to read a book

about a reader reading a book

about a reader . . .

You wake to find yourself

peering through the befogged glass windows

of an old train

steaming across a snowy landscape . . .

Over and over . . . and over . . . my boys . . .

Navigating a snowstorm

in a rusted-out hulk of a car

whose ragtop sleeps with the fishes

is the beginning of a short story

about you . . . and not you . . .

You are about to empty

your deleted items folder . . .

You are about to knock on the door

of a no-longer empty room . . .

A reader reading about a reader

looks up . . . over his bifocals . . .

His bifocals reflect images

which tell of

lost time and lost loves . . .

A round-robin reunites players

with their parts . . .

The immensity of missing pieces

is enough to enjamb the patterns on a chessboard . . .

The white player is checked . . .

The remainder numbs . . .

You bump it up to the next level . . .

There are seven . . .

You are fed a lie . . . and enter a funhouse

with walls of mirrors . . .

Your crinoline costume speaks in tongues . . .

A tale of two . . .

going up . . . going down . . . going . . . going . . .

back to the back to the back to the . . .

In the distance . . . distortion . . .

If not for distortion, then? . . .

Trying to salvage the moment

or the memory of a moment

or the moment of a memory . . .

you return to . . . an empty room . . .

If on a winter's night a traveler . . .

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3D printing the monkeyBarr translates

into a nocturnal emission of guilt . . .

Parties party around a monolith . . .

It zigzags . . . hems and haws . . .

morphs into a two-party playdate

with the them-that-do-not-got . . .

Other monoliths spring up . . .

A winter storm watch checks in

to a no-tell motel in Houston . . .

We have a problem . . .

A masked man unmasks

and is brought down . . .

You tram home . . . disembodied . . .

sidestepping Jeopardy sans Alex . . .

a sad entry

into the deaths be not proud . . .

What’s the point of it all? . . .

What makes us TikTok? . . .

You watch the I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat episode

of The Sopranos . . .

Tony, Paulie Walnuts, and Silvio

whack FBI informant

Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero

on a yacht in the Atlantic

with enough balls and whistles

to resink the Titanic

with tantric popsicles

for those displaying

their homespun compassion . . .

He was one of their oldest friends . . .

but he betrayed them . . .

Is that it? . .  Is that all there is? . . .

On YouTube, a 97-year-old philosophy professor

concludes after a lifetime of asking questions

that there is no point . . .

Oblio & Arrow from Harry Nilsson's 1971 The Point

On this day, a dreary wintry Saturday afternoon 202 years ago, a banker named Horace Smith travels roughly 30 miles on the Tyburn Turnpike from London to visit his friend in the lacemaking town of Marlow. His friend is Percy Shelley. According to Guy Davenport, a Professor at the University of Kentucky, "Shelley was a mere boy to judge from his snub nose, spindly six-feet, and wild hair which he ducks in a pail of water from time to time for as he says the freshness of it. His wife, Mary, a wild-eyed young redhead, reads Tacitus for hours. Her novel, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, is at the printer’s." The three talk history. Specifically, the pharaohs, and the grandest pharaoh of them all, Rameses II, who had a 57-foot statue of himself erected at Thebes inscribed with his name User-ma-Ra which the Greek historian Hekataios made a hash of, changing it to Ozymandias. The full inscription read King of Kings User-ma-Ra am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let them outdo my deeds. Smith and Shelley decide to have some fun and write sonnets about the toppled monument which is all that remains of Rameses II’s greatness. Smith titles his On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below. Shelley calls his Ozymandias. In 10 minutes flat, or thereabouts, he composed one of the greatest poems of all time.

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

 Screen Dump 532

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

Screen Dump 531

Crossing bridges always brings you back

to those caffeinated moments of nocturnal visitors

quoting Keats in the middle of REM sleep . . .

at least I think it was Keats . . .

it sounded like Keats . . . maybe not . . .

This obsession with return . . .

with the craze to rework the jigsaw puzzle

as if the odd pieces on the floor

would hold the key . . . the answer . . .

would give you a moment of calm . . .

Odysseyites have kidnapped the remains of the day

the breakfast nook demanding a ransom

the hounds on the scent of gingerbread

closeted ghosts awaiting . . .

You are frenzied with happenstance . . .

the yellowing instructions from your past

highlight the insignificance of tread wear . . .

Can you imagine? . . .

This too . . . kept pealing to a minimum

during a time of splurge

while others in the cornfield insisted on shucking

as the morning after the morning after

begged the question . . .

Screen Dump 530

Was it that far from the mapwork . . .

the insistence to get on with the cancellations? . . .

A breadwinner's dream . . .

Retracing the redacted? . . .

The trail muted but discernable

and the search party hot on the tracks

adjusting to the slippage in terrain . . .

And if I'm not mistaken . . . in the entire

offset bailiwick

which seems to have fallen into our laps

with little fortitude to boot . . .

You have bent over backwards many times

as evidenced by the plethora

of doctoral dissertations

microscoping your rather large conundrum . . .

OK, I see no reason not to pull up stakes

and begin yet again at square one . . .

A bellwether year, perhaps? . . .

Have you forgotten the first time . . .

the singular devotion to the raucous

which if nothing else

fed the excitement that propelled you

notwithstanding into a variety of encounters? . . .

Ruven Afanador

Screen Dump 529

With the seating chart on hold

it's tough to figure out

where the subway gives way . . .

She drills a hole in the ice

with an auger on YouTube 

eases into the water

talking nonstop about altruism . . .

an alien concept

to the gaggle of egocentrics

raising hell in the voting line . . .

You are t-boned by snow

as if in someone's crosshairs . . .

Backburnering the registration form 

has put the grocery list

on a slippery slope . . .

If only you had switched majors

when the light changed

you could have been

a multitasking grandmaster . . .

Just think of it . . .

imagine a loneliness

peppered with salt . . .

the salt and pepper alternative

to randomization . . .

That was quite an aside, yes? . . .

Do I think what? . . .

Yes, funny you should ask, I do

and hope only for the piggybacked

smidgen of truth . . .

But then of course there's Wittgenstein

who took a year to design the door handles

for his sister's house in Vienna . . .

It's kind of like the Queen's Gambit . . .

c5 to e4, if you will . . .

Someone pulled a sticky wicket

out of their pocket

in the produce section

on the security cam . . .

We had all we could do not to

break out the musical chairs . . .

Everyone was masked and socially distant

and on their way to a leveled playing field

where the comealongs

were first and ten . . . or thereabouts . . .

Platon Yurich

Intermission To Boredom

Head-to-head with kneejerk channel surfing

like a magician's patter

misdirecting the eyes of beholders

intent on mapping unlined terrain

you open with the Queen's Gambit

to control the board's center

gleaned from years of analysis:

Have you considered Hotel Management? . . .

Eyeballing your bloated dance card

you hype a pretend candlelight din-din

and hightail-it to the No-Tell Motel

backpack stuffed from 7-Eleven:

chips, salsa, 12-pack of Natty Light . . .

In that moment of ecstasy-in-training

echoing Bernini's three-dimensional take on Saint Teresa:

head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted 

the chorus ascending the stairway to heaven . . .

you are this . . . and more . . .

feeding momsy and popsy's A+ delusions of the good(er) life

until tomorrow's all-too-soon re-entry into Acme High . . .

from the '90s . . .

Varsity

The leaves would tell us, 

changing their colors,

patterning the ground.

And the crisp Saturday

afternoons.  Sweaters.

Great-looking cheerleaders.

Steaming coffee.  The din

of the marching band

mixing with the Icy Hot

in the locker room.

Joking around.  Towel

swatting.  And Coach

listen up ladies

with his righteous,

almost reverent, words. 

Heads bowed.  Awaiting 

the anointing with tongues.

The circle of hands. 

Helmet smacking.  Head

butting.  Getting psyched.  

Chanting.  Running through

the dim, damp tunnel 

into the roaring brightness.

Prancing across the field

on coltish legs.  Nerves

bursting.  The national

anthem.  Waiting for the

kick, the pigskin bullet.

This holy grail spiraling

toward us, sending us,

charging, at the armored

visitors, under the 

scoreboard's mocking glare.

 

Screen Dump 528

The talking heads in your dreamscapes

masked and bottlenecked

disappear into Chopin's études

insufficient funds barking the background

escorting you to a misandristic moment . . .

Of course you're out there with the wherewithal

holding the key the code the answer

in full Sphinxian getup . . .

Look on my works, ye mighty, . . .

Perhaps this aura brings you pleasure . . .

a respite from the unsettling . . . such and such . . .

the entire about-face shape-shifting slowly . . .

slowly . . . counterclockwise . . . a throwback . . .

time sucked into a maelstrom 

but not, yes? . . .

You as supplicant . . .

playing the field as it were

ticking off ifs ands buts . . .

It wasn't enough that you knew this from the get-go . . .

It wasn't enough to shore up the rationale . . .

You had to go weird-ass

with a conglomeration to boot . . .

And now the ruinous global circumstance . . .

the tide wearing away the details of your sandcastles . . .

your one-hundred-and-ninety-seventh attempt . . .

Platon Yurich

 

Screen Dump 527

The history of this . . . fitful, spasmodic

with a soft spot for irreverence . . .

an easy mark for spit-shiners . . .

lunging, irrepressible, desperate . . .

squandering any lasting claim

to noteworthiness . . .

An epic melodrama of legends of the fall

with colorfast etchings

recording the elementary logic

of remorseless joy

despite your images littered with loss . . .

To confess boredom, yes? . . .

Daily upticks of virtual victims . . .

The spinning out of control

and the return to humdrum

notched with fantasies of truth or dare

in the middle of a bridge

spanning there to here . . .

It was enough to reassume the position

no need to feign forgetfulness

with gestures reminiscent of decades past . . .

Reach into your toybox

and remove the circumstantial evidence of interiority . . .

of being you and not you

of being here and not here

of being then and of being now . . .

Felip Mars

Screen Dump 526

There was an off-handed knowingness . . .

an instability to the morning

that ran red lights and took corners at unsafe speeds

and yet the arrow didn't budge

in fact it seemed to egg on odysseyites

who had been flown in at the last minute . . .

You were landlocked

with reams of paper

and a willingness to map the contours

of life . . . unrolling the record . . . smoothing

it flat . . . turning autobiography

into cartography

no doubt dressed for the part

which had been reshaped to fit the fork in the road . . .

moment . . . or moments . . . palpable . . .

seemingly seamless . . .

This was not about loneliness . . .

the murkiness of loneliness . . .

It had been written up as such

but then a call came in from above

and the wording was changed . . .

We had no idea where you were headed

with your thesis . . . but after a while

it didn't matter . . .

There was something about the journey into the interior . . .

something about the interior design of a mind

that seemed to be plotting a way around . . .

or better, a way out . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys

Screen Dump 525

So it maps a geographic question mark in and around Dublin . . .

Listen to the music . . . Let it wash over you . . .

Jump in and bob along . . . on a journey

not unlike a mind that found itself

whose suicide was foiled by a flower bed . . .

And so on . . .

Because they could see I enjoyed it

immensely

and really what's not to enjoy

what's not to - as Joyce - love loves to love love . . .

You immerse yourself . . . in all seven levels . . .

the chancier the encounter the better

the higher the high . . .

The shoe store . . . and the heels . . . which later - much later -

provide a metronomic accompaniment

following your exit stage left

but was it right? (yes, it was right) -

through the gift shop . . .

Stay the night . . .

The bread truck awaits . . .

Leave them to decipher your scribbles

and phony phone number

a Rubik's Cube on a Post-it

The boardwalk as padded cell of catch-and-release . . .

Impenetrable motivation leading to an A+ . . .

For what? . . .

That you emerged seemingly unscathed . . .

Yes, I suppose, one could argue

but to what end (à la Cicero to Catiline) . . .

mayhaps, your unruly big hair anointing the heads of players -

faceless extras in need of a community one-act -

transforming them into twitching uniformed schoolboys . . .

satchels bursting with how-tos . . . how-not-tos . . .

stumbling home to the sanctuary of mommy's milk and cookies . . .

Angeline Ball as Molly Bloom

Screen Dump 524

Trapped in retrospection you are

seasoned by loss

seasoned by disappointment

destined for the ground . . .

Your worn-out metaphors ask . . .

what now? . . . while you . . . adrift in frippery . . .

paddle upriver . . . dissecting loneliness . . .

panicky . . . signing a treaty with cycles of longing

played out in brilliant one-acts . . .

Your last tapes remixed:

costumes abound

yellowing photo albums abound

past tenses abound . . .

You have become memories of sick rooms . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys

Screen Dump 523

The last time was how many years ago? . . .
You called it "sperimenting," yes? . . .
Glutted with symbols of foreplay
during socially distant close encounters

in sidings slotted for emptiness

you choreographed pas de deux

to the delightful confusion of partners

who had mistakenly thought they had signed on

for a full semester . . .

They received incompletes

as the ordinary heaved . . . and morphed

into the eerie the uncanny the berserk . . .

Screen Dump 522

You accept the role of role model for thumb-twiddlers 

amassing humdrum

through half-closed portals . . .
Visiting a somber mood
you cross paths with ghosts
bearing warnings from the Great Plains . . .
Scavengers rip into your dreams . . .

Reality augments . . . sights and sounds are off-key . . .
Streets . . . unstable . . .

This will be free from rule . . .

You embrace the freak moral logic

of that era's grim strays
who seem to say: we were there . . .

Screen Dump 521

Trotting out the fully formed from the head of Zeus

segue to the wedding

and grampa's comeuppance fueled by heavenly Chock full o' Nuts

pages torn from Freud's Mistake Book . . .

after Y M C A The Macarena This Magic Moment 

a tête-à-tête with intimations of serendipity . . .

Thrice-removed, yes? . . .

The full-frontal of he-said she-said

at the drive-through Golden Arches with this vegan-thing

in pink pinafore

then on to Storytown's cute cropped gingerbread houses

climbing on and up

and before you know it you're in over your head . . .

covering Lady Madonna

creeping like a nun . . .

bald-faced lying . . . on the bed . . .

but you overlook the overheated and give it your best shot . . .

tick-tock . . . tick-tock . . .

while in the confessional . . . the none-too-soon shrinkage

followed by I'm outta here! . . .

while back at the ranch the wedding party parties on . . .

splattering moments of gladness . . . badness . . . sadness . . .

Someone bought the farm! . . .

fessing-up to being born-again

and you in knee-jerk mode Facebook friend him/her . . .

Appropriation tell-me-a-story time:

The noctivagant person-of-interest as tugboat captain

charged with second-degree black belt . . . towing in the big ones . . .

coached for Bernard Pivot's Questionnaire

as administered by James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio . . .

What turns you on? . . .

The ripple effect of Richie Havens

arriving without suitcase making ends meet mending stockings

on never-ending Tuesdays . . .

But who pays the rent? . . .

And so it goes: buttered popcorn with episodes of The Office . . .

Screen Dump 520

As if a bodega at the nineteenth hole
intimate . . . edgy . . . unapolologetic . . .
with you again . . . birding . . . again in Jellies . . .
again the culmination of opposites
almost always the same geometric problem
wending your way . . . ticket in hand . . .
notebook bulging with sightings
and now the painted streets
war zones
confrontations with the Breaking Wheel
trying to upend paintings
disguised as sketches
lines redacted
words enough to encase them
in six by six by six foot cubes
with looped recordings admitting
wrongdoings . . . misappropriations
of the facts in the case of . . .
The case in the facts of? . . .
Do you trust the ramifications
in the jetty jutting into the sounds of silence
letting it be
the audience altogether now reminiscing
if you have nothing to say, say nothing . . .
hamstrung by the kneejerk
by the inconsequentials
by the tools missing
from the pleasure principle? . . .
The knitting continues . . .
A train marks the beginning
of the middle of the night . . .
It's time to reinvent yourself . . .
to reinvent your story . . . your backstory . . .
You don't mind the face masks . . .

their discrepancies
inconsistencies
hypotheses . . .

There are too many issues trumping
the syntax and semantics of  line-cooks
whipping up pre-shift staff suppers . . .

You want to be a part of it . . .
Again the question hacked . . .
Again the question overtalked . . .
But . . . how then should a person be? . . .

Screen Dump 519

Everything can compress . . . and eventually collapse . . .
But why now on a Sunday morning

in the frozen food section? . . .
The UK mathematician who won big for unscrambling
a nightmarish family of equations

as if aliens were driving the bus
is over there puzzling a shopping cart . . .
You continue to fret the scale . . . and plow into
a pretend cluster of stochastic analyses . . .
It's all about the math of things . . . the mask of things . . .
the snarky randomization

that turns the simple into the complex . . .
You search through the junk drawer in your kitchen

travel back in time to the unreality of your basement . . .
to friends arriving and departing
as predicted by the wonderfully seamless unraveling
of imaginary numbers . . .
You pined for an imaginary number that dewy evening
when imbalance shadowed your footsteps
and made you the target of indifference . . .
You are sure someone somewhere wrote you up . . .
the comealongs exacting their toll of inequality . . .
Sharks and Orcas are behaving so badly they make no sense . . .

Race Point, Provincetown, MA August 2020

Screen Dump 518

You're going on about Hidden Mothers
in daguerreotypes and how in the masked world
we are holding onto our own shoulders . . .
tap dancing the frames . . . (I don't know
what brought this on . . .
maybe the painted streets
maybe the instructions for re-entry
maybe the confrontations) . . .
A steam train on YouTube argues a grade . . .
a respite? . . .
then something about dropping sand
for traction
as if we too could gain a foothold
from a similar application
and wince ourselves into a newer normal . . .
The birds in the tray feeders outside
remind me of the flying saucers
in War of the Worlds
the matinee my mother in her housedress
took me to in the summer of 1953 . . .
Did Orson see this coming as well? . . .

Screen Dump 517

A sudden intrusiveness . . . all well and good . . .
with thoughts carjacked
the best laid . . . and all that . . .
Did you think otherwise? . . .
Remedies are short-serving . . . with prognosticians
speculating gold fever
doing their best to make it through to lunch
for the day's special
at the top of the fifth . . .
Winsome of course . . .
of course he/she gets sidetracked of course
lost amid the swirl of words
and the vehicle of moderation again stalls midstream . . .
You release yourself . . .

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