Screen Dump 609

          from then and now

A slew-footed nomad in the checkout line

at the grocery store

just in from a grand plié

lays out lines from Wuthering Heights

or something or other

from one of the sisters Brontë

catapulting you with some sort of Trojan Horse 

into the heather moorlands

with odysseyites who for whatever reason are candying

the ins and outs of pulling U-ies

in front of the camera

grandstanding the last vestiges of roundabouts . . .

Then the illusion . . . and footsteps . . .

You follow them out the door

into a cloud bank from both sides

taking you back to a still life . . .

The teller serializes the ups and downs

of this and that for no apparent reason . . .

The inevitable does not disappoint . . .

You lose yourself in what was lost

reminiscing the unlined and untamed

channeling the shadow in the mirror . . .

falling through the window

into a landscape of porcelains

smuggled centuries ago by traders along the Silk Road . . .

Screen Dump 608

Why bother the nontrivial effort to traverse text? . . .

The rom-com abandoned in a shopping cart snowstorm

with footnotes on nonergodic literature

where your only responsibilities

are eye movement and the turning of pages . . .

You continue . . . reading . . .

Iterations abound . . . and are important, yes? . . .

Taking it down a notch

much to the surprise of graveyard shift hackers . . .

the gate opens to a railroad flat

where one summer morning

you tried out various yoga positions

from a book you had found under the seat of a rental . . .

That was enough to feed odysseyites

around a fire pit later that evening

shepherding secondhand embarrassment

for the perfect balance between carefulness and carelessness . . .

Wendy Bevan

Screen Dump 607

Trying to come up with the most legible story line

to make it all make sense

the Cartesian coordinates for the remains of our days

pages from a flipbook

stuck to the ceiling of a makeshift hut

in a remote area of consciousness . . .

An idea of who you are and what you will be . . .

How now the edited endgame? . . .

As if you have become a blustery winter wind

a tetchy iconoclast

waiting in lines increasingly bottlenecked

shelves orphaned

cranking the engine of false starts

in a monochromatic world

amenable to dropdown menus of altered egos . . .

Then of course there's the perfunctorily

fact-checking name-checking holding forth

as if crossing the River Styx in a kayak . . .

You emerge from the underworld of basements

the protocols of mimes

struggling to voice an objection

to the end-all be-all of all

with a weary sense of satisfying

a tiresome poetic-novelistic balance . . .

The augmentations should be refreshed post-haste . . .

You assume the polar opposite

the driver's seat awaits your strategy

always a welcomed if exasperating experience . . .

Birds of a feather fail . . .

The nonesuch among us are less and less

a gasp of survival

as the climate zooms in

with countless PSAs ignored by the polloi

who immerse themselves in screens

covered in gabardine for the sake of nothing . . .

We have run out of Blue Books

with which to memorialize the streams of consciousness

tricking through the wastelands of now

the idea howled out of the room had it been suggested by 

first-person shooters captured on camera at checkout . . .

Screen Dump 606

Images of war bully your sleep . . .

The ubiquity of tragedy

of not knowing what's coming

the blur of sadness . . .

above and below

a different kind of sorrow

a different kind of disbelief . . .

You view a world in thrall of bloat

segueing between bouts

of then and now

then and now . . .

the digressive components of grief 

appropriated from rejection slips . . .

Why think otherwise? . . .

Chris Abani

Screen Dump 605

The sun insists on rearranging your costumes

trying out different colorways to complement the swirl

of coffee from the corner kiosk . . .

Is this an aside . . . or something less? . . .

a digressive, non-essential chunk of junk text

that in the rearview mirror is just plain fun? . . .

You would like to think that it means something -

or will mean something - after it's nested . . .

and maybe it does . . . or will . . .

maybe a jolt to force lunch

with a remaindered novel's author? . . .

But no life is so simple, yes? . . .

Take the lurkers with their magic wands

festering this and that and then skipping out

without paying homage to someone or something . . .

So many arguments bounce . . . yet the words remain

chomping at the bit to take another shot . . .

Bystanders looking askance at the lineup of ghosts . . .

Leila Fores

Screen Dump 604

It was time to disembark . . . but the clock struggled

with insinuations . . . You knew there had been a mixup

and soulmates seemed a dime a dozen

but that didn't stop the insurgents

who were just as insecure with the gameplan

as the attendees who in no time were paired up for the shoot . . .

The moon seemed untrustworthy

but then they rolled out the Hammond B-3

with its magical brooding deepness . . . and you forgot . . .

You insisted on yellow for the split screen outtake . . .

No one voiced an objection . . .

It looked pretty good, in fact . . .

Extras were brought in for the table read . . .

You sat in the dark . . . loving it . . .

risking the allegation of selfishness . . .

Later your walk along the beach

was soundtracked by the hooped earrings . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 603

Your fingers, stuffed with pages, end-run

to reconnect with the day which has taken a knee

in the excitement of a whiteout . . .

The knock at the door . . . again . . . again . . .

Backstory Alice wonderlands the snow

which threatens to crash the system slowly

up the mountain with flatbeds of discards . . .

Rearranging the chapters as work

you revisit a half-finished dwelling with a false floor

in the woods of your dream . . . the soundtrack . . .

loud . . . perverse . . . remainders of your past lives . . .

Leila Fores

Screen Dump 602

You begin collecting words from the air . . .

Someone leaves a lukewarm coffee

in the dressing room

and things topple . . . you are ticketed

for unresponsiveness and held

without bail reworking the second chapter . . .

the chapter that opens with the unkempt . . .

Isn't this more of the same? . . .

Haven't we visited this so-called

House of Mirrors before? . . .

Safety protocols lax . . . and many know . . .

Wanting to wait it out while streets fill

with underappreciated phenoms

on leave with pay

citing The Book of the Dead

may not be the best way to go . . .

So you cave . . . or something . . .

insisting on bothering less . . .

Later the doors open . . . a translation enters

in a modernist suit held high

by surrogates hawking weak passwords . . .

You resort to a play on the word schism

to get the goats of  latecomers . . .

A PSA chimes in with an update  . . .

Leila Fores

Driving Home After My Last Prostate Exam

My Harvard-trained urologist

straight black hair yet to be peppered

whom I’ve been somewhat intimate with

for ten years now

enters the examination room

looks at the test results

types something into his computer

and says You’re good.

Unless you have a problem, we’re done.

But the shoe will drop . . . someday.

Yes, it will, he says, but not here.

And I’m a bit saddened

not because his words portend my shelf life

but because . . . strangely . . . I will miss him

and my annual visit

to this sad room

with its sad faces

and sad words.

Driving home after my last prostate exam

David Bowie, dead at 69,

sings This Is Not America on the radio.

Head bandaged

buttons for eyes

he lies on a rickety chipped hospital bed

in an empty room

in Lazarus, his last video.

When the cancer spread, he stopped treatment.

David Bowie, Lazarus (2016)

 

One hundred years ago today, Sylvia Beach, a Paris bookshop owner, published James Joyce’s "Ulysses," a 732-page novel about a day in the life of Dubliner, Leopold Bloom. Joyce used every trick in the English language to portray the journey we each take from the womb to the tomb. "Ulysses" was banned in several countries and quickly became one of the most important novels ever written that most readers have never read.

Screen Dump 601

You too consider bailing but the last few episodes

of Ho Down reclaim your otherwise

so you face the unplowed streets with takeouts

while licorice stick bluesplayers

shred the changes

ignoring time signatures of mixed martial artists

in gilded cages . . .

The snow continues its deception

the tried-and-true are misdirected

by evil clowns whose words

elbow into cold case files

in forgotten cul-de-sacs around the world . . .

Why not now the nostalgia

for Golden Books

with their little engine that could promises

chuffing in the middle of a chow-down

with smiles-a-plenty odysseyites

around a round table? . . .

Meals-On-Wheels was last seen entering a roundabout . . .

Whoever was there now that the takeaway is moot? . . .

Mixed Martial Artist "Thug" Rose Namajunas

Another Ordinary Morning

(reposted from Tuesday, October 1, 2013)

Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing.
          - Mark Strand

The leaves coax the light into a snow sky. A simplicity of one, costumed, belabored, fraught with delusion, lingers in a dream of the shore. The voice at the door continues the story. The organs of day engage a Netflix world, spiriting you away. The cat remains noncommittal. Late at night when you lie awake, tell yourself that you love who you are, that your half-concealed life is not without promise.

Martina Hoogland Ivanow

Screen Dump 600

As resident cartographer you continue to map

the terrain of intimacies 

etching your life

earmarking odysseyites

with aplomb

their cantilevered  promises

rutted and gutted . . .

You as always are elsewhere

changing costumes in full view

your half-track idling in a tow-away zone

on a dead-end street

painted purple in desperation . . .

You have left marks so to speak

on the faint of heart

on survivalists who look away

when dispassionate quatrains

jam the tone deaf . . .

No one is allowed to advance

until your enigma clicks in

with the language of machines . . .

A pileup on the causeway

floods the bedrooms of those

enamored of your signage of confused animation . . .

Your hatcheries of discourse remain on standby . . .

Irma Haselberger

Screen Dump 599

Nobody knows anything about the future.

          - Louise Glück

Once upon a time with several backstories . . .

Listening to the pages of books

you want to return to where it all began . . .

How it came down . . . and continues . . .

The survivors . . . masked . . . mundane . . . surreal . . .

Little sense renaming things . . . the overflow gesture

will surely bottleneck . . . not unlike most in the script

which you insist on trotting out . . .

The bus stops though are magnificent

but we must wait for later angels, yes? . . .

A good idea to spend time cataloguing various happinesses

both obscure and profound . . .

And now you endeavor to fabricate your own happenstance

which if done properly can be adopted by others

who have decided to make-do with leftovers from Pizza King . . .

I know . . . I know . . .

Never forget the sound-hemmed

or those who say the least . . .

Ghosts in the green mirrors of yesterday

continue to appear in your Facebook album . . .

Why did you deconstruct the bed before leaving? . . .

Was it the square wooden shoulders peering through the glass? . . .

Darkly? . . . Not to say . . .

Spending the day in a parking lot . . . waiting

for words to arrive on a Greyhound . . .

You were promised a box of pencils when stop-action coydogs

beyond all invention howled the passcode to your hip pocket . . .

As if experiencing tears for the first time . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek

 

Screen Dump 598

The Shining's hedge maze with single digit temps

is a one-way ticket to elsewhere . . .

Odysseyites amuck with Coen's Macbeth

When the hurly-burly's done . . .

all doors open . . . hoo-ha . . .

Again, again, you try to capture the detail

with a nervous camera

like again you're obsessing The Da Vinci Code

earthenware digits reversing

the order of operations

to see if the end product morphs into a takeaway . . .

Trying to restart the Method . . .

Rearranging yellowing photos

from The Land That Time Forgot

(or should have)

you dream witch's garb

contorting into prophesy

with first person shooters at Rodin's Gates of Hell . . .

Flipping burgers in some greasy spoon

with hangers-on from a trilogy

that never got off the ground . . . whose words

are etched in someone's granite . . .

The mirror's images symbolic

of foul but give fair advice to heroes and cowards . . .

Kathryn Hunter in Joel Coen's Macbeth (2021)

Screen Dump 597

Your memories avalanche . . . their redundancy

taking you by the hand . . . misleading you

through the maze of your heart's back alleys . . .

How not to personify the habitual . . .

goofy shifts and the beauty of the clunk close to convincing you

to dispense with the endgame . . . the proper

though not necessarily acceptable solution . . .

A plague of hideous narcissists enters

full of sound and fury

local littlenesses piggybacked with false promises

take to the streets with anarchic images

from the backpacks of recognizable strangers

who are quick to trade identities

signifying nothing . . .

A contrabass flutist strikes a dischord

and is recalibrated by a wandering minimalist

intent on delusion . . .

The night puts out feelers . . .

Many experience a faux aha . . .

You see it coming despite your backward glance . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys

Screen Dump 596

Something about the web of indifference . . .

No retelling the clutch . . . it was there . . . you were there

as if tap dancing in the bardo . . .

Then you dropped the ball . . . outstripping silence . . .

Odysseyites began speaking from hard-won experience . . .

You Ubered home at 1:30 AM

playing stopgap with a year's reprieve

dust bunnies cavorting . . .

Why bother the naiveté of Positively Fourth Street? . . .

You have no faith to lose

in your celebrated future waking life . . .

Can you recap anything? . . .

Is there a documentarian? . . . a videographer? . . .

You are repainting the rooms . . . yes, I understand . . .

The cake was indeed left out in the rain . . . period . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek

Screen Dump 595

On bed or sofa . . . you adjust the volume

to accompany your departure

the departure of others . . .

The stillness captured

epic tales of whiteouts

hunkered down . . . waiting . . .

So now is the time to hoard it in your heart? . . .

Again and again . . .

Let's broach continuity

for the sake of . . . for the sake of what?  . . .

It sounds fishy doesn't it? . . .

I mean when was the last time you opened

a how-to with bits and pieces a-plenty? . . .

Should we go on? . . .

dump everything into a disambiguation machine

and see what happens? . . .

Maybe it'll surprise us . . . though I doubt it

what with the transparency

mottled at that . . .

Bloom of happenstance . . . then the close . . .

Shannon Hartman in Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (2017)

Screen Dump 594

Your uneducated palette makes haste

and so itself belies . . . snow creasing consciousness

as when lost in the stacks

you made the most of words

the clock flipping the storyboard

awaiting yet another invasion

this one more contagious

outmaneuvering makebelievers

pulled in to make space for makeshift whirligigs

atop unmarked cars . . .

Bells ring unendurably . . . as if entombed . . .

Many try to stay the four-credit course

with a lab from one of those

insufferable unaccountable kennel farms . . .

Those in the wake of your wandering to what end . . .

Just enough cover to be visible

the tracks of odysseyites

cunningly contrived by the unfulfilled . . .

Shannon Hartman in Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (2017)

Screen Dump 593

You took umbrage out for a quick question

entering a labyrinth . . . the idea sprung from the Middle Ages . . .

Impenetrable to intruders . . . yes, that's it . . .

But what about the audience? . . . those accoutered in chain mail? . . .

Mostly opera buffs

incidentalists who looked after the impossible

years and years . . . and years

when those contemplating bigness stepped forward

drawing lines in the sand

leaving odysseyites with next to nothing

and strange tales of the forgotten who were beside themselves . . .

Isn't it wonderful to feel the first soft flakes? . . .

I mean, prepare yourself for an extended commitment

to combat boots . . . some bearded . . . wearing overcoats

not knowing when to stop and take it again from the top . . .

Marie de France (1160-1215)

Screen Dump 592

Haunted by the weird aftertaste of the word-drunk

you proceed to fill in the blanks

only to arrive like a rumor at the tail-end of a long train running . . .

Costumed out of desperation for three scenes hence

in no time you run out of words

tweaking the coordinates

and move into a double-wide consciousness . . .

You begin visiting on odd-numbered Saturdays

logging innuendoes for TikTok

celebrating incidentals

parsing the friendship of a conundrum as if it were celebratory . . .

You are fit to be tied to your lit-life

rescripted by scholars emeriti brought in with field recordings . . .

A door is left ajar by odysseyites

who flee Zoom's parameters . . .

The world keeps ending on Netflix . . . but it doesn't . . .

You thought you had deleted your account . . .

You were sure of it

but a glitch appeared in the middle of your nightmare . . .

Screen Dump 591

You commit to dreams-a-plenty

to an allotment of time

to delusion

to a slightly skewed morality tale . . . interrupting the moment . . .

You gather dust when you least expect it

when the penultimate scene fails to engage

the magical mystery tour of the apartment

where your erotic other waits . . . hands bronzed . . .

One must have a mind of . . . and so it goes . . .

Bundled against the sharp wind

your childhood friend becomes the Joker

following a plastic surgeon's dotted lines . . .

Dreams-a-plenty, yes? . . .

Pushbacks threaten . . .

You TikTok the day away with addled wine obsessives . . .

Outside, jays hit the feeders with an arrogance

that scatters seeds to the ground . . .

You become a ground-feeder, gathering the seeds . . . waiting . . .

There are rules and regs for all

our parts edited, updated, polished . . .

To relinquish nothing . . . to take no prisoners . . .

Screen Dump 590

Mirror in the mirror.

          - Arvo Pärt

You read the lines in the face in the mirror in the mirror . . .

The bird has flown away . . .

Iambs carry you into a spare, unoccupied room:

odysseyites tethered to where you were most . . .

Retracing your steps, your moves, the players in your play . . .

Not the one you wrote . . . labored over for how many years? . . .

but the one you picked from a stacked deck 

when the dole was doled to the doles

and you disembarked . . . bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

to play their game . . . because, hell, why should it be

only their game? . . .

Indeed, it was fun . . . manipulating the scene

sparking the moment . . . seducing the seducers

clocking the clock . . .

All the while the lion watching . . .

You were costumed in the skin of a lion

having scraped and cleaned and soaked and salted

and smoked and dried it

according to the voices in your head . . .

Always the voices in your head . . .

How often? . . . How many? . . . How now brown cow? . . .

Inquiring minds want to know . . .

You had mastered the rounded vowel sounds

and found them enticing . . .

Oncomers came on and in no time fell under your spell . . .

Come one . . . Come all . . . Come hither and yon . . .

Of course you'll have time to return in time . . .

But the cupboard is bare

despite the cornmeal con with legs-a-plenty . . .

Odysseyites spent time in the mooring of starting out

were written up and released into their own rom-coms . . .

Gaming tables laughed to see such a sight . . .

Discos spooned . . .

Enter again the lion

the elephant raising and lowering his trunk in time to the magic . . .

A house in glass . . .

Occupants in invisible ink . . . held up to a lightbulb . . .

You cannot escape yourself! . . .

Leaving before the credits with Max Schreck aka Count Orlok

all tricked and treated out in 1922's Nosferatu

clickety clack on the sidewalk crack . . .

The lion in a delivery van far from the madding cow . . .

Screen Dump 589

Those days when both of us are on different wrong pages

or different wrong sides . . .

I know you thought it was a dream

or an instant replay . . . but no, the morning

was elbowed out by some startup's beta version

all promises and what have you

new and improved . . . supposedly better

the relativity of GoFundMe better . . .

Nonetheless the streets have been prepped

for something . . . yet another dethroning

of  politicos? . . . The incumbent impediments

and control of the center of the board . . .

Please don't hope for the best . . .

Who me? . . . I don't think so . . .

The weird thing is I've misplaced the passcode

to your voice

and now I'm in the throes

of  reconstructing the front end from memory . . .

Why the itinerary of thoughts? . . .

Is it time to go? . . .

Yes, wake up, get dressed, it's time to go . . . I am smitten

with to-dos and can't wait to see how today plays out . . .

Lydia Roberts

 Screen Dump 588

Time speeds through you . . . bidirectionally . . .

The ceiling fan spins tales of inundation . . .

How emulators seek justification

for hoarding . . .

The need to hold onto some semblance

of your past waking life

in all its preciousness . . .

The get-gos are gone . . . and will not be back

anytime soon . . . if at all . . .

There was a time and place

for some of us

but the clocks changed

so the players anteed-up

thinking they'd return and decide what to do

as if their lives were haikus without seasons . . .

Lydia Roberts

Screen Dump 587

Then they asked about directing solo performances

the credibility of misplaced modifiers

whether it was more difficult than directing a group of actors

and you knee-jerked

manipulating the interior monologue

for all to see

words and images bailing

arms raised . . . as if opening the book to the moment

the stage suddenly overrun with excerpts from

Didion's Book of Common Prayer . . .

But it's not really that, is it? . . .

What do you mean? . . .

You know . . . the commonplace we all inspire

when tackled mid-run

the instant replays . . . in slo-mo

buckets brought out as if this had been written

the well-intentioned escaping in their high-end SUVs . . .

You reopen to the dilemma of desire

your crib notes wrinkled by the winters of our discontent

featuring quick-study shadowers

who bronze footnotes of hidden agendas

that by force and against their will you made them eat . . .

The truth grieves me . . .

It grieves us all . . .

despite the rules against showing pain . . .

The seduction of the arrival gets their goat

and they more often than not collapse into the fourth wall . . .

Directing solo performances? . . .

Of course, proceed with an enigma dried to perfection

showcased against the missing . . .

Meg Sullivan in MegAnneMaud (2009)

Screen Dump 586

Your early old age enters the Land of Foreign Bodies

where quick-to-ensnare logicians emeriti map rescue distances

always rescue distances . . .

It's not something for the pulchritudinous

who would insist otherwise with their twittered tattoos . . .

The community idiom is at the top of someone's list

of inappropriate pours . . . on-site distractions

glance-thieves all . . .

I am beside herself, yes? . . .

The Real Deal has been kicked up several notches . . .

As requested, I too have submitted my request

to the shadow boxers on Main

running in place with ankle weights

ramped-up with ebikes . . . their relentless

pursuit of dotted lines almost says it all

but without the missing pieces the end-all totters . . .

Why the snaps of an empty room? . . .

You must know he/she in solo garb meant well . . . I suppose . . .

The waters beyond the Great Barrier Reef

with its 14 degrees of latitude

continue to trump our six degrees of separation, yes? . . .

C-3PO

Screen Dump 585

But the hands are a dead giveaway . . . then too the drama of the face . . .

The moments of anticipation . . . excitement . . . inklings

into the perhaps . . . retooling yourself for elsewhere

as if the curtain call had been recalled

and you boarded the ship of happenstance . . .

Meanwhile upticks in loss continue . . . increase . . .

There will be no retake . . . no remake . . . you disembarked at that point

and set out . . . this and not this . . . that . . . etcetera . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

Screen Dump 584

Downward and downward

as if a prayer for words that holds open the door

to a dreamscape with you in an orange grove above the sea

and once a mountain covered in snow . . .

You found comfort at the entrance to a covered bridge . . .

Odysseyites provide blankets . . . at times a postcard . . .

Each day the stone steps of the climb

to a hillside town with costumed go-betweens

reciting lines long lost carry you . . .

I would have preferred collecting paper cuts

but you insisted . . . then everything changed and we were left

with a set of hieroglyphs for reassembling life

suited to the colorways that were chosen

by drivebys on their way out with diminishing returns . . .

Alina Lebedeva

Screen Dump 583

No, not never . . . the end flashing on the screen

collecting empties from the thems that got

surprised when looking through the wrong end of a telescope

everything . . . and everyone . . . small . . . manageable . . .

Of course, that's when the scene ends

and the midnights elbow in with rewrites . . .

You, under cover, I mean, you, under the covers

replay the drama of rain . . . looking through the glass

as extras plod across . . . Across what? . . .

I dunno, across the moors, how's that? . . .

Did you say you got a callback? . . .

You pulled out the stops to your life as remainder

threw open the drapes . . . Proust-like . . . and now? . . .

Look at the trees at the edge of the world . . . 

They're talking to you . . . recounting the time

you wanted to run . . . go back . . . as we all wish . . .

Am I spinning my wheels here? . . .

Is it all bullshit . . . all window dressing for the camera obscura? . . .

Or are you readying yourself once again to get

into the driver's seat . . . despite the cracked pleather

and transform yourself into a journey

back to the blank page with odysseyites clamoring for more? . . .

Spectators flown in to populate the front row

await assurance . . . and who can blame them? . . .

They've walked the walk of sidewalk days

trying to find the door that you told them would welcome

their penmanship . . . their words . . . within which . . .

Aneta Ivanova

Screen Dump 582

The joy of opening your eyes to the previously unseen

moves you to freefall . . . to cast yourself off . . . oarless . . . 

You traffic in fragmentation . . . savoring the elements

that seem to defy comprehension . . . The exciting almost

of the flight of nearness with you on a bicycle

speeding downhill . . . enjoying the random blundering

in concepts too fine for the timid . . . embracing the inevitable

record of failure . . . of not saying what you want to say

not because you shy away but because words fall short  . . .

Beverly Peel & Tyra Banks

Screen Dump 581

Ghosts of gentle lunatics guide your latest revisions

the irregular folds of happenstance weigh in with blurbs

from spiral-bound collections of origami . . .

Your world has become labyrinthine . . .

You retreat into your altered ego, dreaming yourself

an alien inventorying costumes

in a shabby off-the-grid B&B

brimming with knockoffs of Golden Books

a sort of meta-metaphor for time ill-spent . . .

You await your cue to enter the scene

of a wake . . . half-expecting a downpour but the anonymity of rain

surprises you . . . flooding the reshoot and washing away

the drafty monologues of auditionees . . .

Nina Hoss in Returning to Reims (2018)

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The revised ambiance unsettles go-betweens . . .

Many remember overhauls with a sparkling clarity

which seemed to ease their entrance . . .

With so many awaiting callbacks

why bother craning your neck to grab hold? . . .

If only I had an app, I would . . . indeed I would . . .

What's with the smock? . . .

Do you anticipate a splattering of the nonsensical?

a reassignment of metaphor? . . .

Now there's a welcoming conundrum . . .

Of course, without more to go on, it seems as if

the hodgepodgers are in ascendance . . .

Nothing much to add, so you may as well head out . . .

Nina Hoss

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A casual craziness-troubling genre

informs your carefully choreographed appearances

the bird's-eye view stuffing your pockets

with to-dos . . . Odysseyites found

in translations wander Commercial Street

among the masked . . .

The lunch hour bottlenecks at the food truck

which sports a new paintjob and new menu

redirecting you back

to your elementary school cafeteria

where you usually sat . . . alone

at a crumb-encrusted table . . .

You manage a wrap . . . then slip back

into seclusion . . . into the solace of words

fabricating fake dramas populated by flâneuses

who take explorations of cities

as their calling . . . and are rewarded

their occasional unstable footing forcing the body

to adapt to a new balance . . . a new world . . .

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And at dawn, armed with fiery patience, we will enter splendid cities.

          - Arthur Rimbaud, A Season In Hell

You are the perfect subject . . . rehearsing

monologues of introspection . . . flip-flopping

intuitive . . . costumed . . . in an enigmatic "don't ask me how" way

as if inhabiting a meandering fortune cookie

managing chance . . . hoping for the best . . .

Your incomprehensible gestures tag folly

and make for an exquisite shoot . . . little matter that

the limo's tires are flatted fifths

documenting your ebb and flow . . .

No worries that you will not get your due

that you will miss the opening

and be set adrift with an uncharted script

that the unprimed span of canvas

will not give you enough room to breathe

to stretch out, get air, vet your place in the sun

without a mime's sounds of silence . . .

The gates to splendid cities open to you . . .

There have always been . . . and always will be . . . illusions

fertile destabilizations . . . like a disordered collection

of yellowing snapshots from your celebrated future waking life . . .

Irma Haselberger

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Like an MRI of your alphabet asking for seconds . . . and thirds . . .

There are options . . . always, options

selecting players randomly using machine language . . .

Your 50-minute hour mutates into a mini-doc 

of 20 faux pas . . . with odysseyites flown in for a re-enactment

that has nothing to do with anything . . .

You have become enamored of place . . . this place . . .

The way it was . . . The way it is . . .

Your distant closeness colors the world . . .

Your periscope however stubborn locks on the loneliness 

of marionettes . . . whose strings are tied to rehearsals

of twelve-tone musical compositions in forsaken music halls . . .

DiFilippo Marionette Theater Company

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And their stories of course . . . sometimes two three four deep

too deep? . . . their riddles . . . idiosyncrasies

their egos . . . following the dotted lines . . . boringly

always the same . . . costumes googled . . . gestures formulaic

predictable . . . yet humorous . . . entertaining . . .

So you do whatever you do to step up to the plate

to placate them . . . tease them . . . with movements-a-plenty . . .

Is this getting old? . . . Is it? . . .

Quickly . . . cover it with books, envelopes, yesterday's mail . . .

I can do this . . . yes, I can do this

and get something out of it . . . the gold ring

of the merrier-than-thou-merry-go-round . . . 

A flash of your father at an amusement park lifting you

onto a wooden horse . . . the Trojan Horse of your adolescence

stuffed with horns-a-plenty

when you stepped out of your chubby self

and into the lights and drama of the fashionistas' world . . .

You should have seen me then? . . .

But I did . . . and I was stamped with pleasure which ran up and down

and through me like wolves on a hunt . . .

The slack waves listed . . . deconstructed . . . like nothing else . . .

Irma Haselberger

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Not unlike the churning poor . . . the begging-off

too small to bother with

to remove from the back seat

like a short story or piece of flash fiction

as if waddling along the wood's edge

the weariness, yes, the weariness

of driving through rain

to reach the end . . . of the scene . . .

Deadbeats mastering backbeats

waiting for the waiting for . . .

the ramifications thereof . . . the sidewalk

middling midterm midday midtown midsection . . .

I am become Godot . . . engendering happenstance

the nomenclature of pigeonholers on break

when the urge becomes as overpowering

as kayaks through whitewater . . .

Collecting the memes of arias . . .

There is much to be savored

on the screen at a weed-choked drive-in

the struggle with the speaker on the window recalled

the choreography of the tenacious front seat

then the stimming accompanied by

the truth taking stare state of mind

that precedes a breakdown/breakthrough? . . .

Marta Forsberg, Composer

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You collect blow-ins from magazines for collages

of skateboarders shredding abandoned screenplays . . .

Curators off-camera interview orphans

in Adirondack chairs . . . connecting the dots

to the nonsensical as if in response to What did you expect? . . .

But it's all there . . . well, sort of . . .

Your fascination with figuration

your writing between the lines

walking the dunes to the lighthouse

during low tide's non-credit course

which you audited as if the brittle microfiche

would point a finger at incompleters

who partied with odysseyites

before disappearing in a late-model non-sequitur . . .

Then it was back to the blue screen

with Miles playing Bill Evans's Blue In Green

making it a loss for words . . .

Besides, this time next year will be the same time this year . . .

You can't not imagine how . . . how the heavens opened

and post-impressionists weighed in

with a muted palette 

while a storm waited at the blue in green light

prepping us for tomorrow's time trial . . .

David Benoliel

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After that there was little left to say

especially with the rain . . . which fell

past the place settings . . .

Instead of bailing, you disappeared

into the anomalies of time

but now you're back in the middle of an aria . . .

Quite providential, yes? . . .

There have been days of high drama

with few breaks in the dialogue

which made its way along some coastal route

pinned with tourist traps . . .

The filming continues . . .

especially the avatars of time and place

as if in the heart of darkness someone said

Thanks for the memories . . .

You had asked for the full catastrophe

and were taken aback by the preponderance

of rehearsals . . . all for the better one would hope . . .

David Benoliel

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The discrepancy rang in for the mandatory eight

while you . . . and your shopping cart . . . continued to check

for underlines which would have fit in very nicely . . .

It's really too early to say

but I would urge you to go ahead

before the principals leave the stage for the coda . . .

Have you encouraged others? . . .

Has the segue arrived? . . .

It would indeed be a coup if . . . and only then I might add . . .

So . . . the apps did the trick, yes? . . .

Were the blue books collected mid stream? . . .

Someone came forward gushing appreciation

which is always a hat trick

conjecturing this and that as if tomorrow was yesterday . . .

Peter Lindbergh

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It's not about getting it all down

again feeding your obsession 

a mirroring of psyches

(whatever that means) . . .

Now is not as good a time as any . . .

Your aim is off . . .

The rain . . . a narrow gauge

through backstories

in back alleys all but spent . . .

Odysseyites stocking up on staples

for wintering the summer

at the shore . . . their notebooks

street smart and ready for

close encounters with figments

of  consciousness

hurled out of second floor windows . . .

Insist on paper and pencil

for up close and personals . . .

Maciej Boryna

Intermission Piano

Your cousins are in the water.

But you're not.

You're playing intermission piano

on this early July morning

that's just beginning to heat up:

the sand just starting to sting

the voices of your cousins

just starting to get louder.

So you're playing intermission piano

on this early July morning

because sometimes the water is just too cold

sometimes your cousins play just a little too rough.

Intermission piano.

It's kinda scary.

Walking the edge without a musical score

going on what Frank O'Hara called nerve

when he talked about being chased

by someone with a knife.

Intermission piano.

On this early July morning.

So it's good that grandma's here

on the beach

in her housedress

with her beach chair.

And it's good that she's invited you

to sit on her lap for a while

watch your cousins in the water

and slowly wade into the day.

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Buying time to rethink the restoration . . .

When last was just before

and you laid out specs for go-betweens

knowing the endpoint would fade . . .

Now you can . . .

I had hoped to make it back in time . . .

The dream has too many doors

of different colors

and you keep ringing the bell

channeling odysseyites

populating the wakes of dead friends

who remain connected . . .

I want to transcribe your genes

but you skip beats

leaving several in an empty parking lot . . .

The last time was the last time . . .

although with the so-called rebirth

it seems as if we will be able to . . .

I hope so . . . I really do . . .

The printer's cartridge is empty

and the kiosk on the corner is a hog barn . . .

You have been put on hold . . .

Nicholas Cage in Pig (2021)