Fall Collection

Winsome though they are,
it was not enough.
Something kept nudging me
through the time trial,
keeping me attuned to the weather channel
with its reverential esplanades
stretching far and away.
I tried to make-do with the items you left.
No luck. Fragments of then
kept falling out of place.
I imagined Venice instead of the usual,
its narrow convolutions
just what the doctor ordered
forgetting of course my fear of water
which reluctantly I must admit
had a lot to do with it.
That didn't work either,
and I was back at Barnes & Noble
where this flirty little blond
in hot pink jeans
and Louis Vuitton knockoff
got into a musical chairs thing
with a plainclothes IRS guy
and ran the gamut of acceptable insinuations
all of which were carefully documented
by her incidental associate.

Woman XXVI

Her every sentence is a mini-pose
as she fills her eyes with world-weariness
while twirling her vintage-y skirt.
I record her narcissisms,
and can't wait to get into her archive.

Kate Bosworth

Your Next Gelato

          for Bets Smith

The inkman is on his way to the next match(up).
He has proved himself an unreliable witness.
The supporting actors, too, are figments of something,
and that something is filing past as we speak.
(Don't you just love the colors?)
You're trying to imagine how things will turn out.
Me too, I'm in the same boat.
I've gone so far as to pilot the endgame - the real endgame,
not this interim havoc with the clocks stopping and starting,
the menagerie's bedfellows heating up.
I'm sure they find humor in that. We have.
And the spectators, always opportunistic, jostling their way
to the parking lot with its freshly-painted regulations.
You'd think they have a mall to confiscate.
Oh, I almost forgot, have you closed?
Isn't that what it's all about? Closing?
Practicing the senseless script
so you can regurgitate it verbatim on the ride-along
with Miss Goody Two Shoes (size 11)?
There are so many ways it can go - no hints here, yes?
Of course you can speculate
which is what I assume you're doing
(your eyes have that pottery glaze look),
the mountains looming as if they were propped up
by stagehands whose tears are drying in the atelier.
(Incidentally, the atelier is a nice touch.)
Perhaps we should have argued more vehemently
with each other or for a rewrite at least
but you were in the thick of it
your mind racing across the palazzo
filled with images of Morandi's blanched vases (or vahses)
thinking about the next gelato to cross your tongue.

I Cook Rather Than Starve

Do you like to cook?
          - Dating site survey question

It's like listening to yourself
wrapping your arms around your own consciousness
(for the first time, perhaps?)
profiling your soul for a prospective mate
classifying your style
as egoistic or altruistic or both
or neither
the morality of the street
in five easily-mastered lessons
unencumbered by the cheering of the sandlot crowd
as you (or your clone) round second base
on the shadeless, macadamed ball field
carefully adding ballpointed tattoos
to your forearms between innings:
and now ladies and gentlemen
stepping up to the plate: Finnegan Beginagain
sunshine springing eternal
as his beautifully spotless mind
embraces the spectators
backpack filled with life's lessons learned
(a tad light, if you ask me)
the true (north) meaning and why it matters
comfortably ensconced
in a goldleafed pyramid scheme
which, if followed sacrilegiously, is guaranteed
to tag the long ball of happiness far out of the park,
the pearly gates agape
with peace, love, and all that jazz.

Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova

It could?

How long (has this been going on)?
          - Paul Carrack (Ace)

Nonchalance. Then trying something else. As mediocre.
OK, exiting after the thunderstorm.
That was a good start.
Capturing the moon in the emptiness between two branches?
That was good, too.
The conversation jump-started with you
bringing up - again - Woodstock.
Why did you keep returning to the image of a church?
There was no church. Ask around. No church.
And the hamlet?
Peaked about 25 years ago. Ask.
By the time we got there, the fences had been trampled,
and they were talking people down from the towers.
Yes, I heard you mention the thunderstorm,
and remember some guy doing acrostics.
The Star Spangled Banner.
The act ending mid-stride with you trying to sort things out.
Forget it, you found a silver (sand) dollar and a fob of sorts.
A dawning? Who knew?
He said it was about a band member
but that's not the way it's been written up.
So what does it look like to you? In retrospect?
A younger version of the reader disentangling the writer?

Woodstock

As Per

The task of the researcher is to disprove the null hypothesis, or the claim that there is no difference between, for example, two levels of something. Since it's usually impractical to inspect all instances of something in a population, we select a sample which - if valid - is representative of the population at a level of confidence that we are willing to accept (typically 95 percent). We run the study, come up with findings, and report that we are 95 percent confident that the findings we came up with by looking at the sample are the same findings we would have come up with if we had looked at the entire population. Alternately, there is only a five percent chance that the findings we came up with would have appeared if no real difference exists between the two levels. Further, when we say a finding is statistically significant at the .05 level, we mean that if we were to run the study or investigation n number of times, we would come up with the same finding 95 percent of the time. Level of confidence is kind of like the amount of reasonable doubt we are willing to accept.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Woman XXV

She medaled in conjugation speed
and the javelin throw,
and holds advanced degrees in episodic aimlessness.
Her latest pin is ancient alphabets,
and she's been spotted at the deli counter
practicing cursive.
I forget why I'm standing in line.

Corrado Amati

The Gypsy Girl’s Guile

          for Catherine Mary Connolly (1969-2012)

The practitioners of inner peace
clamor for recognition
offstage in the wings
among the jugglers and other resellers
of souls worldwide.
They insist on being heard
and resent the assertion
that the end is in the beginning.
Many are puzzled
and await word from above.
It will come.
The gypsy girl knows this.
The gypsy girl knows the Secret
of the Dance as well
which she guards with her guile.
She has used her guile many times
to get what she wanted.
She would have it no other way.
Neither would those
seeking her gifts
word of which has been spread
throughout the land by fireflies.
They come for a glimpse
of her painted toes.
They do this with abandon
and without regret.
Offshore, a vessel lurches
trying to make headway.
The sea enjoys this sort of thing.
The vessel will arrive on time.
The gypsy girl can see this too
with a clarity
that would put most to shame.

Greenhorn! and the Art of Imperfection

Me. And me now.
          - James Joyce, Ulysses

I hadn't heard that expression since Cork Hill.
Half a century ago.
My grandfather and his cronies, sucking suds at the corner saloon.
Polish fellas. Words unminced.
You betta get the hell outta here!
C-130s. Touch and go,
bringing fame and (mis)fortune.
But now, from a couple of fogeys in The Bellevue.
Might as well have been the psych ward.
Might as well have been spring.
Black clouds rolling in over last night's ninth-inning call.
These are the Majors,
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
Conundrums amid homemade specials.
Farm fresh. Indeed!
A summer stew. Bland. Soy sauce? Sorry.
Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck . . . out!
Friends in another booth telling my daughter and me
about the berm in their backyard.
To quiet the road noise.
Berm. Another term I hadn't heard in a while.
Thirteen years, if you must. (And, of course, you must!)
A house in a new development.
With berm to quiet . . . the madding crowd.
Down payment and all.
Here we go! à la Heath Ledger.
(Where DID he go? Better: Where did WE go?)
Significant other #2 morphing into insignificant ex #2.
I suppose it does take two to tango.
Or, maybe three?
The rice bowl with crack.
The Wabi-sabi(ness) of it all, yes?
There must be some kind of way out of here,
said the joker to the thief, . . . .

Steamboat Willie (1928)

Into Thin Air

Oblique stories unfold before your eyes:
the stranger as mirror image
insinuating himself/herself between the lines.
You will repeat this over and over,
and log 1000 miles before the call to begin.
You google unintentional silence
stopping briefly to explore the tributaries of exhaustion,
leaving you floundering. Shake it off.
There's no time now for dead air.
Perhaps your internal derailleur
lacks a granny gear for higher elevations,
the air thin with exhilaration, echoing those moments
when runners spirit to the finish line.

1908 Olympic Marathon (National Geographic)

Sidebar

I can't bite into an ear of corn without picturing Johnny Depp in that 2004 desert island favorite Secret Window based on Stephen King's novella Secret Window, Secret Garden though, Scout's Honor, the rotting remains of my ex-wife and my understudy are not pushing up corn stalks in my garden which, incidentally, is being slowly decimated by deer whose nightly takeaways are notated in the soil by their bifurcated hoof prints which has led me to google ultrasonic pest repeller as touted by my 90-year-old neighbor who, embracing technology, closeted his muzzle loader and bought one of those sonic gizmos at Brookstone in the mall. Deer aside, my immediate concern is preventing the appearance in late fall and early spring of a mud pool in the middle of my path to the wood shed by diverting runoff into a four-inch slotted drain pipe which I have ceremoniously buried in a 40-foot long three-foot deep trench which I carved out manually with a composite-handled pick ax from the local Agway while imagining Steve Jobs on tractor happily mowing my fields of dreams.

Woman XXIV

She friends the God of Doors,
looks forward and back
texts stage directions in triplicate.
The curtain rises.
I fantasize her
costume changes,
and lose myself
in her unnumbered addenda.

Saskia de Brauw

In the Hall (House?) of Mirrors (Glass?)

How did her life live itself without her?
          - Jonathan Safran Foer

Sketch the images in the mirrors to preserve them.
To show them to others.
To share them.
Sketch them quickly.
The way your art teacher had you do it.
Forget about getting it right. (Whatever that is.)
Forget perfection.
You have 20 minutes.
For what?
Never mind, just sketch.
Do any of the images remind you of people you know?
Or people you knew?
People who play - or played - a role in your drama?
Think about the people and their delicate lives.
How their delicate lives impacted your delicate life.
How your delicate life impacted their delicate lives.
How whatever they did impacted whatever you did.
Whatever you chose to do.
Don't point a finger.
You are the architect of you.
You are how you are.
Not how you should be or could be.
But are.
The Captain of Your Soul.
Captain America.
O Captain! My Captain!
Captain Midnight.
Captain Morgan.
Captain Hook.
The Captain and Tennille.
Keep sketching, please.
Are you beginning to recognize the people in the images?
They're in there.
And if you can, think about the questions.
What questions?
The questions you've written on index cards.
Think about the order of questions.
The questions you've been dying to ask the people.
The people in the images.
The people you know.
The people you knew.
The people you don't know but would like to know.
Irrespective of how shallow the questions may seem.
How seemingly shallowly secular.
But isn't there another way?
No. This is the only way.
You wanted feedback, yes?
Doesn't everyone want feedback?
How am I doing?
How do I look?
Do you like what I've done?
Where am I going?
When will I get there?
How will I know when I've gotten there?
You've come here to ask the questions.
To ask the people in the images the questions.
The questions on the index cards.
Surreptitiously?
Perhaps, but necessary.
Wait. I think I see a dog in one of the images.
Perfectly acceptable.
What?
Animals are perfectly acceptable images.
Yes, it's a pit bull. It's his/her pit bill.
A white pit bull with a black eye.
He/she called him Joe or Joseph or something like that.
Friendly.
Please. Keep sketching.

Francesca Woodman

Woman XXIII

She strikes a pose
in life drawing class.
I forget the model.

Luisa Bianchin

Outtakes

I am not now that which I have been.
          - Lord Byron

You befriend a Chinese Puzzle Box,
walk through scenes of over-rehearsal and exasperation.
The (mis)direction is good for both of you.

This time without the backdrop.
You begin to lose interest, yes?
Nonetheless, proceed as if smearing paint on canvas.

Forget the image. There is none.
Wing it.
Let yourself be enveloped by the drama

of the moment, the spontaneity
of the lens, the elements of time captured.
Bemoan the loss.

Again, this time with tension.
The method is beside the point
resurfacing as binaries

which down the road will have their say
striking a chord with many.
(Pretend an audience.)

See how far you can take it.
The surprise will be costumed in the next chapter
however oppositional.

Rosalind Solomon

Pareidolia

You've taken it to the far corners
and then some
without the least bit of worry
that someone's derailleur could jam.
And now what?
You're without a signal
and your merit badge in Morse Code
is just that.
Perhaps a recapitulation would help,
a wandering in the dunes
beyond Commercial
past the Inn and tiered gardens
the tiny liquor store
the ice cream parlor
opposite the post office
with steps ideal for people-watching
and time-sensitive commentary
to the lighthouse
that years ago we walked to
in low tide and later
found ourselves neck-deep in the Atlantic,
but I doubt it.
The Pinot Noir you're nursing
awaits the green light
in the green room
as the cost of casualness
leaves you backpedaling
to remembrance.
Your life has taken on a different hue, yes?
Even for bookmakers
whose long shots revisit you in the wee hours
multiplying location by desire.

Friends With Benefits

You shrug off the probability
and continue down the condiment aisle
eyes the color of mirin.
Penciling in the moment
takes the effort of the Nile
but over the years you have come
to accept it, even enjoy it.
Your costume has the shortness of breath.
Presentation is everything, yes?
The stalemate is clear
even to your friends with benefits
deplaning in Hoboken,
the culinary extravaganza a prelude
to the main course which the players
though dedicated seem to relish
dismissing with yellow #2 Ticonderogas.

And so the day begins . . .

And already you're retracing your steps
replaying the scene
trying on this, that,
and the other,
searching through your backpack
for the notes you jotted
while waiting for the roar of the waterfall
to sooth you, transport you,
and you decide
Yes, it would be good to continue to the summit
(or to somewhere) à la Caballo Blanco.

Micah True (1954-2012)

From Somewhere Else

You're pulled over for texting, and launch into a diatribe on the correct use of sans-serif fonts, trying to explain that you're not from here, the land of barleycorned, quick-fix heretics, hog-wild tramplers of community gardens, flippant proselytizers of otherworldly elixirs as well as down-to-earth pharmaceuticals; that you are in fact from somewhere else, from somewhere along the macadam to enlightenment, the way littered with impediments and withering voicemails itching to be free. You try to explain that the overnight at Lord Weary's Castle was a mistake, a misstep, a singular disappointment, and that there's nothing wrong with buying into the psychodrama of the Method, that it is in fact the only proven, money-back-guaranteed way the pieces will fit, tattered but neat but so what, highlighting the proposition that cataloging the colors of Why is busy work for newhires naive enough to try to impress top brass with double-blinds. Sustain the effort? Pshaw! How-tos from a nobody in some backwater.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Catechism

You begin to compile a catechism
on the inevitability of change
having been blown away by the wind farm
the blades out-of-sync
shadowing the land
carrying pilgrims though a labyrinth of time
whimsically, as if nothing else mattered,
and, for that matter, nothing else did.
She’s bankrolling his latest venture.
So that’s that, and that.
Wrap up your bleating heart
return to the batting cage
practice your swing.
The expert's 10,000 hours, yes?
Of course, even those in the nosebleed section
will be able to read your face
time-stamped with now.
There have been others, gesticulating, pupils dilated,
lines out-of-focus, shedding intimacies.

Who made us?
God made us.

Why did God make us?
God made us to show forth His goodness and to share
with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.

What must we do to gain the happiness of heaven?
To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and
serve God in this world.

You drag your feet through a maze of trials
leaving a trail of bread crumbs.
You know this, and you trust this?
Do not fall victim to distraction.
Wait a moment. Let me read your file.
Falls victim to distraction.
Happenstance.
Pointing and flushing.
Characteristic of the breed.
But do you believe in change?
And second chances?
Fear eats the soul.
A 1974 West German film.
Regurgitating an anthem will take you to the next checkpoint,
an affair of the heart
as comforting as down.
You can see the light at the end.
It's there, trust me.
Again? Give me a moment, will you please?

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Wait!

They've left off an ending

a wrapping-up

the closure that we're told we all hope for
that we all need

and that (we naively believe)

will tidy-up the guest room

and allow the would-be guest to return
along dwindling roads

to homegrowns
and otherworldly pleasures.

And so your intimidations -
the hunchback of your nightmares -

will continue to knock at the back door

at three AM

awakening you

to dig among the flower beds

for shards of the flower pots

from your childhood makebelieves
when sandcastles appeared like anthills
and images of candy canes lined your dreams.

And the benevolent accommodations?

None, only misinterpretations of twilight

leaving you wobbling along the path

to the gingerbread house

now overgrown with should-haves.

Lily Cole

Woman XXII

I sample the flavors of her 33 1/3 angularity.
Her tight typeface
wallpapers my memory
stopping me mid-sentence.
My iPad takes the wheel.

Marine Vacth

Woman XXI

She writes me into
her short story:
a walk-on
with one line
from Wittgenstein:
What is thinkable is possible.
I blow it.

Joyce Tenneson

Retrospective

We live to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

          - Anaїs Nin

Everything obscured. Obliterated.
Layered over, as Hockney says.
Matthew Brady moving the dead
instead of the cameras, circa Civil War.
Manipulating the image.
Making it more.
We talked about which movies we like.
Really. And so the drama:
Call me Ishmael and all that
through however many chapters
until the Rachel appears, and finds you clinging
to drowned Queequeg's coffin.
But what of the reliability of retrospection?
The eyewitnesses' embellishments.
Unintentional yet instrumental.
How you enter the frame and alter it?
Enter the room and the conversations change?
You're not surprised, are you?
The Doobie Brothers' Long Train Running
and you on lunch break from the bureaucracy
with a reference librarian
and they're doing a sound check
and people are beginning to segue
into the weekend.
He said. She said. Muddied.
Wait. Let's run through that again.
Warmify it this time, please.
Manipulate the image.
Move the dead.
Later, comparing notes
for the retrospective report
due Monday morning on your boss's desk.

Francesca Woodman

You Come Too

I shan't be gone long. You come too.
          - Robert Frost

Parabolas plaster the culvert
plucking passersby
like olives from reminiscent trees
in dot com groves.

There are moments in everyone's life
when a clear shot is possible,
when things improve
despite having to be redone.

The farther reaches, and you in the distance.
I didn't get that.
OK, that will be (insert dollar amount).
Regrettably, I won't be able to join you.

Scrimmage. A game of scrimmage.
A pickup game
like those in the old neighborhood
when we were always ready

at the drop of a hat.
A drop in the Dow. And now
it's time to unveil your latest masterpiece.
I almost said lasterpiece.

Lasterpiece Theatre.
Reset the screen dump, and examine the fallout.
That was off-putting. Pudding?
On the second page of the dessert menu.

One order with two spoons, please?
A tall, dark extra enters the scene
muddying the plot
making it impossible to follow

the cairns.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. 
Well, which is it?

Press the release button
and you'll be ejected into the new season
with new anchor stores
and the kinds of things you like to browse

with or without the right stuff.
Your obsession. An osmotic reaction.
Yes, that's what it was,
and that's what it is.

I've told you to leave
well enough alone.
I tried to do what I thought was right
but somehow things got botched

and we were left with dilemmas
which fell from the heavens
like there was no tomorrow.
You've got to be kidding!

ILY (your name here).
Unoriginal yet immense. Intense.
Immensely intense.
Winterson: Why is the measure of love loss?

What the hell was that all about?
Look, just follow the instructions to the letter
and you'll be done before you know it.
Before anyone knows it.

Francesca Woodman

Life in the Pits

The present tense is being rehabbed
and the creek rerouted to hear the trickling at night.
This will be held for you at the reservation desk.
The latter-day impostors were given walking papers.
They were last seen on the brink.
Elaborate, please? My pleasure.
I'm trying to keep my options open,
in other words, I'm trying to offset the strange way
they have of choking when I least expect it.
Kind of like certain types of printing?
Ditto for me. Forget life in the pits. It's a drag.
There are far more fascinating ways to make music.

Cut and Run

Now look what's happened: the party
of the first part bailed - Styrofoam Starbucks in hand,
warm-up suit looking the part.
And what part is that, exactly?
Whatever the contract calls for.
The foreplay wordplay served up with air guitar
and spiffy website hawking attitude apparel;
the three act play chopped to one.
A short run to the corner eye-candy store.
To begin again, yes?
What? You mean nothing more?
Do the math.
Opening day closed: your life discarded,
kicked to the curb, moments of passion cooling:
your weeping counterpoint
to the water music shadowing you.
No stranger to cutting and running,
you now reap what you sowed,
pack mules in the street hustling Post-its of dreams.

Francesca Woodman

Gone

          for Catherine Mary Connolly (1969-2012)

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

Off-The-Shelf

Off-the-shelf placeholders know the Secret of the Dance and at least three or four Romance languages which they like to use off-season with aimless wanderers behind closed doors. They also like to play gin rummy on overcast days when most of us hide beneath piles of blankets counting the hours between bouts of blue. They dislike the sweltering heat that cuts through the calm like the hedge clippers of those marshaling efforts to test the waters of love. Insistence is key. In an eye-blink the tide can turn and wash the careless out to sea where, if lucky, they will be able to re-connect with long-lost ilk-mates and begin again. Making the most of tragedy is what it's all about, n'est-il pas? Like Rothko with his unframed color fields of dreams, or 20/20-ers with their panoramic views, unfettered by wire rim or tortoise shell, embracing the natural confluence of primaries and secondaries, giving them a foot in the door and a leg to stand on.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Without

You audition for the part
parading your naiveté as freshly-laundered linen sheets
the bed made with dreams of first times
around the block alien -
all perspective
all logic
out the window.
Your 180? Inconsistent
and undeniably out of character.
But then, perhaps not.
The recipient? Conveniently guilt-ridden
(Would do me in!) - 
a placeholder
a stand-in
a once and future insignificant other
the security camera's fuzzy evidence a TKO in the first round.
And the disruption?
Appalling. Nothing to be done.
You nailed it. The part. The opening curtain, though, snagging.
The audience, hushed, now whispering,
clearing their throats, shuffling their feet.
The unwritten novel of a passion
crumbling, falling away,
replaced, most assuredly, by dry-eyed re-entry
into the world of the living.

Fabio Chizzola

Redemption

In the final scene of The Scent of Green Papayas
Mui sits in a yellow kimono, reading aloud, pregnant.

It began long before the inkling.
The Magical Mystery Tour with Cell Phone

carried you into yellow, then blue,
two trains passing, you a passenger on both,

staring at your receding image,
trying not to deliver the lines you chose to ignore.

Trân Nu Yên-Khê

Disordered Interiors

. . . the most tangential clues could become brutally relevant.
          - Annie Ernaux

Your feeble metric yielded far too many false positives.
Really? Just how many are far too many?

And the straight line from x to y was returned unopened.
Of course, the semioticians were all ears.

I had a great time, but then, night fell.
Slow down, I'm trying to take notes.

Click Automatic Writing
and you'll be sailing away with your own true love.

Dylan, yes?
It doesn't jibe well with the course (select one):

a. You signed up for
b. You set for yourself.

Stop, already, with the parenthetical stuff.
Please, continue:

OK, we drove through darkness; she wearing glasses.
I was having a conversation with myself.

We ended up sitting on the floor, discussing facades.
And this was good, yes?

I remember her eyes, scanning the lines to the next scene.
I pulled out a three-ring binder

and began jotting down images.
Regrets climbed into my pockets.

For what?
Skipping ahead, channel surfing, the deck's changing milieu.

More hair splitting!
Not in a bad way, though.

Some, by the way, have been bronzed.
I tried to categorize incidentals despite their squirming.

Tell me, do you  enjoy being categorized?
I'm sorry, but it's a kneejerk.

And then?
I dropped out, along with those memorializing the moment.

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Posthumous

You've begun to feel temporary -
your dreams of the future
your arguments with the past
bent harmonica reeds
asleep in the closet
the tune out of tune.
You've joined the ranks of ordinary, confused adults
bottlenecking checkout lines
brown-bagging lunch
doing however many reps at the gym.
Has anyone noticed?
This is what it's all about, yes?
Your car leaves the scene of an accident.
You follow suit
reconstructing moments
with the Erector Set
you picked up at a garage sale
parts unknown.
Your son/daughter will graduate
and assume the position.
And your aging parents?
They've already passed,
their cat mingling daily with onlookers
lifting his/her head
to meet their questions.
Your present is tense, the sun offline.

Francesca Woodman

Overwritten

. . . and so to survive, they'd need to forget.
          - Lawrence Raab

You revisit the memories
knowing that soon some will be overwritten.
Permanently deleted.
Several refuse to join the lineup.
Others waffle.
A long ball into the right field bleachers
the runners advancing
too late now to rethink the gameplan.
You too had to be dragged in here
by the scruff of the neck
pockets turned out, shoes and socks removed,
trying to buy time, incoherent.
And then, of course, the room you pretend doesn't exist.
Sorry, but the title has been reworked.
The scene rewritten.
Someone had to do it, yes?

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Dénouement

Love's mysteries in souls do grow.
          - Seamus Heaney

You connect the dots, ignoring the numbers,

and find a topography of damage,

the breakdown lane scattered with shattered dreams,
recognizable fragments littering the culvert.

You begin counting backwards from 100

as your mother suggested years ago
intimidated by the absence of footholds
yet eager to move on.
Are you happy with whom you've become?
With the self forged by past events?
You're not one to look back.

You grab your backpack, leave your cell,

and begin the trek, mindful of the signposts

for love, for betrayal, for the bagpipes' eerie call.
The voices in your head continue.

Albrecht Dürer

Woman XX

I google her and watch
the hits scroll.
She tickets me
for overtime
then removes
her uniform and gloves
which inflate
to cartoonish proportion.
They squeeze me
out of the room
as she enters the bath
where her nipples sparkle
like uncut stars.

Life as Film Preservationist

Moments with lost silents push you into deep pockets,
the bucket list morphing into indecipherables:
the menacing collage, the porosity of stalked time.
The rate of polymer degradation increases faster than you thought
but the intrigue locks you into a playpen of dreams.
Street vendors stacked in real-time
hawk claustrophobic incidentals, itching to be inventoried.
So what's a little queasiness?
This is what you wanted, yes?
Would you rather something else? I doubt it.
How then the pharmaceuticals?
The speech patterns which continue to tantalize?
Can you wait out the so-called trademarked expert
downsized to a handicap parking space?
The morning paper arrives as rehearsed.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Arriving at the Atocha Station

Your naiveté colors the faces of stand-ins
insinuating themselves into your beautiful life -

a life of free weights and free passes
a life tailored to mobile devices and mobile homes

a life for the tongues of videographers
advancing through the contours of time.

Do you really believe everything you've heard
about profound experiences

or is this yet another seduction of those
who continue to rummage among sinkholes

searching for the equivalent of happiness?
I’ve heard you threw yourself

at the Speaker of the House of Mirth,
who then favorited you, taking care to dislodge

his/her wedding band as a precaution
against discovery by clingers and clangers

slated to appear as footnotes
on thin plates of aluminum earmarked for museums.

He/she will remain shameless.
Your next feature has been deleted

to protect random somnambulists stuck in traffic.
A wind-up toy will be the innocent bystander.

Duplicity

Again, you've misplaced your words, dialed 911, and were added to the queue. Irregularities gather beneath your window, bearing moments, however improbable. The game of chance calls. You try to figure the odds this time before jumping in but hubris keeps knocking down the house of cards. Your request to be among the favored few will be submitted and ignored. Due to a lack of interest, stanzas have been deleted. There is no future tense. Can there be loss without gain?

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Until Nothing Is Left

. . . as longing fades until nothing is left of it.
          - Mark Strand

Images flood the page.
You hold an hourglass up to the moon.
The dailies begin.
Your eyes fill
with colors, and costumes, and angularities,
touch just out of reach,
the final scene,
you turning away.
Not fair.
And you thought it would be?
You do remember your entrance, yes?
Getting clobbered
with what you thought would never happen?
You had a copy of the script?
You knew your lines?
Hadn't we rehearsed the scene
gone over the details
made changes
discussed the incidentals
the ultimatum?
What ultimatum? There was no ultimatum.
Am I confusing you with someone else?

Saturn Overcome by Hope, Love, Beauty  by Simon Vouet

Nothing Personal

I never appreciated Stephen Rea
until I saw him opposite Lotte Verbeek
in Nothing Personal
a quietly intimate elegy directed by Urszula Antoniak.
Two wounded people.
A secluded house.
The beautifully austere Connemara.
She uncompromising.
He ironic.
They see solitude as freedom
and close a deal:
food for work
but no personal contact
no questions. And yet.

Stephen Rea and Lotte Verbeek in Nothing Personal (2009)

But would that be enough?

You worry the prime real estate
speckled with persons of the cloth
their jurisdictions incidental
the years of sidebars indifferent.
(Why are they here, anyway?)
There's little to do aside from the obvious.
Yes, I suppose, you could unfurl
the colored parachute
and make do with the droppings
but the tug on your sleeve
keeps reminding you that there's more to it,
more than the Hallmarkian images
would suggest.
But that too has patiently eluded you.
You could take to the swings
and begin scribbling
on the electronic blank pages
floating down, on cue, from wherever.
But would that be enough? Really?

Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons in Georgia O'Keefe (2009)

And Now?

Trailers awaken you with images
of the new season.
A new cast and crew.
And the script?
Emailed as an attachment.
The need to know, yes?
Stronger than the need to avoid pain?
OK, everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves someone.
Specifically?
How about Wrapped around you?
Aren’t those lyrics to a song?

You try to advance the images
but the remote quits.
The delete key refuses to delete.
Just go through it.
Isn’t that what Loman said?
Who?
You know Death of a Salesman.
Willy Loman.
You’re mixing apples with widgets.
Look, sustain the effort.
Let it wash over you, pass through you.
Beginner’s mind.

Philip Seymour Hoffman  as Willy Loman

Awash with Nuance

Then suddenly they resurface
and you wonder the nuance.
Or, maybe you don’t.
Or, maybe you look to make sure what?
That your shoes are on the right feet?
That your iPad is loaded?
We’re all expendable
at least as far as the elements are concerned.
Or the elementals.
And wouldn’t it be interesting
if on a given day
the DVDs you’ve been religiously stacking
and paying homage to
displayed identical images?
Your past lovers assemble
in the town square
and coalesce into the one you await
or will await
or  awaited
or whatever
assuming of course you are  the self you claim -
the one he/she told you would arrive
when you least expected it.

Hugo

Woman XIX

I lose my remote
in the excitement
of her cookware.
Thumbing through recipes
I find a photograph of her
as a marionette
lounging among cushions
in a room filled
with parsed sentences.
I reach for my cutting board
to capture her strings.

Chloe Sevigny

A High of 51

          ode to Schenectady New York

I am Proctor’s.
And the Parker Inn.
And Katie O’Byrnes and Mike’s Hot Dogs and Pinhead Susan’s.
I am counting my change on the corner of Erie and State.
I am counting my blessings.
I am counting my chickens.
Red lights are dancing.
Birds are chirping.
Twitterers are tweeting.
State workers on lunch break are taking off their coats.
I am Peter Pause and Geppetto’s and the First National.
I am the Backstage Pub and the Bangkok Bistro.
I am the City Squire and the Manhattan Exchange and Deanne's.
Cars are zipping by with frosting on their hoods.
Ballet students in tutus are crossing Broadway en pointe.
There are birthday parties in back yards,
and back streets, and cul-de-sacs.
I have just finished a vegetarian burrito at Bomber’s.
It’s the special on this special day.
I am Cappiello’s and Ferrari's and the Katz Kafe
And Scotti’s and Nico’s and Perreca’s and Civitello’s.
Marquees are flashing like crazy.
Families are lining up at Bowtie Cinema
with popcorn, and candy, and soft drinks.
I am CVS and the Van Dyke.
I am Trustco and Arthur’s and The Happy Cappuccino.
Why wait for the right time?
This is the right time!
There is no better time!
The sun is smiling.
The sun is basking in the light of this special day.
The streets are freshly paved.
Even the facades are bubbling over.
Day care tweedlers are holding hands and singing.
The Pizza King is striding the sidewalk with his subjects.
The cobblestones are polished and gleaming!
Someone has rolled out a red carpet.
I am the Grog Shoppe and Slick's and Clinton’s Ditch.
I am Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonald’s and Burger King.
Try some.
There’s something here for everyone.
Every taste!
Every size, every shape, every age, every color.
The train station is handing out free rides.
Buses are busing in tourists.
They’re wearing sunglasses.
They’re carrying shopping bags.
They’re ready.
Some have backpacks strapped to their backs.
I am the Orion Boutique‎ and Lennon’s Irish Shop.
I am the Moon and River Cafe and Subway and Citizen’s Bank.
C-130s are buzzing overhead.
Stop lights are blinking.
Cells are texting.
Diesel engines are skipping down the tracks.
Chess players are practicing their openings.
Actors are delivering their opening lines.
I am Family Tire, and Ken’s Subs, and Chez Daisie.
I am Cella Bistro and Gershon's and Center Stage Deli.
I am the Wedgeway barbers snipping their customers.
Their magazines are opened to pages you will enjoy.
I am the Union Inn and the Y.
I am the Aperitivo Bistro and Tattoo Blues.
I have put my best foot forward
and landed at the public library
and General Electric
and Schenectady County Community College
and Union College
and the Open Door Bookstore.
Paul Mitchell's students have just styled my hair
and I like it.
Mr. Wasabi's sushi is my sushi and your sushi and your sushi too.
Take some peanuts back to your office.
Take a cup of the Muddy Cup’s double espresso.
Take a cup of Ambition’s Mudslide.
I am Villa Italia Pasticceria and Canali's and Cornell’s and Pasqualina's.
I am Capri Imports and Morette’s King Steak House.
Don’t fret the small stuff.
Put your feet up.
Kick back.
Take in the skywriting
and the kite flying
and the chicken barbecuing.
Take in the weight lifters
and the walkers and joggers and strollers and bowlers.
Take in the car wash
and the window wash
and the butchers and bakers and candlestick makers.
Today is today with a high of 51!

Paging Through Jung's Red Book

She was young, of course. . . .
          - Siri Hustvedt

You've misplaced your archetype and now
your unconscious is collecting itself and leaving.
You thought you had it all worked out
but every minute brings a change.
Restate your case.
You bought into the line breaks and realized too late
that the enjambments were a joke.
Your trust has made you untrustworthy.
I've heard it from you before:
I had to protect myself.
OK, are you now free to be the self you see
or are you clubbing onlookers
with that old - and very tired - I'm confused.
You're lucky you have time.
Those you've blindsided refuse to pick up.
I can't blame them.
Jung broke with his pal Freud over scrambled eggs
built a scale model of his childhood village
then with gaslight proceeded to search for his self
carve it out so to speak
renew membership in the Square One Club.
You too can be an event horizon.
You too can block hostile takeovers by those
laying claim to your inner beauty.
It's all here in the pages of Jung's Red Book.

Scanning Photos to CD at Walmart with my Daughters

The high priests have stepped in
with their counters, tallying the evidence
as if I - the party of the first part -
have the option to redo the scene,
reshoot the photos, remake the obvious.
This is the one shot I got.
But spin? Infinite iterations. Always
another way of shading the images,
twisting the ends to secure them
against . . . ? Against what?
Embarrassment? Regret?
Of course, I remember the sleepovers -
or at least being told of them
(You had to ask, I suppose?).
And the ballet rehearsals and recitals,
snow angels, sandcastles, camping trips,
trampolines, sleigh rides, homework,
bicycles, books, Barbies, beaches,
barbecues, boomerangs, baseball bats.
Yes! Yes! All, yes! Quickly!
Feed the photos to the scanner
while there's still time.
Its faint chirp transports me like Glass.

An Adult's Christmas in Nantucket

. . . the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep.
          - Dylan Thomas

We paid the price and boarded for the rough crossing catching whiffs of a paperback rider as we took our faded vinyl seats amid designer bags and backpacks with stretch marks. Once off, I escaped to the afterdeck under the glare of Ahab's understudy, preferring the romance of the sea to the chattiness of the Times until the waving of hands by the long-time-no-sees guided us to the island.  Then on to the cobblestone slog from the wharf to white-haired Barbara's B&B, exacting its toll on the plastic wheels of space age luggage.  Later, the shrill of smoke detectors, unaccustomed to the seriousness of eighteenth century hearths, would punctuate the much-touted Christmas walk, where a no-nonsense spaniel of some unknown vintage sat primly on a sofa in front of a fire, eyeing the intruding landlubbers traipsing through his home at this most ungodly of hours, decked out in - get this - blue-tinged booties as if we were all to be herded posthaste into a delivery room for the birth of yet another ne'er-do-well in swaddling; while outside one of the larger evergreens, bedecked with strands of multicolored blinking lights emitting the scent of whale oil, was soon set upon by hordes of down-filled stamping feet for canned poses to be Facebooked in nanoseconds. The evening capped by a graybeard, whose highbrowed delivery of A Child's Christmas in Wales, with two thespianettes acting out various images, would have been enough for Thomas himself to fall yet again off the wagon and tip a few with the furrowed seamen whose varnished visages bore down on us from their perches on the library's hallowed walls with eyes privy to sights to which even Thomas's words would have failed to do justice.

Dylan Thomas  by Bunny Adler

5 PM, Christmas Eve

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. . . .
          - Ralph Blane

Santa and his reindeer
line up for beers
at the corner pub,
their day in the sun done

for another year;
their sleigh,
loaded with empty promises,
mothballed.

Last minute shoppers
down to their last minute
converge helter-skelter
on shopping malls

as Blue Light Specials
blink throughout stores
like Christmas lights
on artificial trees.