Screen Dump 86

(reposted from Wednesday, June 11, 2014)

You enter a room . . . forget why . . . read . . . then not . . .
The dumbness of the day . . .

of putting one word in front of the other
of putting your hands in your pockets

of putting your hands in their pockets . . .
The intimation of intimacy . . .
of finding someone's clothes in your closet
of finding someone on the other side of the bed . . .
Have you forgotten about the tickets . . .
the quart of milk . . . low-fat . . .
the gestures . . . out of balance . . . of yet another day? . . .
The loneliness of long distance runners . . .
the scent of green filling your nostrils . . .
You can't wait . . . to tell someone . . .
To re-string the instrument . . . unplayed for far too long . . .
A question of sooner or later . . .
Your own wish to become a blankness . . . forestalled . . .

Saskia de Brauw

Screen Dump 758

You practice your lines in a two-way mirror

plagiarizing last night's notes

ghosts escaping into the semantic other

balancing tongues

at least believing such

that this is the way you have learned

to manage the world . . .

to manage you in the world . . .

Something will come undone . . .

You will then fondle happy moments

lipsyncing the middle of a chapter

from your childhood's diorama

carried along by the current . . .

your grocery list sheepishly revealing the answer 

to a question you have yet to ask . . .

the neighborhood's scammed

as odysseyites fill their foreigns with ancient myths . . .

Kate Barry

Screen Dump 757

Your earlier self inhabits the body . . .

A trolley on a back street searches for passengers

who were meant to be elsewhere . . .

You'd better not hear me say that! . . .

the weird aftertaste when you at least tried . . .

then the green of a standin

asleep in the other room . . .

Yes, perhaps the endgame

which if nothing else will stoke the confusion . . .

Someone will be kicked to the curb

before the overflow is reckoned with

and rendered inconsequential . . .

You began the conversation on a positive note . . .

a concert A? . . .

yes, that's it, you said, recognizing

the ramifications of a lost lyric

in the early morning, no, no, not that,

it wasn't that, I'm sure . . .

It's not about making the cut

the call and response . . . that sort of thing

reconfigured from audio files

dropped off at a transfer station . . .

It's about a musical suite in a stand of pines . . .

Can you imagine the confusion

of a left turn . . . then another . . . and another? . . .

Nervous motion, head jerks, tics, shouts . . .

The sinister recording of happenstance

followed by a rewind, a retelling . . .

Eva Torkarchuk

Screen Dump 756

Recall the chef you went to high school with

deboning your salmon steak

while in an antechamber

a one-nighter riffed on a Fender? . . .

You wanted so much for it to be . . .
The deck is stacked but you know that . . .

Veganism? . . . OK, veganism . . .

There's loneliness in acceptance, yes? . . .

The time your pickup broke down

leaving you stranded in nowhereland

only to be dropped off at a subway stop

staring at the third rail

as if onlookers refused the magic

of your harmless costume . . .

And later at the bus stop

where rehearsals got out of hand

and the day became a graphic novel

in a strange tongue . . .

You knew this but continued your renderings

rubbing your hands together between your legs as if . . .

As if, what? . . . As if the director would call a reshoot? . . .

Take a moment to close read your journal

then return to the diorama of your neighborhood . . .

Forget inevitability . . .

Jan Scholz

Screen Dump 755

You're taking a line for a walk

to capture the cherry blossoms along the River Styx . . .

It's a day in someone's life, yes? . . .

The someone who was promised this but given that . . .

How unlikely . . .

Then the excitement of the roles you took on

after the barman's Last Call

bloating your Little Black Book

with fingerprints from your tweens . . .

You were dusted . . . and sent home . . .

Your Hokas make the unseen seen

with canned images from the produce section

of the neighborhood Hannaford . . .

Plans to repair the fence

trampled by wolves in sheeps' clothing

en route to grandma's

await the results of COVID testing . . .

The director of Netflix's Ripley

refuses to believe it . . . or not . . .

There once was a time . . . you suppose . . .

 

Screen Dump 754

You've become enamored of the invisible,

the mystery of entanglements . . .  

It's not so much the unknown,

it's the excitement

of being seduced by the moment,

the feeling of engagement, a shared journey . . .

The sloop of your dreams, drifting . . .

This performative feeling about writing . . .

that it's not set in stone . . .

that it's not closed down, not done . . . never done . . .

is good! . . .

You wake to an openness . . .

a blank page, an empty canvas . . .

And, no, it's not too late

to resume the close reading of your autofiction . . .

to experience deconstruction . . .

A bookstore materializes long enough

for you to buy your book, which isn't for sale . . .

Someone chimes in with sequencing is arbitrary . . .

Where does that fit in? . . .

Nothing wrong with being inquisitive . . .

Better than being aggressive or defensive, yes? . . .

The slippery slope of misinterpretation? . . .

of misunderstanding? . . .

The time left is now . . .

your experimental film . . . infinitely looped . . .

The Turin Horse (2011)

Screen Dump 753

A  Polaroid of young people at a beach

and the tale of the white Donald Duck tank suit

dripping with the full catastrophe begins . . .

A return to the days of then

soundtracked by 45s

the carefree exchange of goods and services

Jerry's Long Strange Trip . . .

high heels clicking on a 4 AM sidewalk

following an n of 2 or 3 or 4 . . .

all legs and arms and hair and words

streams flooded with binge

when . . . fanfare, please . . . a bread truck

rolls onto the scene

with Henry Miller at the wheel

Can I give you a lift? . . .

so you climb on

for yet another ride

costumes aplenty

experiences aplenty

memories aplenty . . .

Regrets? . . . A few . . . You too? . . .

La-di-da, la-di-da, la, la . . . à la Annie Hall . . .

years later . . . an ice storm cometh . . .

its outage an insult to the Age of Crocs . . .

The world teeters on the edge

of Hawking's uninhabitable . . .

yoked to this and that . . . this and that . . .

and your hand . . . their hand . . . a full house . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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

Rensselaerville Library's Eighth 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
240 poems by 136 poets.
Stop by PADYES for your daily poetry fix!

Screen Dump 752

You’re inventorying defining moments, trying to decide which one to include in your proposal for grant money to mount your play which you haven’t begun to write, so you're like, This may be a defining moment, with feet entering the five and dime from your childhood, drawn from a linebook by the director of that over-the-top production where everyone was fitted with a body double to stand in when excitement paled, but now with the defining moment head-butting, you turn to noone and begin improvising a selection of Beckettian anecdotes because, just because, you're in the mood to name-drop . . .

Billie Whitelaw in Samuel Beckett's Footfalls (1984)

Screen Dump 751

This is where the metaphor gets a little screwy

with you playing the part . . . whatever the part may be . . .

knowing that observing the inconspicuous

is your forte . . .

Let's start with an invisible person

sampling poutine at a diner . . .

They leave their cell phone at a bakery

with a baguette and stories to tell . . .

Are they a tourist? . . . Maybe later . . .

Cut to a lump of clay shape-shifting . . .

toggling the fourth wall as if a gift horse's mouth . . .

Are you OK with the vegetables in your garden? . . .

Let your family know . . .

This is important . . .

Family relationships are well worth

their autofictitious melodramas . . .

Think Tolstoy . . .

Everyone thinks about changing the world

and no one thinks about changing themselves . . .

How this came to this is well worth the time

it took for you to open the door to an unknown sound . . .

A cellist in the woods works through a Bach sarabande . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 750

A draft of a manuscript is being read aloud

by a voice from the air . . .

Crows mock crows . . .

You enter the scene idiosyncratically loose

in bib overalls and Mucks

approaching as if in the middle of a paper spree . . .

An unshapely tuft of something begins . . .

It's all about dreamscapes

in Rothkovian colorways . . .

The mist . . . as written, yes? . . .

but why this consequence by an unknown? . . .

I mean you could have just as easily engaged

with the cameras rolling . . . as discussed . . .

I'm not sure you're ready to apply the rules

of present tense . . . when the color of time being

is finished anyway . . . staying out beyond curfew . . .

of course you remember that day

on the street when the rightful owner

emerged from a late-model SUV

and began interviewing you for the next installment . . .

Federica Putelli

Screen Dump 749

You sport incompletion at an archaeological dig

with Etruscan vases and dental instruments

playing the part with players playing root canals

costumed as shattered visages . . .

The lone and level sands pull out into traffic . . .

You disappear into a labyrinth of words

but manage to recite your way out

with No coward soul is mine by Emily Brontë

whose disregard for convention

makes for an enjoyable trek

across the Yorkshire moors of someone's dreamscape . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 748

You concede a strange bunch of circumstances

abutting a consolation of sorts

nothing to complain about . . . yet

but someone's interior monologue is about to sound . . .

It could be UPS

in the guise of medievalism or innuendo . . .

You're tizzied over an early arrival . . .

Try not to get hammered again . . . there's no need . . .

not that there ever was . . . at least according to the transcript . . .

It could be just what the doctor ordered

not unlike when your development was muted

and you were on your clovenly way . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump 747

Your rhyming dictionary is off the grid

cluttered with words

you meant to Uber . . .

Buybackers stream . . . yet another example

of wardrobe anxiety from your out-and-about days

of celebrity passcodes . . .

This will begin . . . and this too will begin . . .

dreamscapes overshadowing your vintage items . . .

Regressing to some well-worn route

leading to a floor-through apartment

filled with the clarity of your mirror image

warms on the back burner . . .

Nothing is ready for you . . .

Nothing will be ready for you . . .

Appointments are backed into double wides . . .

This is not new . . . consolation prizes

leak language barriers . . . a throwback to the days

you shopped for muffled noises

only to be disappointed by more days of exceptions . . .

or expectations, whatever . . .

Antonio Palmerini

Screen Dump  746

Your costume mishap is a trailer park

and the horses in Patti Smith's

debut studio album are having none of it . . .

eating and drinking their shortlisted lives

in the orchard that went viral

while you studied your reflection

in a glass bead game not unlike Ahab's

he's dead but he beckons . . .

And here comes everybody's electronic music

with Moby whose middle name is Melville . . .

Patti Smith

Screen Dump 745

And now you're cutting and pasting . . .

exiting through the gift shop

with Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For? . . .

An uncertainty about how to live? . . .

A turning like the turning of the seasons? . . .

An image of a face from long ago

but the entanglement is like a train

leaving a station recalled

for a phrase rethought . . .

Enough to cross the bridge

with street cred and sky-high interest rate . . .

Not that you haven't been warned . . .

It's the unremitting arrogance

of a violist da gamba stopping by woods

on a snowy evening quoting from

a remaindered copy of How Should a Person Be? . . .

Leila Forés

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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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