Screen Dump 744

The tiresome bobbing and weaving

obliterate the string of pearl days

basking in the unseasonable 50s . . .

What you thought you heard

is what you heard . . . at least

according to hearsay . . .

Emptying a bottle of invisible ink

to the Big Pharma of resolution

is an AI monologue composed

not from images but from words . . .

Objections disallowed by dissonance, yes? . . .

How can masterworks survive

in this forensic undercurrent? . . .

A din drifts in from the back room

where pleas are bargained

before headlining virtual tabloids . . .

Your lines riskng enjambment

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

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 743

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

The intricacies of intimacy

with you elsewhere retooling your philosophy . . .

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

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

with the casual dress code

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

because you're telling me

that complaining kickstarts creating

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

Like listening to someone's words

as if on the noisy soundstage of a silent film

or listening to a serial open mic reader

whose words supply a different narrative

every time someone texts

or listening to your own words

dress-coded for undertow with boxy takeaway . . .

Illusory, perhaps? . . .

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

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 742

Thinking a reshoot of the end game

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

The hiking paths wait . . .

This pincushiony dynamic is offputting

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

to the 365 days of summer . . .

It's something to think about, I suppose,

especially when considering footwear

and the miles and lines to be traversed . . .

I hate to remind you but those cyberdays

keep coming back, their moves color-coded

for easy turnstiling . . . and more . . .

Flat screens are a turn on . . .

Reminds me of Miles cranking out however many hits

to fulfill his contract and join Columbia . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 741

You're turning the room inside out

looking for the missing link

you forgot to include in your email . . .

Rhode Island Reds cluck news feeds . . .

the regulated symbol in art

smearing your dreamscape lakeside

with the cinematography grammatical

to showcase your outré demeanor . . .

It's nothing . . . really, this imagining

as if one were willing to retreat

to a safer pop-up monastically . . .

even with everything curated, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 740

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

Why this segue into alienation

with voices at the back door? . . .

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

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

of course, it's all about coming

at the drama from a distance

all stops pulled out

the perspective just that

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

You do recall the reshoot

after several lines had been cut

leaving you at loose ends, yes? . . .

a kind of detachment

even about the most intimate of details

fanning out like a stacked deck of cards

with the magician asking you to pick one . . .

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

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 739

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

Cybersecurity mavens schedule colonoscopies

with iCloud colorways

as if keyboarding members of the alphabet

to guide a 20-wheeler through the woods of words

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

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

Repurposing confidential information next to a dogbed

is a bullet train back to the future

where rehearsals are more rehearsals

and the game afoot raises the stakes

to a sub two-hour marathon

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

The drama resurfaces in water under the bridge

quenching no one's thirst . . . with you

leaving the table of random numbers without a word

without finishing the song . . . driving away

into sheets of sound . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 738

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

the geometry of stories

etymological underpins

backstories

late night walks - real and imagined . . .

Self-mythologizing life's path or paths

however logical or reverential

may seem, if pressed against a whiteboard,

a mapping of your encounters

etched from bootleg tapes

whose words fill thought bubbles

alphabetizing utterances

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

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

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

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

the blindness of happiness? . . . I mean

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

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

upon which you can enact or re-enact 

your one wild and  precious  life  . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 737

You're shadowing Kafka . . . with pointe shoes

spinning . . . spiraling . . .

into the tremendous world

inside his head 

then it's on to the drone

with the speed of a grizzly

but not whose woods these are . . .

the plaintiff continuing despite admonitions

with someone alleging misappropriation . . .

Again, the unbearable whiteness

before the conductor

raises her baton to begin

reeling-in the orchestra . . .

letting them know

where she wants them to go . . .

giving the impression

they're behind the beat . . .

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

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

baptismally, perhaps? . . .

quoting Gilgamesh

the unbearable heaviness . . .

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

wait, not moving, no longer . . .

A matinee . . . but not . . .

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

Leila Forés

The Ghosts Among Us

Death bench-presses a cosmos of darkness . . .

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

The clock smirks . . .

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

or the diagrammables

in the Kafkaesque cul-de-sac

but more . . .

which will play out . . . regardless . . .

Acknowledging re-acquaintances will buy time . . .

especially now with the truth-or-dare-isms

repotted in the guest room

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

once waited . . .

There will be an ungodly number

of happenstances carried aloft

through the streets . . .

white chariots drawn by white horses . . .

The Trojan Horse will appear . . .

weighing history heavily . . .

And in the final moments of the final quarter

extras as ghosts will fly in

to make it all seem real . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 736

Having discarded the template-a-minute app

as an unbearable lightness

confused by impersonators

you engage the drudgery of filling in the slots

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

Altogether now with meaning, yes? . . .

You're drifting off-course . . .

the day's minutia fogging the lens

to say nothing of wannabes warming up . . .

The little green room is plantless . . .

an amalgam of exchange

without dawn's pristine view

reaching back for a foothold

or facsimile

which in time will revisit this memory . . .

This is not without precedent

but the moment-to-moment displacement

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

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

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 735

As if using a prepared piano

you explore the fringe between music and noise

experiencing emotions

as you write about them . . .

Is that something you even think about? . . .

Meaning? . . .

Cavorting with unbearables? . . .

Not sure . . .

but there always seems to be less to go on

especially when films echo the wavelengths of the lost

sitting with ferals napping on stoops . . .

Confronting silence with veiled undertones? . . .

Interpreted as joy? . . .

It's the presence, yes? . . .

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

Questioning the call of odysseyites

inserting  pronouns to enhance palatability . . .

But didn't you say you were confused

by the struggle to make it all fit

into a nice little takeaway? . . .

OK, maybe elsewhere . . .

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

There's more to it than that . . .

the pounding at the back door, for example,

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

It's probably worth the bother . . .

besides we all know you enjoy winging it

with the monochromatic subtones of early morning drivebys . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 734

The mesmerization of the airbnb . . . a loophole

to magic your audience into hypnotic submission . . .

scripting the maelstrom of your wiles

with alternative mysteries

leading to the decreation of egocentrics

who are left to wander the empty boulevards

of Walmart Supercenters . . .

Your promiscuity alchemical . . . its weird threads

seducing those on the edge of aftermaths

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

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 733

You've misplaced the opening scene

where you in silhouette

disappear into an apartment building

in a late-night snow storm . . .

Inside the vacant apartment

miniature glass slippers

arranged paradoxically

speak to you extemporaneously . . .

You entertain the notion

of a dentist's appointment

for a loose crown . . .

or an afternoon feeding the bears

that wander onto the knoll

looking for evidence . . .

Nothing can be done about this . . .

Nothing should be done about this . . .

The light will change

but isn't that usually the case

especially when ordering takeout? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 732

That the magicians left

is a rain-soaked late December morning

in a glut of jaundiced checkmates . . .

Your late night posturing

has opened a cabinet of Caligari moments

flooding a willingness

to split the session for odysseyites

miming on a gessoed stage . . .

The world will begin again

and again

with contemplatives appending

for appending's sake

while you, delightfully costumed,

will be seen through the half-inch

of a window left open

by one of your entourage . . .

moving seductively to Mahler's Fifth . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 731

Your dream sounds a diminished seventh

in a wine-soaked gritty eatery

with you wearing your want in bib-overalls

inventorying the dissonant conversations

that once filled the long, narrow, high-ceilinged

hallway to nowhere . . .

A chance encounter, the makeshift profile

a deluge of lines that grows tired

as you excuse yourself

onto a parallel stage

colored with red collared Maine Coons

big enough to intimidate . . . a perfect fit

for your inscrutable autofiction . . .

How often did standins speak their tongue? . . .

anticipation flooding their ludicrous logic . . .

a takedown by a passing mathematician

whose game theory panoply just out in paperback

leapfrogged to the top of some obscure list

of academic best sellers . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 730

You worry you're spending too much time

within the mirror in the mirror

of your one wild and precious life

memeing Proust's madelaine . . .

burned-out AI memory chips

spewing the anger and anguish

of living in The House of Crazy . . .

You're trying to capture the colors of the 13 moons

but the composition bullies down

the Rothkovian palette . . .

You decide True Blue will do

knowing Michelangelo bailed on The Entombment

because he couldn't afford ultramarine . . .

its extraction and production so prohibitive

that the semiprecious color was restricted

to the Christ and the Virgin Mary . . .

You fear the clock's relentless ticking . . .

Will you return now to the easel with snow forecast? . . .

Will your image remain long enough to be captured? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 729

Blue-lined notebooks fat with FAQs sideswipe

with indifference . . .

You deconstruct backstreets

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

of your former selves -

some then . . . some now -
sorting through fragments

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

your retreat into the backdrop . . .

There will be additions which you will fail

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

captivating onlookers with pretense

your costume re-engaging the opening masterfully . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 728

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

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

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

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 727

And you in the ungraspable somewhere

flopping down on a couch

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

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

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 726

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

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

tumbling through the paper drifts of assignments . . .

That was when you repainted your room

with your altered ego

leaving a memory of special effects in a milk truck

before dawn's early light . . .

The cavalcade of costumes was well worth the tag team takedown

when eyes wide shut for unknown reasons

stepped in from another season of reruns . . .

The confusion addictive

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

the Dickinsonian obliquesness

conducive to auditioning for different roles . . .

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

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 725

Your spectrum of entanglements

continues to tickle comings and goings

Roman numerals stacked

fleeing into an anxious canyon

of choral meanderings

memories flooding the stairwell

evoked by the tracks on your mixtape . . .

You're checking out playlists

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

fragmentary dreamscapes

draw you in . . .

You've been tagged for a workgroup . . .

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

It happens, yes? . . .

The days into weeks into months into years . . .

grasping at fillers to avert the inevitable? . . .

Sitting there,  smiling,

your tongue unleashed from its moorings . . .

unctuous in its wake . . .

as if regression took the wheel from some roadie

when, at the last misstep, you decide

to stay a while . . .

Antonio Palmerini

ars poetica (with a small p)

(reposted from Tuesday, February 15, 2011)

A poem should not mean / But be.
          - Archibald Macleish

Outside, the snowflakes dance a minuet.
Wait a minute.
Do I need outside?
Isn't it implicit?
Outside, the snowflakes.
Inside, a minuet.
The snowflakes minuet.
No! No! Too telegraphic!
Try this.
The waves lap the shoreline.
The shoreline?
How about the shore?
The cat lapping the milk.
A minuet of cats.
And the paperboy?
He too could be pelted with snow.
On the beach?
Yes, on the beach.
In the middle of winter?
Why not?
What about the middle of summer?
What about it?
An evening of minuets.
Outside?
Yes.
Under the stars?
Of course.
The empty parking lot filling with snow.
Tracks.
In the snow?
From the dancers?
Dancing a minuet?
Yes.
Outside?
Yes, outside.
Under the stars?
Maybe.
Implied?
Possibly.
Possibly?
Possibly.
The newspaper is snow-soggy.
I'll speak to the paperboy tomorrow.
Outside?
Wherever.
Whatever.
In the middle of a minuet, if need be.
A paperboy dancing the minuet?
Why not?
As one of the snowflakes?
Yes, as one of the snowflakes.
Wouldn't his legs get cold?
Perhaps.
Are they made of paper?
Of course not.
They're made of snow.
He's one of the dancers.
Of the minuet?
Of the minuet.
The dancers have spent weeks rehearsing.
The minuet?
Yes, the minuet.
And now it's snowing?
Yes, and they're dancing.
The minuet?
Yes, the minuet.
I can see it.
Yes, it'll work.
Outside?
Yes, outside.
Outside, the snowflakes dance a minuet.

Excited that two of my "woman" poems (below) have been selected by Upstate Artist Guild artists as prompts for paintings to be included in exhibitions at Troy's Fish Market Gallery in November & Albany's Food Co-op in December.

Woman XVII

She enters my dream

through a side door

a blues harp player

in snakeskin boots

and weathered jeans.

Getting out of bed

I slip on a musical note.

Woman XXXIX

She says she wants to ride

and pulls up on her Harley.

I roll my Schwinn

back into the garage.

Screen Dump 724

With irrevocability looming, how can you be sure? . . .

Unlocking the tee-time,

OK, I get it,

but let's face it, it's nothing,

days pummeled with coffee and Danish . . .

No one in the know . . .

No other way . . .

The joint had to have been bugged, yes? . . .

Subjects flashing tenure, mashed with newsprint . . .

Opening statements . . . gappy, medieval references . . .

The room in stitches . . .

Talking heads . . . He walked! . . .

despite the fact they had chauffeured the 12 angry men

in an unmarked vehicle, windows blackened . . .

Yup, closed-mouthed

for the rest of the show, they were . . .

It was positively 4th Street, or maybe 5th, I forget . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 723

Your past lives gather in a room filled with familiars . . .

You're dumbfounded . . . speechless . . .

standing outside in knee-high grass . . . green and metronomic . . .

An upright bass player on loan from the produce section

of the food co-op runs changes over the retractions

you're riffing . . . prompting you to peel a dead language

from the interim speaker of the House of Crazy

who casts his die midstream and arrives at a reception

where the scene unfolds with blank stares . . .

Your mother's eyes redact the script . . .

A director calls for softer thought bubbles . . .

The move trips a flushed response hurling the entire cast

into the bowels of a banned book . . .

You want this hot early fall day to be enough but it is not . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 722

You draw a line as if the why is adrift

in a soon-to-be-predicted snowstorm

when incomplete sentences flurry

and you, jacketed against the cold,

attempt a semblance of sanity

while talking heads feel compelled to cosplay . . .

The moment-to-moment touch and go diminishes . . .

especially now with crumpled scripts

cluttering the gazebo

where an Anthony Hopkins' lookalike

walks you through the proof with:

Let X equal the cold . . .

In real life, it’s not that simple . . .

In real life, it takes a long time to break the ice . . .

the entire ordeal offputting  . . .

You worry tragedians . . .

You confirm the faces comprising your past selves

which your therapist, confusingly, demurs . . .

Yet, a brisk walk awaits . . . so you leave, quoting Woolf:

If a writer were free, there would be no plot . . .

Antonio Palmerini

At the Transfer Station

Rain sheets the windows

of the black Dodge truck.

There’s a young guy

in the passenger seat

and he’s giving you the thumbs up.

His grandfather is unloading the Dodge.

You're getting soaked

wrestling trash bags

out of your SUV

but you stop, put down the bags,

and give him the thumbs up.

Screen Dump 721

The provocativeness of close reading triggers

a memory that will prove your undoing . . .

Still, it's a wonderful life, yes? . . .

Clouds retreat in joy to the core of a volcano

on a remote island in a sea of forget-me-nots . . .

A sidelong glance from before glimmers . . .

You, in the moment, spend the rest of your allotment

running lines from award-winning one-acts

hoping, if nothing else, for a takeaway . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 720

Wait, there's more . . . it'll come to me . . .

that elusive construct that opens a dialogue

and you're off and running

with depositions about the hazards of following suit . . .

I know you know what I mean

having been interrogated again and again

about the meaning of meaning . . .

You said as much in discovery

and now you're living in a yurt

with midnight puppets

editing autofictions with invisible ink . . .

mirror images reflecting after-hour hookups . . .

It's not so much the tabbing . . . but flipping out

over the admittedly loose adaptation

of a fragmented backstory . . .

And this was elsewhere, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 719

You thought you had the journey all mapped out

dividing days into passionate melodrama or befuddlement . . .

napping in transit as resident fashionista . . .

Ubers and Lyfts at your beck and call . . .

Upgrading short stacks from a Dance Macabre . . .

odysseyites promenading with corpses along the boulevard

only to be messaged stack overflow . . .

That you decided at that point to shuffle the sequence

ballooned the palatability to the delight of standins . . .

You could have danced all night . . . and you did . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Disconnecting the Dots

(reposted from Wednesday, August 16, 2017)

Sometimes I left messages in the street.
          - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress

And then Frank O'Hara stopped by.
He's living in a yurt . . . in the 'Dacks
doing this . . . doing that
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
And how about Gustav Mahler channeling Frank O'Hara . . .
bicycling Bavaria
I seem to be absolutely born for the cycle!
deconstructing Moby's Porcelain
disconnecting the dots
as if it matters . . . and it does . . . but not to
his gorgeous, alcoholic, hearing-impaired,
superflirty, 19 years his junior, wife and muse, Alma,
whose bedpost is mottled
with the notches of affairs.
Billed as the most beautiful girl in Vienna
she believes several men are better than one
and spills as much to Freud one afternoon on his couch.
Never a fan of her husband's music
she chooses none of his for her funeral 50 years after his death.
And here again is Frank:
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, . . .

Laura Mentink in Wittgenstein's Mistress (2017)

Early this morning, bicycling Route 28 to Inlet:
unforgettable . . .
meandering past pristine lakes, deep woods,
and rustic little towns, someone wrote.
I know a moose when I see one.
And I've seen several . . . at Hoss's General Store in Long Lake.
Everything anyone would need . . . or want.
Everything.
Books . . . some read, some unread . . . on my shelves.
OK, so I've skipped a few chapters
and skimmed others
and disregarded enjambments.
Who hasn't?
But really . . . what is this thing called PO-ET-RY?
Without coffee, I mean . . . or, I mean, of course.
And what's with that?
Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends:
A photograph's all that's left of you.
Must we write from prompts?
Or from furniture music, à la Satie?
I am now trying . . . to write upon nothing, Swift said.
Someone keeps elbowing in with irregardless.
Where, oh where, are the grammar police?
Can you spell donuts?
How about potato?
How about VP Quayle's version of potato?
By the way, it's now called Dunkin'.
Dunkirk is showing at Bow Tie Cinema.
Try this . . . but not at home.
This is a text.
I'm embedding pics in a text.
Putting pen to paper . . . sitting on the fence.
Trying to write right
and other absurdities for understudy
by standins . . . and passersby . . . and wannabes
saddled with odysseys.
Three rows over, 60 years ago, in Latin Class
this girl - an upperclassman - in the school uniform

imprisons me in Dr. Caligari's Cabinet
while Julius Caesar divides Gaul into three parts.

Latin Class

Coming Into the Country with John McPhee
who memorialized big rigs and other uncommon carriers
in Uncommon Carriers
after shadowing truckers for a few months.
Something about momentum
and air brakes
and commercial breaks
which speed delusions
with Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man.
I'm out here waiting for the answer with Soren Kierkegaard
the other Dane who loved the rain falling mainly on the plain
in full view of Either/Or
written after breaking up with his fiancée Regine Olsen
using the pseudonyms A for Either, B for Or,
and Johannes Climacus for The Diary of the Seducer.
I can well understand why children love sand, Wittgenstein said.
It's all about castles . . . my home is my castle, yes?
With you bundled with apps . . . one day in the foreseeable . . .
An algorithm walks into a bar . . .
This too will be tweaked . . . and tweeted . . .
to fit the model to the facts
or the facts to the model . . . whichever . . .
before Cicero's 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?

Lucius Sergius Catilina

Sound familiar?
This, by the way, is an example of trichotomy,

in full habit Sister Anna Roberta said.

And why the Fates red-carded Caesar
in the middle of the Rubicon
and why Hannibal joined the circus and mastered elephantese.
It comes full circle . . . all of it . . .
the dots connected . . . disconnected . . . fading from view . . .
with paybacks and fallbacks

playbacks and callbacks

wetbacks and drybacks
and boxes of ephemera
near the counter of the old, lamented
Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in Boston,
Dan Chaisson wrote in The New Yorker
brimmed with
mangy postcards
wedding announcements
lobby cards
vinyl LPs
hippie stickers and patches
Civil Defense pamphlets and evacuation maps
poker chips
Old Maid decks
and skinny dogeared self-published PO-ET-RY chapbooks
filled with messages in the street.

Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop

Screen Dump 718

Rehearsing lines for detox where talk-talk is restrung

with unwords for transposition . . .

rearranging the furniture of the mind

to extract the right answer by rewording the question . . .

Of course, the drama of the get-go

with the feel of a silent movie . . .

eyes darting around the corners of the room

as if a mouse had sped past

slamming down chunks of cheddar

trailed by a reconfigured tabby . . .

The flattish physiognomy of the perp

under the cold, bleary sheets of confusion

opens the key to eventual deformity . . .

To hear the little click for another season of reruns . . .

is OK . . . even par for some of the players

chomping to borrow a phrase

for when the lake freezes over

with you dotting the horizon in yet another rewrite

of your one wild and precious life

bought and sold by plagiarists

shoplifting future episodes for junkyard flaneurs

in search of thought bubbles

floating above orphaned backstreets . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Content providers are providing content

for weekend do-it-yourselfers . . .

Why did you walk off the set? . . .

The troubling aftermath of parsing the logic

long listed drip-dried

up and out . . . into and out of the tropes

clutching the elusive, the untranslatable . . .

chopping and framing the sum of its parts

to evoke the essence of absence . . .

You're drowning in word soup and loving it . . .

backstroking to Nothing Compares 2 U

while down-time and emptiness haunt the backstory . . .

Wouldn't you rather smirk the passcode

reminiscing short stacks in the greasy spoon

of one of your past lives

when odysseyites stood on their heads

and busied themselves

assembling paraphernalia

for your next expedition

into a supermarket's labyrinthine aisles? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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A long hauler paging through the elements

and with that, the scene shifts

summoning a fact-checker

to fact-check the epigraph on tippy-toes

when all seemed taken by the virtual bridge

you had conjured the morning after . . .

Where were you on the night in question?

You seem never to tire of that . . .

Approaching it as if this is it

as if this time is it

as if toggling the options . . .

The events in the just-released transcript

by the just-released who had long been forgotten by most . . .

But that was long ago

to say nothing of your selfish devotion to your art . . .

And then this happened

with the weird-ass energy of the woebegotten

and you bejeweled with scrimshaws

sitting among the antique furniture in the atelier

blue-penciling diatribes . . .

Was there no other way? . . .

What was that anyway? . . .

The dynamics of engagement, perhaps? . . .

The regrettable choices? . . .

The nomenclature of streaming seems to have caught on

as a contender for an individual's legacy

revealing the contents of the steamer trunk hidden in the attic

having been asked on facebook chat what's important . . .

Weathering love's inconsistencies

you may want to consider the language of divinity schools

where the shades of gray are Wac-A-Moled into submission

to the delight of those on the wait list . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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

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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

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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 . . .

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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.

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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

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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