Blackberries

(reposted from Thursday, August 11, 2011)

When I lived closer I'd keep things cleaner,
weeding the bushes every now and then.

I had this pair of blue coveralls -
Frank sewn in red over the left pocket,

the name of my friend's father,
who repaired radiators

till the acid ate his lungs.
I'd pull on the coveralls,

wade into the blackberry bushes
and pick away, protected.

I've stopped by again today
to see how my father's doing.

It's August and he's eighty-six.
He's asked for some blackberries,

so I'm out here, in shirt and tie,
picking.

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As if your carouseled life had been nominated for an Oscar . . .

The scene in the supermarket

with triads played out of time

by woodwind player wannabes . . .

Imagine the confusion of recurring themes

delivered post hoc by paramilitarists

dressed to kill . . . and do . . .

Where have all the flowers gone? . . .

C'mon, sing with me . . . if for no other reason

then we're here . . . together . . .

in this cluttered, trampled,

underappreciated landscape . . .

Hey, the re-enactors are still here

and I feel in my bones that they can make a difference

changing the subjunctive as directed . . .

stepping up to the mic

with proper intonation . . .

There's never been a better wishbone, yes? . . .

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You leave them in the early hours

their heads adrift in autofictions

memories of costumes

worn by people of the high Urals . . .

You ride their falsified credentials

into the countryside

open to the sound of your tiny cabin

on the side of a hill above a river . . .

the river you swim in and kayak on

between your missions-impossible . . .

Ghosts keyboard the voices

in your head . . .

Books kindle your world

in the words of odysseyites

trafficking in incidental phrases

and ads for river cruises . . .

At dawn most days you rise

to patch leaks in the clouds

with an awesomeness that grows . . .

Irma Hasselberger

 Gone

(reposted from Wednesday, April 18, 2012)

          for Catherine Mary Connolly (1969-2012)

You have faced the final storm, and now float,
high above the seas, guiding fellow sailors.
The days have begun to lighten;
the nights are open windows.
I turn the soil for a vegetable garden:
tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.
Rhode Island Reds appear
scratching for worms with gnarled, yellow claws.
My grandfather is here, too,
a stubby Philip Morris dangling from his lower lip.
He speaks to me, in Polish, about happiness.

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This shred of arrogance kept popping up in the living room

as if at the appointed hour

you are the whole in your seemingly illogical . . .

Where do we stand? . . .

There was nothing not to like about it

of course it had many iterations . . .

so many that the scorecard filed a grievance

and left us with little to say

especially when your publicist struck a dissonant chord . . .

With so few clusters you have to wonder

though I suppose one could argue the converse . . .

Leila Fores

Rensselaerville Library’s sixth annual Poem-A-Day Project

celebrates National Poetry Month

with a new poem by a local poet each day for April’s 30 days.

With this year’s entries, PAD will have showcased

180 poems by 110 poets.

Stop by PAD2022 for your daily poetry fix!

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Why page through your wrinkles? . . .

It's late but what is time? . . .

and here comes the morning up the garden path

to help with turning the soil

for the excited plants . . .

And the songbirds . . .

Go ahead . . . Go in . . . Can you imagine? . . .

Yes, things will come into play,

I suppose, and, yes, one day

the ashes will pass Go . . .

But now you're here . . . filling with wonder . . .

Green tea! . . . Don't forget the green tea . . .

It will help you clear the hurdles

with happiness . . . and hilarity

for your glorious head . . .

Deborah  Turbeville

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You're in a parking lot fingering your phone

directing the play by play by play

the fridge pissing off neighbors with its barking

then this mad cow parks in a handicap spot

Don't have a cow, dude! . . .

Really? . . . I mean REALLY? . . .

The subterfuged world never at a loss for

That's how we do it . . . by the witless . . .

Sputtering with malcontent you take a breather

then, a tearful delivery, a tearful moment

at the whiteboard with a invalid proof

for mathematicians-a-go-go . . .

the bartender gaslighting the hammered

who humble back to their hovel

to be set upon by octopi or octopodes

in the watery world of the socked and soaked . . .

I want to hold your hand? . . . I don't think so! . . .

The world as experienced . . . in all its flatness is so . . . 

Yesterday,

all my troubles seemed so far away . . .

Glass's koyaanisqatsi (Hey, look, a q without a u!)

You enter the world of metal detectors where

fixed income instruments or bonds

follow just intonation

allowing you to nix diversification

and preserve the (High School) Principal

who is poised to flop into bed

with the School Nurse on paid leave . . .

Ba Ba Bond . . . James Bond . . .

Perhaps you should appeal to happenstance

especially after factoring everything down

to the list of pall bearers still In the Still of the Night . . .

It's time once again to head out

to the dollar store for a ramification

or a conciliation . . . or a pontification . . . or a Jorge . . .

Of course you knew him . . . he was one of many

on your to-do list . . . after deconstructing

the ins and outs of the allegorical Lord of the Flies:

Maybe there is a beast. Maybe it's . . . us? . . .

Come down from there . . . to the slots in the casino

where the real is really real

and you'll be as broke and as fit as a broken fiddle . . .

Par excellence the auteur! . . .

I had heard that you had been hobbled by the last stanza

but hey you can always deposit your ashes

in a local tributary and watch them

float downstream as we assemble according

to the directions scribbled with a foreign tongue (ouch!) . . .

Deborah Turbeville

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Tooling along a coastal road on a café racer

bells whistles lace-up leathers

you speak in tongues to pick-up gamers gaming the small diamond

in view of a creek that runs through the woods

on its way to the river . . . the magic and mystery

of your roadhouse expertise

tipping tampered scales

back when coupes were the rage

and radio stations - the few - had to be dialed in

by turning a dial . . .

There was something about the static - the radio static -

that made you want to engage interior monologues -

iron clad center stage wordless soliloquies - with you

toggling obscurantism

and stepping up to the plate with a full count

mimicking the black and white colorways of radio silence . . .

You seek salvation - fresh and focused - behind Razer glasses

tweaking the list of odysseyites docked for cleaning the roundabout

imagining a four-score and 20 return

on a tracking device that breaks free of the dream

you obsess over with a randomness

whose silhouettes clutter the performance space

with overtures that beg for smoke and mirrors . . .

This will have to do, yes? . . .
This apparition of sliding into decrepitude

as if your time capsule of an apartment belly-flops the water

shredding the pages of your future perfect waking life . . .

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Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos?

          - Virginia Woolf

You're taking notes on the straight and narrow

as the detritus of a life

crashes the weight of a wake . . .

Act One Scene One:

We search for younger days:

riding a balloon-tire bicycle through the streets

and into fields of dreams

appropriating clichés with reckless abandon . . .

Each day up and out and into the fray

following the yellow brick road

into . . . and beyond . . . the Great Beyond . . .

Masks of pandemics mask stimulus checks . . .

You balk at the thought of yet another move

to quell the restlessness while off script

odysseyites bleed the shoot in a New York minute . . .

Leila Fores

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No, it's not a dress rehearsal, despite your appealing restlessness . . .

The joy of encryption . . . of scrambling the known

as if Tolstoy's spell-check informs your excitement . . .

You enter the painting

and you're on a road . . . waking in the middle of someone's dream . . .

Snow dots the breakdown lane . . .

          How did you get here? . . .

          How did I get where? . . .

          Here, in this backwater backstory . . .

Your coffee mug dusted for prints . . .

The clock texting like crazy . . .

Your queue is flustered and needs a break . . .

Review the fine print if you doubt the algorithm . . .

Odysseyites have grown bored of Marvel Comics;

they're tweaking the turn of events

mounting arguments against the escape hatch in the limelight

of the final scene for all its worth . . .

You're using an online random number generator to pick lines

hoping the answer will pop out of the mishmash . . .

The surface tension with its stuff of days

swings open the doors to a museum of off-color fields

giving you time to recast the worthwhile . . .

Laura Zalenga

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Camo'd savages launch incomprehensible assaults . . .

The nighttime sky ablaze  . . .

Your apprehension . . . wild . . . .

The past's lessons . . . trampled

Where to go?. . .

as threats from identity thieves pierce your consciousness . . .

You try to keep the plates spinning without knowing the when or why

of machines of annihilation . . .

Foot-traffic chokes the passing lane . . . 

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You follow the lead's decent into raw ambition

to test your stick-to-itiveness . . .

memories of odysseyites piggyback . . .

The play-by-play . . . hyperreal . . . surreal

as if staged in a black box theater

by actors retooling the script on short notice

under a drone's jaundiced eye . . .

The director-cum-auteur, yes? . . .

Intransigents upstage the takeaway

with bolded scribbles on yellow legal pads

as the conceit fractures

with sleepovers and makeovers and takeovers

within walking distance of the spot marked X

while you rehearse the missing pages

with temps who couldn't care less . . .

Leila Fores

My poem, Cataloguing the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, was a finalist from among 735 entries in the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase International Poetry Contest. Bravo to the other poets, & many thanks to curator Bob Sharkey & his team for a super event!

Cataloging the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Bernini saw it in three-dimensions -
head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted.
Tons of marble floating.

Cataloging the ecstasy of Saint Teresa
you cross over
and find yourself in a choral group

performing Arvo Pärt’s The Peace.
This is good. This is really good.
The puzzle at the foot of your bed?

You try to recall the connection.
The mystery of happiness without remorse
or something like that. You’re not sure.

Here’s how it’s done, the caped magician told you
after your eighth birthday party.
Misdirection. Misdirection.

Saint Teresa in Ecstasy by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini

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Why spend this late hour worrying?

The sink drains and you are among the ancients . . .

You are the ancients

headed for the disaster of the unknown . . .

On the road, hands cupped

you find a box filled with moments

of astonishing pleasure . . .

You crack open a can of words . . .

It's not too late

despite the chagrin

on the faces of your stubbed hammertoes . . .

Forget them . . .

The sink finally drains and you breathe in deeply . . .

This day of blueberry jam

of busy bird feeders

sharpened pencils

stoked fire

rescue cats curled in sleep

is here . . . is now

the Jeep warming despite the cold

the trip down the mountain

for ingredients to make grandmother's goulash . . .

It will be OK . . .

There's nothing but a memory

to lay down a dry fly

onto the roiling surface

for a maybe . . . 

a moment of astonishing pleasure maybe . . .

catch and release . . . catch and release . . .

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          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 . . .

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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

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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 . . .

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

 

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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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)

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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 . . .

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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 . . .

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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 . . .

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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