That Was Then . . . This Is Now

That was then . . . and it was good, yes? / But this is now.

          - anon

When is one finished?

When does one know that one is finished?

A repurposed wasteland appears.

The walls whitewashed.

The floors swept.

But the rooms remain empty.

Meanwhile, stories . . .

~

It's 1967. The Summer of Love.

You're living in a VW Bus

trout fishing in America with Richard Brautigan

drifting along like an easy creek

trying to follow the words of Carl Rogers

to become the self that you really are.

~

What is it all about?

What are you all about?

You get what you put into trout fishing in America

stepping in the water

feeling the cool drift

taking it with you.

Taking what?

The otherworldly contours of love.

The spellbinding angularities.

The waking-in-the-middle-of-the-night inconsistencies.

The ups and downs . . . the ins and outs . . . the wicked game.

~

Your daughter dances to Strauss's Annen Polka,

floating with the wide-eyed innocence

of a nine-year-old who has yet to glimpse

the world of the backstage.

Look at her taut sureness, the steadiness and poise,

the promise of her young movements

as they transcend choreography with a joy that,

you can only hope, will buoy her through a life

filled with huge pockets of uncertainty.

~

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.

~

At 42, she faced her final storm,

and now floats, high above the seas,

guiding fellow sailors,

her last words, Goodbye, my love.

You turn the soil for a vegetable garden:

tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant.

Rhode Island Reds appear

scratching for worms with gnarled, yellow claws.

Your grandfather is here, too, from the dead,

a stubby Philip Morris dangling from his lower lip.

He speaks to you, in Polish, about happiness.

~

K. H. Brandenburg tweaks an algorithm

for compressing audio files to birth MP3s

using Suzanne Vega's a cappella, Tom's Diner.

~

You return to a post

about a rhino poacher

who was stomped to death by an elephant

then eaten by a pride . . .

~

She checks herself out of detox

chugging rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer

and into an ICU where a voice says

You're not going anywhere

but to a psych ward

and a 28-day program . . .

and the Monkey laughs

and rides shotgun

through late-night streets.

~

It's good that grandma's here

on this early July morning

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.

~

On reconnaissance in his second tour of Viet Nam,

he takes a shrapnel

dying 35 years later at 57

without a memory of a parade

because there were none.

~

Looking at the lobsters in their watery cells

awaiting execution by boiling water

reminds you of David Foster Wallace

clinically depressed for most of his life

who one day stopped taking Nardil

walked out onto his back porch

threw a rope over a beam and hanged himself.

Wallace was an abusive assaultive explosive misogynistic

gifted alcoholic and drug addict.

Looking away from the lobsters

you think of Consider the Lobster

Wallace’s essay highlighting the unethical abuse of animals

in which he asks

Is it right to boil alive a sentient creature

for our gustatory pleasure?

Knowing that the so-called scream

of the lobster being boiled alive

is not its voice but air rushing out

of the holes in its shell doesn’t help . . .

nor should it.

~

You've stopped by again today
to see how your father's doing.
It's August and he's eighty-six.
He's asked for some blackberries,
so you're out here,

in the blackberry bushes,

in shirt and tie,

picking.

~

You get lost with Chet Baker

replaying the opening bars

to All Blues from The Last Great Concert 

recorded two weeks before he fell

out of a window in Amsterdam . . .

because you can't stop

because it's one of the realest things you've encountered

and for a few moments . . . nothing else matters . . .

~

She breaks into her counselor's office

at the therapeutic community house

drinks a bottle of hand sanitizer

and is taken to the emergency room

where she drinks more hand sanitizer

then sneaks out of the hospital . . . wasted . . .

She's picked up by the police

taken to a homeless shelter

on Christmas Eve

then back to the community house

the day after Christmas

where she apologizes to her counselor

and the other residents

and is put on probation . . .

binging . . . purging . . .

She is given the option of treatment for bulimia . . .

She refuses

and is discharged to a cot

in a warming center

where the lights go out at 9 . . .

Next day . . . she's back on the street . . .

~

Do you believe in magic?

Of course you do.

~

March 28, 1941, a little before noon

Virginia Woolf

with hat walking stick overcoat and large heavy stone

wades into the River Ouse drowning herself.

She was an escape artist

who mapped the extraordinariness

of our interiors . . .

~

Elizabeth Bishop catches a tremendous fish.

~

It's 1960. Latin Class.

Julius Caesar divides Gaul into three parts.

Three rows over, an upperclassman, in the school uniform

imprisons you with her long legs

while Marcus Tullius Cicero addresses the Senate

with the trichotomy of his Third Oration:

How long, O Catiline, will you tax our endurance?

How long will that madness of yours escape us?

To what end will your unruly boldness hurl itself at us?

~

You fritter away time and space.

Goalposts splinter.

Your goalposts splinter.

No one believes the converse.

At one time the b-ball shoe of choice

but then on the seventh day

of the seventh month in the seventh year

you fall asleep at the wheel

drift over the double line

and the winged goddess of victory

teams with Aldous Huxley

to open the doors of perception . . .

an aha moment.

~

The mixing of your lines bear the awesomeness of youth.

The imperfection is imperfect, perhaps,

yet as perfectly as possible

as perfectly as you know how

with the almost-imperceptible mistakes

making it delightful.

Let disorder triumph along the boulevards of redaction

where the ifs ands and buts barter transfusions.

Adjusting your sightline along the monochrome,

you resemble a look-alike

from one of your favorite films

the wake of which is a which of a which

but my advice is not to wait it out.

You will know, trust me.

And it will be good.

~

Late at night when you lie awake,

tell yourself that you love who you are,

that your half-concealed life

is not without promise.

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 715

Losing your place in line at a tag team lawn party

the moment-to-moment gazes

the moment-to-moment costumes . . .

The iffyness . . . especially the embellishments

highlighting the timetable of your life . . .

where you are . . . and why . . .

The accumulation of happenstance . . . scripted . . .

does little to quell the offhandedness . . .

The offhanded notations of old money . . . of old and new money . . .

Consulting a flowchart for next steps . . .

But is it enough? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 714

Irrevocability pins you to the mat

to wrangle seconds . . . or thirds . . .

as if messaging with footnotes a sarabande by Yo-Yo Ma . . .

Why bother sweating the opening bars

with the prelude bleeding through the score

inflicted by a little-known? . . .

You're regressing faster than the speed of sound

to when you auditioned for intimacy's promises

and were thrown for an infinite loop

by odysseyites reopening the book to the chapter you slammed shut . . .

A well-known misstep, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

 The Poetry Hotel at the Rensselaerville Library . . .

Woman XLVII

(reposted from Tuesday, April 19, 2016)

She consorts with puppets . . . no strings attached . . .

in a room filled with bobby-soxers

where she is subjected to the free passes

of agents who feign muteness

to fake Stradivari's signature

while playing stoop-ball with bassoonists smoking joints.

Weed is dressed to kill.

She loves basement bashes . . . un-posing . . .

and underclothing worn out.

The streets criticize her player-piano introductions

bottlenecked on bridges during rush hour.

Her wherewithal has caught on

with post-coital interviewers

who tweet at double-headers

where triple plays are as commonplace

as nosebleeds.

Costumed for night . . . she seldom rides shotgun

saving her literary lollipops for footnotes

and phony phone numbers floating in her wake . . .

her long legs spanning one and a half sidewalk cracks.

Let's Get Lost

Chet Baker 12/23/1929 - 5/13/1988

Leaving the airport at 5:30 AM you keep replaying the opening bars to All Blues from The Last Great Concert recorded two weeks before he fell out of a window in Amsterdam . . .

because you can't stop
because you can't get over how perfectly he nailed it
because it's one of the closest things you've encountered
and for a few moments . . . nothing else matters . . .

Screen Dump 713

Nonsense lapses into feigned forgetfulness

dumping you in the middle of nowhere . . .

second guesses segue to pastoral settings

upstate with stemmed glass bumped

to the edge of tomorrow as Georgian models

infiltrate your REM sleep . . .

There's a history, of course, going back to the City

where who knows what happened . . .

the loss temporary . . . weighing the pluses and minuses

of your next move . . . memories of tagalongs

bloating the escape route . . . conflating the statistics

while all along, in the cards, the Shirelles

with Number One on Billboard's Top 100 Chart

for 1960: Will You Love Me Tomorrow? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

An article on a poem's first line by Elisa Gabbert in The New York Times Book Review from February 12, 2023 reminded me of Raymond Carver reading My Boat at UAlbany in 1987:

My Boat

by Raymond Carver

My boat is being made to order. Right now it's about to leave 

The hands of its builders. I've reserved a special place 

for it down at the marina. It's going to have plenty of room 

on it for all my friends: Richard, Bill, Chuck, Toby, Jim, Hayden, 

Gary, George, Harold, Don, Dick, Scott, Geoffrey, Jack, 

Paul, Jay, Morris, and Alfredo. All my friends! They know who they are. 

Tess, of course. I wouldn't go anyplace without her. 

And Kristina, Merry, Catherine, Diane, Sally, Annick,

Pat, Judith, Susie, Lynne, Annie Jane, Mona. 

Doug and Amy! They're family, but they're also my friends, 

and they like a good time. There's room on my boat 

for just about everyone. I'm serious about this! 

There'll be a place on board for everyone's stories. 

My own, but also the ones belonging to my friends. 

Short stories, and the ones that go on and on. The true 

and the made-up. The ones already finished,

and the ones still being written. 

Poems, too! Lyric poems, and the longer, darker narratives. 

For my painter friends, paints and canvases will be on board my boat. 

We'll have fried chicken, lunch meat, cheeses, rolls, 

French bread. Every good thing that my friends like and I like. 

And a big basket of fruit, in case anyone wants fruit. 

In case anyone wants to say he or she ate an apple, 

or some grapes, on my boat. Whatever my friends want, 

name it, and it'll be there. Soda pop of all kinds. 

Beer and wine, sure. No one will be denied anything, on my boat. 

We'll go out into the sunny harbor and have fun, that's the idea. 

Just have a good time all around. Not thinking 

about this or that or getting ahead or falling behind. 

Fishing poles if anyone wants to fish. The fish are out there! 

We may even go a little way down the coast, on my boat. 

But nothing dangerous, nothing too serious. 

The idea is simply to enjoy ourselves and not get scared. 

We'll eat and drink and laugh a lot, on my boat. 

I've always wanted to take at least one trip like this, 

with my friends, on my boat. If we want to 

we'll listen to Schumann on the CBC. 

But if that doesn't work out, okay, 

we'll switch to KRAB, The Who, and the Rolling Stones. 

Whatever makes my friends happy! Maybe everyone 

will have their own radio on my boat. In any case, 

we're going to have a big time. People are going to have fun, 

and do what they want to do, on my boat.

Screen Dump 712

But there was more to it than the translation

skirting the main event while asking the resident Sphinx

the passcode to some inner chamber

where alternatives are kept on ice with Facebookers

posting the past despite the plethora

of contemporary adaptations of your take on Beowulf . . .

those damaged destined to repeat their obsessions

tumbling head over heels into roundabouts . . .

A treatise on the importance of getting your house in order

targets hoarders making the mess messier . . .

This longing for one last shot at immortality . . .

a day in the life of a day in the life . . .

everything volumizing a high wire act 

with no less than how to get through the day . . .

The vigilance you signed up for, yes? . . .

Can you imagine this ancient hatch? . . .

This escapade of hopscotch fueling the voices in the air

that today argue happenstance . . . the lone and level sands

stretching to a wooden-legged captain awaiting a white whale? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 711

An afternoon class in Classics

changes the way you approach texts

while the gravel trail bloats

big cats on fat bikes

waiting to find out what it all means

beginning with Shall we begin?

as we begin Frances O'Connor's Emily

with more isms to latch onto

sprung from the sibs' paracosms

to embellish the autofictions of those

in the boarded-up storefronts of no-no

disputing the biopic tag

with sex, drugs, rock n roll

and a downplay of collaboration

ignoring Emily's diary paper . . .

And behind the embellishments

The facts in the case of . . .

You walk the walk for more words

using the Index of First Lines

to guide googling only to return

cache full of purple waywardisms

as if you had trod the moors . . .

Then on to the myth hands in pockets

parlaying passcodes at transfer stations

to level the playing field

for odysseyites bused to the soundstage . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 710

Again, asking yourself in the mirror

What good would questions do? . . .

the silence between extremes

leaving the madness of March

with index finger pointing to ring finger . . .

You buy time . . . walking through replays

that slam dunk you awake

in the middle of yet another dream

of being called out for texting plagiarisms . . .

You're thinking of taking the day off . . .

wanting to call in sick

when sick has nothing to do with it . . .

besides there's no one to call in to . . .

You should know this by now . . .

You should know that the gallerist

reviewing your work has run out of excuses

trying to make something to find out

what it means to make something . . .

Antonio Palmerini

30 days . . . 30 poets . . . 30 poems . . .

Rensselaerville Library’s Seventh 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
210 poems by 120 poets.
Stop by PADYES for your daily poetry fix!

Screen Dump 709

You're grappling so as not to forget what you want

to remember . . . a whoosh as if the surf crashes the cliff

with you floating above . . . You have decided

to practice narrowing your focus to eliminate

the superfluous from your walks . . . the day, deftly unraveling,

seems almost to disappear . . . so many thoughts

vying for your attention . . . then this idea of the texture

of it all . . . everything everyone seemingly connected

with tabs for those nestled in the cleft of your memory . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 708

You recount how touch initiates the sense of "I" . . .

how it costumes the body on misty mornings

and waits at the bus stop for passengers to resume their lives . . .

A test email breaks the silence . . .

The number of people passing through the portal increases . . .

And so it begins . . . parsing the engagement

with you in the soup aisle at the supermarket

swiping your phone for texts, checking the message

you took great care to get just right,

elbowing through inundations

amid the wearisome floundering of the spinning orb,

harvesting the future for meaning

while standing at the edge of a cliff for however long . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 707

You leave the gallery and long-limbed bronzes

which is OK since it's being streamed

with gaps for reconciliation

by people filing in . . . as what? . . .

let's call them inadvertents . . .

visiting the exhibition retrospectively,

following Zoomed corridors

through an opening in the text

and into the next scene

of customers at the counter in a diner

rewritten while obsessing the commonplace

with thoughts of odysseyites

going round and round the roundabout

in your old neighborhood

resonating with the rhythmic beat

of a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil

shaping steel red-hot from the fire

as if it were planned . . . 

as if it were the answer to the blue question

glued to the ATM . . . empty, unused

on a one-way street

informing each and every touch of the day . . .

Antonio Palmerini

My poem, The Mathematician's Daughter, was a finalist from among 468 entries from 44 countries in the 2023 Stephen A. DiBiase International Poetry Contest. Bravo to the other poets, & many thanks to curator Bob Sharkey & his team for a super event!

The Mathematician’s Daughter

But what of the cul-de-sac of her childhood?
The slow circling of bases on the dusty diamond,
calculator in hand?
The unraveling of ribbons on warm Saturday afternoons?
Her knack, yes, for movie theaters
and the sheer pagination of her intellect.
Her ability to plumb the depths of bodies in motion
to retrieve artifacts long forgotten
pinning onlookers to the mast with her proofs
as she practiced higher-order equations
on the sweet-smelling turf
under autumn’s orange sky.
Forget as well that she knew by heart
the names of Leibniz’s monads
the mass appeal of transits
the high rise of sorts with the stop sign in front
the vase of freshly-cut delphinium.
I once found her calibrating the pulsating, scratchy music
of stoops, wearing a smile filled with late hours -
hours spent spread-eagled over reams of graph paper
lined with doodles and obscure footnotes
from the sixteenth century -
her first four words as illuminating as ever.
She tried hard to find happiness in coefficients
in the beauty of imaginary numbers
staying the required course despite the odds
instead of shortcutting to the breakfast nook without a word -
an unmade bed, some fast food bristling in the wastebasket
the canned soups in her cupboard
arranged as they were in powers of ten.
In the end, she returned to the lecture hall
where, amid furious note-taking, she had once plotted our future
filling the whiteboard and the air
with intricate drawings of the Interstate at dawn
calculating the logarithmic distance from x to y to z.

Backstory Alice Deposed

Numbers. Their coming-together.

Their commingling. I loved it.

Positive and negative numbers.

Big and small numbers. Real and

imaginary numbers. The purity

of primes. Testing their solitude,

their robustness, their

resistance to proof.

Walking them through the

nightmare of dreams. It was

seductive, addictive . . .

not only on the page

or the whiteboard

but also in the day-to-day.

My days throbbed with them.

I was lost to them. Then

I collided with Dear Luddy.

And I abandoned them.

Just like that. I stopped.

I stopped playing with them.

I stopped sleeping with them.

Nada. But they pursued me.

Their images pursued me,

haunted me. Infiltrating

my fibers. Cavorting

as they did. Yes, there

was a Wonderland of sorts,

but it was finite.

Then the lines began

rewriting themselves

and it was as if I was shoved

through a firewall

into an alternate reality.

The images squeezed

through . . . along with a solo

accordion. I filled my journal

with admonitions . . . not

bothering to correct

misspellings. I began

trafficking in consumables.

Packaged as in . . .

As You Like It. I held

the aces. Controlled the

scene. Flipped the roles.

But always far from the

madding crowd. My height

intimidated them. They loved 

it! Especially after googling

wine lists. Always the same

sluggish words . . . blah

blah blah . . . as if . . .

as if . . . I never anticipated

having to count ceiling tiles.

I always made the most

of a (sometimes) pathetic

situation. Do the math. Run

the numbers. Pair the

primaries! Olly, olly, in-free!

Ready or not, I always came.

Screen Dump 706

You practice a disciplined indifference

trying hard to seem not to be trying too hard

plagiarizing Seduction Theory

eyes on angularities

racking up odysseyites for a casual game of nine-ball

in the diamond formation on the subway

where it's all tag-team fashion show

for the clock's hand-wringing . . .

Trying to stay awake amid the blizzard of YouTubes

you reach back for the metric of then . . .

bundles of literary allusions

misquoted misspelled misplaced

in the rare book section of the museum . . .

spending nights alone in a dark room

teaching yourself to draw as if blindfolded . . .

learning to unlearn . . .

the fascination when the game is afoot . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 705

You hop into bed with happenstance . . .

scenes of endearment in black and white

on a doilied Stromberg-Carlson

in a room reminiscent of Miss Havisham's

crammed with memories of home-schoolers . . .

The boulevards distract with light reading . . .

odysseyites await first dibs

their landing craft reassembled

with the same worn colored pencils

from a gallerist's backroom . . .

Renderings . . . mounted in amber

slip past the watchers at the gate

satisfy the elements of someone's style . . .

You google factorials

applying exclamation points

to escape to the garden . . .

head filled with Mahler's doom-laden Ninth

its twenty-seven bars for strings . . .

transcendent . . . a prototypical specter

redacts your clang associations . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 704

Of course one could ask, What options? . . .

Imposing complexity on a single piece of prose

as if the flat darkness

demands a gathering of sorts . . .

You are now here . . . on your way there . . .

The permutations of if drone on

debulking the synthesizers and spandex

of a second Stone Age

at times engaging the rhapsodic

with a view from within . . .

risking enormity with its attendant salads and sadness

yellowed pages of indecipherable scribbles

appear late at night at the foot of your bed . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 703

You favor transmutations . . . real and imagined . . .

passersby cosplay odysseyites

follow dotted lines . . . the consciousness of overcast days

delivering overcast shadows

acknowledging overcast notations

as if in the tunnel of unread words

appearing again and again in dreams

of morning shows throughout . . .

You try to recall days when in the middle of nothing

you were handed a different script

a different unfinished script

winging it with nothing more

than semiotic regurgitations

connecting the dots to an overgrown apple orchard

from someone's childhood secrets . . .

the one your friend let go of when his parents disappeared . . .

The knack of going back intimidates you . . .

as if riding through storm clouds of white chickens

on a red wheelbarrow . . . overly-anthologised

beyond recognition . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 702

A diorama shadows your blue-penciled autofiction . . .

The day wanders through snowflake-dotted buildings

leaning against one another

as if the whole world is about to entropy . . .

You enter a wormhole

parlaying archival footage

for an afterlife with benefits . . .

the deck stacked with thumbnail sketches

of odysseyites seduced by Sirens of Dissonance . . .

The eons avalanche . . .

there are so many you've lost track . . .

A downsized news anchor holed-up for days in her room

bangs out magic on an ancient ribbonless Remington

over and over and over . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 701

The instability that looms . . .

like arriving at insight through revision

so you keep rethinking the path

and it turns out to be illuminating

even when you feel on the brink

or fear going over the edge . . .

the stick-to-ittiveness . . .

Sorting through old photographs . . .

your past lives . . . your past choices . . .

the anything as everything . . .

regrets at the last station . . .

doubts . . . insinuations . . . 

ghosts recapping playthroughs

dance across rooftops . . .

How often have you been slammed with less

despite costume changes promising more? . . .

despite the correct passcode? . . .

I know you know this from past table reads . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 700

You're dicking around with comma splices

trying to flesh out the ambiguity of appositives

checking prices of navel oranges and fuel oil . . .

The books on the shelf in fracture mode

stare you down, threaten to open . . .

There's a diagrammable certainty to all this

but you're having trouble putting your finger on it . . .

It's just so intricate and deliberate . . .

like winter's grip . . .

Traffic at the tray feeders jams

dislodging with a bright palette

the ennui of second-growth trees . . .

This could be about me, you, or someone else . . .

This hodgepodge of injecting meaning into the day . . .

the value of your words plummeting

given the seeming insouciance of event parking . . .

The relapse is about to relapse

with its refusal to countenance

any change in policy governing rules of grammar . . .

No doubt we'll hear more about this . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 699

A dropdown menu of grayed-out options

is about to announce your seeming willingness

to engage theater as theater . . .

After all, it’s all theater, yes? . . .

Even the garnish on your takeout . . .

So how about a share plate of edibles

selected with care

by your favorite chef-de-cuisine-du-jour? . . .

enough to dampen the gratuitous hostility

of your joystick with the rag-dolled strangers

backstage urging hardtail fat bikes

down gravel paths with night moves

going meta . . . stretching like taffy

along the yellow brick road of imagination . . .

Everyone memorialized in the softcovers

cluttering your backroom

is a person of disinterest

kneejerking golden rings in fables

transcribing the blank pages of the novel

you inhabit . . . while you reach

for your autofiction trying to forget

what you saw, who you were,

fashioning orphaned marionettes to retreat

into the theme parks of your fragmented mind . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 698

Many were inexperienced . . . time and again

misinterpreting hand-holding as condescension

revisiting the cul-de-sac with the passcode

at the wheel of your nightmare . . .

So you would proceed . . . slowly . . .

encouraging them to ask questions . . . take notes . . .

The strangeness of the encounter . . . a given . . .

both of you stepping out of your comfort zones

as if shooting with a green screen . . .

And what about postproduction at the tea shop

with work-a-day costumes oozing hilarity in retrospect? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 697

Voices from the air elbow in with the insistence

of Crayolas pocketed from the early days

when naïveté colored your renderings

with eyes wide shut

dumbing down the circumstances

for palatability's sake . . .

A breeze through an open window

with images of past lives

swells thought bubbles into the full catastrophe . . .

You as confused as I . . .

Yes, add that to your write-up . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 696

Seasonal hymns carry you aloft

the small print assuring you that the exaltation

in the fuzziness of the rearview mirror

is evidence of your coming-of-age . . .

Reams of prayer repurpose happiness

on the street where you live

and alter the topography of your brain . . .

You day-trip backstory practice

mimicking the chamber group in Pictures at an Exhibition . . .

the momentum enough to spearhead you into the beyond . . .

Isn't it magical? . . . intimacy's joggle? . . .

The candles flickering their excitement . . .

puzzling amusement . . . dynamic

in their medievalism . . . in their ability

to quell supermarket stalkers

comparing notes on extended techniques

with odysseyites dabbling in noise . . .

The snow is indeed over the top

but, look, the wonderment of this winter wonderland

is a dotted line to the divine

prompting players to sort through their collections

of unfinished symphonies

sorted on imaginary number . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 695

Odysseyites curry favor with Johnny-come-latelies

homeless in email . . . palming handouts

and a free pass to the Lone Star Steakhouse

where buy-ones get-ones feature . . .

A Shakespearean interface perplexes you far and away

your memory skewed by the cacophony

of the signal-to-noise ratio

filling the first movement with incomprehensible snow . . .

You have come to appreciate nautical wherewithals

and manage to navigate the second movement

mindful of the snow whose melodic drifts

you later learn was what everyone

had slogged through the snowstorm to hear . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 694

Sometimes in her sleep Albertine throws off her kimono and lies naked.

          - Anne Carson, The Albertine Workout

Hence, your fascination with sleep

and with Proust's Questionnaire

alluded to in the opening scene . . .

This, of course, made to seem inconsequential . . .

Alone now in the wilderness

in a blizzard . . .

OK, a good start . . .

Tweak it a bit to fit

into the Islets of Langerhans . . .

That can't be right . . .

Nonetheless, continue . . .

Act Two is much the same

prompting your comment on the formulaic . . .

The cluster fills with posers . . .

That it works is insidious, I mean, incredulous . . .

Are you sure you want to proceed? . . .

If you do, you'll have to walk us through

the proof specing falsehoods within

a narrow margin of error . . .

Think an endangered Snow Leopard

in one of the most remote areas on earth . . .

You are with yourself

you are within yourself

not unlike the unnamed monster

in Mary Shelley's novel

with Victor Frankenstein near death

on an ice floe relating his terror

to explorer Robert Walton . . .

this excursion into horror

by an 18-year-old's nightmare

two years after she became pregnant

with her first child, also unnamed . . .

The monster like all seeks love and recognition

but suffers misunderstanding, rejection, hatred . . .

Enter TikTok:

a world out of balance scored by Philip Glass

whose teacher Nadia Boulanger

arguably the greatest music teacher of all time

fueled his one-upmanship

with fellow composer Steve Reich . . .

and so the world as House of Crazy

forcing us to dip our quills

into rose-colored liquid

to palatabalize appropriating a one-way ticket

to elsewhere . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 693

He has left nothing to say about nothing or anything . . .

          - John Keats

Images of your former self fill the air with commiserations . . .

Videos spiral into collages of departure

and go viral . . . assembling words to say something

about something you know something about

but then stop . . . This happens, yes? . . .

It's as if you were told about the last time . . .

It's as if you were told this will be the last time . . .

It's as if you were told this is the last time . . .

Imagining the confusion when the code bombs

and regs are swapped out for neologisms . . .

You have tried to set the record straight . . .

There will be no setting the record straight . . .

Who told you you would be able to set the record straight? . . .

The record is gone . . . last seen entering Hannaford . . .

You have tried to pick up where you left off . . .

Just where did you leave off? . . .

Too much information . . .

You have submitted the paperwork, and rejoined your age-mates

who pump air and will continue to pump air

into the silence of anechoic chambers . . .

It's as if you were glued to YouTube . . .

It's as if you knew all along you would be muted . . .

It's as if you were recognized for who you are . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 692

Maybe they're coded into the graphic versions

of Stephen Hawking’s Time

hawked by junkyard dogs and other ne'er-do-wells . . .

Or Proust? . . . maybe Proust? . . .

Regardless, time passes . . .

Fashion plates spin . . .

Turntablists go on record to transfuse vinyl . . .

Anything to keep out of hock . . .

Anything to stave off the due date . . .

The life of a court jester juggling, what,

five, six, seven balls

in the days of bungee jumps

accelerates the metabolism

sets loose change jingling

pockets fluttering with delight . . .

This is good, yes? . . .

Dishpan dilemmas melt away . . .

You wake in a Beckettian diorama

locks unchanged, doors ajar

showcasing reticence, ambiguity, and

humorous deflationary counterpoint . . .

Who said that? . . . Did you say that? . . .

Dusty volumes doze on podiums, awaiting magic fingers . . .

Everyone is in fine fettle . . .

And after? . . . Who knows? . . .

At the very least you’ll be penciled in

somewhere ages and ages hence . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 691

You do your best to weather a strange ineptitude

the discoloration of the senses

that follows a fragmented conversation

but before you know it

a triviality arrives

with its own list of demands . . . 

Later, several strangely-costumed leads

appear seemingly on cue from installations

and reappear one by one

as if in an infinite loop

offering monologues and soliloquies

odds and check-out times

well-wrought and well-received

thorough in their encryption

yet lacking in payback . . .

while outside an out-of-sorts vehicle

makes its way along the narrow one-way street

depositing memories

on one chipped stoop after another . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 690

Long haulers reconfigure goodbyes . . .

There is no other life . . .

Promises are scanned . . . some shredded . . .

Irrevocability is tabled . . .

The difference jolts you awake

in the middle of your soliloquy

filled with hounds

nipping at the darkness . . .

Your lines recall with impunity

late night walks through scripts

costumed in OCD . . .

baiting your next subject . . .

reporting the outcome to the moms and pops

infiltrating the neighborhood

after word got out

that the sidewalks are paved

with deleted TikToks . . .

The world fills with dubious auditionees . . .

 

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 689

You're onstage translating blue book innuendos . . .

Graffiti artists recruit Zamboni drivers

for the latest in homespun contortions . . .

Every day you write down a color for emphasis . . .

It sometimes works . . .

especially with underdeveloped photographs

and smokeless candles

from Bed Bath and Beyond . . .

You admit to appropriating yourself . . .

About the dog's dutiful permanence

within the purview of the cat's tall tail

wedded to your spot-on translations

you reluctantly relinquish reserve . . .

The day is recalled for safety violations . . .

Knowing full well desire's amplitude

fuels your compassion

for one-armed bandits with performance anxiety . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 688

The day quibbles intensity

climbing in a hot air balloon . . . belching symbols . . .

the same 32 symbols with few exceptions

scribbled by ancients on cave walls . . .

Your visions incubate playoffs

as odysseyites seek shelter

from misappropriations . . .

A free ride with Thanksgiving looms . . .

There is something about something, but . . .

the dumplings, ah, yes, the dumplings

continue to steam . . .

You return remarkably from your incision

into hubris which unchecked

could forego Chromebook's immensity . . .

Blueness strolls elsewhere

while a disaffected second assistant director

toggles a capacity

for resilience against despair . . .

He too will . . . eventually . . .

Rinsing your mouth after using a puffer

impresses a starlet known for her brake pad bails . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 687

You're using a random text generator

to fill in memory gaps . . .

How back from  elsewhere in blue suede shoes

you loitered to grab caffeine

with a camera obscurist lost in plate tectonics . . .

Misplacing the memo

you practiced night sweats

with a minor leaguer

who had to follow an instruction sheet

for stonermasons . . .

Fast forwarding 40 years you find yourself

among the original cast members

bloating come-ons for moving-up day

in a city of somnambulists . . .

The sky cloudless (which here means nothing) . . .

Memorable hamlets . . . and ink . . .

quid-pro-quo under the skin of a woolly mammoth

mooring across a Russian novel

with a grandmother inviting you in

for voodka and borscht . . .

Your high heels catch-as-catch-can . . .

your hemming and hawing

make it into the finals

with a jump shot paradigm shift

while sniggling softly in tantric rapture . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 686

It was time . . . but time for what? . . .

There are too many times

and the clock is of no help . . .

You don't know what to do . . .

You fill with indecision . . .

A keyboardist taps for a return to Wordstar . . .

You find yourself waiting in a waiting line . . .

You decide to throw caution to the wind

and go food shopping . . .

The aisles speak to you in foreign tongues . . .

You feel alien . . .

Free samples are thrust upon you . . .

You begin reciting aloud a monologue

you thought you had forgotten

but then it popped into your head

just now in the condiment aisle . . .

a monologue from your faux halcyon days

when you looked forward

to nights of how-tos and what-ifs

in storefronts stuffed with tchotchkes

piled high by functioning hoarders . . .

You love the pig mug . . . and the designer toilet paper . . .

There's more but it won't let go

of the tip of your tongue . . .

Shoppers stare at you . . . aim their iPhones at you . . .

The supermarket begins to close in on you . . .

an experience reminiscent of your time served

in boostered state office cubicles . . .

You press the Escape key . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 685

You displayed inscrutable dexterities

in the moment and thereafter . . .

isolating the ambience for later study . . .

dating entries as a method

of keeping track

of where you left off . . .

There was little sense in doing the math . . .

Enough came too soon . . . the pleasure

climbing but falling off before peaking

as incomplete as the scribbled code

bobbing in the runoff . . .

Your experience with choral groups

seemed endlessly renewable

endlessly enjoyable

as rare as colorways in bipolarity . . .

Your attempt to encounter afresh 

the waveform action of syntax

led to a diatribe of dead ends

directing you to return to the streets

marked One Way with all the trappings

of cutting, splitting, and stacking wood

impressing the making and unmaking of sense,

the how not the what of knowing . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 684

Your basement tapes voice allegations

of foreplay and aftplay

in the cemetery miniseries

that didn't make the cut . . .

Yes, the hills are alive . . .

But, hey, let's not forget there's more to it . . .

A conductor with baton raised

ready to start time

opens the throttle

to begin the first movement . . .

the clocks change

and the bottleneck at the back door

is shortlisted in the Times

with someone soloing

as a prelude to the sarabande

that everyone has been waiting to hear . . .

You tell me about the pleasures

of your special house

the color-coded, numbered steps

the nested rooms

the welcoming gestures

the shoutout Beethovenish . . .

A semblance of your former self

searches scores for an earwormed progression

that holds the clock's breath

with you keyboarding in real time . . .

You open with a chase scene

awaiting the first snowfall . . .

A dream of a dream of a dream, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 683

You engage a semicolon and chalk up another lap

trying to snag a moment of immortality

with ospreys on the breakers

at the tip of the Cape . . .

a perfect day . . . a perfect costume . . .

your younger self trying to elbow in

but you surprise the nosebleed section

with a crossover dribble

and set the stage

for another take on

Long Days Journey Into Night

conceived in one of the dune shacks

you visited followed by high tide

and an arpeggiated welcome

by the piano player at The Moors

who upon seeing you announced

shipwreck! . . .

You envision a write-up or a white-out

but words are slow

which is OK because odysseyites on holiday

are standing down

waiting for the call to exercise

their right to farm

with its green light ignoring nuisance lawsuits . . .

You're at loggerheads

deconstructing time and loving it . . .

so why shouldn't the exasperated

in the green room pay homage to last month's winners

in the Pick Up Stix Contest

touting fast casual Asian cuisine? . . .

The Moors, Provincetown, MA

Screen Dump 682

You sleep with jealousy and run red lights

bronzing conjugations of fornicate

trying to pump the impression

of laughing through intersections . . .

Scribbles aside you paddle to the middle

and sketch the shoreline . . .

The sun sits between timeouts . . .

It's all about staying the moment

finding a script with starting blocks tailor-made

then moving online for subtleties . . .

You got rid of most of it at the transfer station . . .

But some things are difficult to part with, yes? . . .

Sticking to your fingertips

when a storm approaches for example . . .

Seeing them in your rearview mirror . . .

And now, they're dancing on the roof

the angle making it impossible for you to let go . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 681

Undaunted, the U-Haul speaks volumes . . .

Have you been here before? . . .

Your appearance bodes well for the extended forecast . . .

Were there enough corrugations

to keep the pachyderms occupied for the duration? . . .

The shore can be therapeutic, yes? . . .

Especially the white sand . . .

It's not just that though . . .

There's something else, something I can't put my finger on . . .

This has been happening a lot lately,

and I fear it may become par for the course . . .

Bette Davis was one; there have been others

but she nailed it, and it's stood . . .

Did you think you could forestall the inevitable? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 680

Your eyeliner tells a different story . . .

Cartons upon cartons upon cartons

delivered in a misrepresentation of facts . . .

And where in this stream of consciousness

do you place yourself? . . .

There's no telling

when you too will be dropped . . .

Waiting for . . . Waiting for . . .

Insinuations jumping out of the woodwork

without regard for the other players

in this mini-drama

which streams Saturday evening somewhere . . .

Come out with it, already . . .

You know you're bursting with others . . .

The excavations bronzed . . .

Your thoughts bronzed . . .

The heat-stroked field always a good excuse . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 679

You fall asleep watching Scenes from a Marriage

(for the umpteenth time)

and awaken to a brighter palette:

the confluence of material, brushstroke, support, scale

how music can jack the spirit

the change in your pocket jingling with memories

the exchange of emails shepherding new worlds . . .

Running on the fumes of texts excites . . .

This time you have read the manual

studied the expressions on their faces

reviewed your notes, practiced survival skills

as suggested by counter staff

at Dunkin' and Starbucks . . .

They too are familiar with the sketches you shared

and seem to understand your reasons

for trying to get it all down . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 678

Words bottleneck the coastal route:

you know, the windup, the pitch, the corner

the cab to the outer reaches

the Nile rerouted

gondoliers on holiday . . .

Oblong days saturate polyrhythms . . .

Back seat drivers GPSing . . .

The muses step up to the plate . . .

Did you fail to deliver? . . .

Did you fail to hand in the report on time? . . .

You will not pass Go . . .

You will not collect $200 . . .

You will be banished to a Draft Folder

in the Outer Banks

to sit there, in a quandary, bemoaning a foothold . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 677

You passed the rigor of bicycle days,

coaster brakes waiting behind package stores,

ifs, ands, buts triangulating the derivatives

barely visible through the brushstrokes,

armatures buckling under symbols shape-shifting

with wait staff, your chalk drawn and ready . . .

The mathematicians of your half-life

are talking their way

through the axioms on Knife's Edge

the conjectures at Herring Cove

the theorems along the Mohawk

hustling you past

the rentals, the SROs, condos, two-families,

the faces in the windows of doublewides

reflecting the ambiguity of your words . . .

Your rewrite fills an amphitheater with iterations

of the same person . . . a stranger . . .

You were told this would happen, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 676

Your answering machine is asking questions.

          - Anon

You're not sure it's a question

and you're trying to convince yourself

that you couldn't care less

but you know that you do . . .

You know that lately it's been a rabbit hole

and that in the dream you had drilled down

to your old neighborhood

now in disrepair

and confided to your friend who died

of a heart attack on the tennis court

30 years ago at 39 . . .

Your afterimage brought you to your knees

and has been texting you incessantly . . .

You've said you want out . . .

So you put aside the question

in question, and think again

about Alice, in disguise, in your dream,

wearing one of those huge hats

in the manner of the Red Queen

and carrying on about why words

can be made to mean

so many different things

which again opens the door

to the conundrum

waiting for you in the fun house mirror . . .

Antonio Palmerini