Short Stack

Someone's ordered pancakes.
Someone else has ordered an omelet
but you're counting the words
in this morning's fax.
The genie doubling as cabbie
is taking a shortcut
to avoid the bottleneck at the bridge.
It's a different bottleneck
and a different bridge.
Another hot one
the sidewalks costumed
colorful crowded
cloud banks on the way.
The garden veggies will be happy.
What about you?
Have you been here before?
Have the 20 questions upended you?
You'll have plenty of time to tweet
after the downpour.
Besides, we still have two wishes left, yes?

The Questioner of the Sphinx by Elihu Vedder (1863)

The Lonesome Vigil of Wind-Ups

You say you're not into the long-term . . .
The insouciance of the neighborhood pins you . . .
The moms and pops . . .
And the arias . . .
When the moon hits your eye like a big . . .
(Sing along with me) . . .
Your excuse is legendary . . .
You have enough points . . .
Your life as facade is beginning to read like a new Chapter Four . . .
Your sense of balance back . . .
(Just ask the shared bicycles) . . .
Think about us in the we hours . . .
Demand directions and seconds . . .
And thirds . . .
The spuds are delicious, and an excellent source of renewable energy . . .
Wait! One more thing: you too are here and here and here . . .

Woman XL

And then she says . . . I want to clown around and around . . . and around . . . and around . . . and take that out . . . and put that in . . . favorite color? . . . three . . . I enjoy variations on that theme . . . don't you? . . . especially in A minor . . . I've told you that in the summer I sometimes do . . . and I sometimes do not . . . I will only respond to emails from endangered species . . . a cigarette? . . . never . . . of course I've tried that . . . and that too . . . and three . . . and four . . . I was there, you know . . . in the wings . . . with wings . . . poetry is TMI . . . courting poor taste? . . . we are all collapsible . . . combustible . . . collateral . . . a contextualist? . . . a constructivist? . . . blah blah blah . . . I am consumed by the game . . . I am costumed for the game . . . I am the game . . . of chance . . . of choice . . . your choice . . . your move . . . P-QN4 . . .

Proof

Let x equal the cold.
          - Anthony Hopkins in Proof (2005)

The mathematicians with half-lives are checking your proof
talking their way through the axioms on Knife's Edge
the conjectures at Herring Cove
the theorems along the Mohawk,
shepherding you past the rentals, the SROs, condos, two-families;
the faces in the windows of your landscapes
reflecting the ambiguity of your words.
Your still lifes passed the rigor of bicycle days,
coaster brakes waiting behind package stores,
ifs, ands, and buts triangulating the derivatives
barely visible through the brushstrokes,
armatures buckling under symbols shape-shifting with the wait staff,
your chalk drawn and ready.
You check for the rewrite; launch into the monologue.
The amphitheater begins to fill with iterations of the same person.
A stranger. You were told this would happen.

Woman XXXIX

She says she wants to ride
and pulls up on her Harley.
I roll my Schwinn
back into the garage.

Woman XXXVIII

She crosses her Ts
and her legs
and dots her eyes
with innuendo.
She has mastered
the art of wordlessness.
Seeing her
in a summer dress,
I am born again.

68 Lines Randomly Selected from the 2,088 Lines in the 118 Poems
Composed in my 68th Year Using the Random Integer Generator at
random.org on my 68th Birthday over 3000 Miles from Tintern Abbey

. . . thy wild eyes these gleams of past existence.
          - William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

the angles spellbinding, infectious with singsong
and then, again, you decide to look at the sketches of domes in cities
as you follow the directions
carrying a Louis Vuitton bag
you'd think solutions would drop from the sky
who are we to downplay the Hallmarkian tentacles?
it is tomorrow, yes?
ambling along under cover and without a mean streak
as items on a grocery list
meaning?
everything? anything? nothing?
the tide turns just when we think
to their delicate lives backstage
things have changed
I think not
there are too many people here
fill in the gaps
as fearful as feared
you will know them when you see them
you're pontificating again. I thought you were over that
yet unconvincing, as if the bell lappers knew all along
there was no turning back
titled Mangled Hands
another with tickets to a double-header
how we got from there to here
and I was back at Barnes & Noble
but they're going ahead with the auditions anyway
you googlemap the directions from here to there
time now to plow out
it was a close encounter. one for the archives
the windiness of cities
nonchalance. then trying something else. as mediocre
everyone's trying to hide
stuck in traffic
the lights flicker. valets exchange glances. the monitor lapses into a
this time you will not be unhinged by reflections of your former selves
a dawning? who knew?
creating havoc, scenes colliding, mounting to confusion
and that something is filing past as we speak
as she fills her eyes with world-weariness
only to default to comforters
but you know that you do
solitary moment will wrap its arms around you and guide you to the
engaged by the same old same old
challenging our identity flatten as one who knows
but that's for another poem
I for one want my writers blocked
the players at the foot of your bed await direction
a woman in white, a small boy, a girl, a small dog
and then?
there was no church. ask around. no church
especially now with the neighborhood Velcro'd
by her areola
ideally suited to multitaskers
yourself in the cutlery but then repaired to the foyer where a well
everyone seems to think that's OK
the clock's face again pokes in
with Dylan singing, I'm sailing away, my own true love
the tingling ebb and flow
maybe it was Bob Dylan
something about Rothko's rooms
to secure a small stipend to tide you over
who - let's face it - are in it for the freebies
creating havoc, scenes colliding, mounting to confusion
for her stats
you know that lately it's been a rabbit hole
there will be no setting the record straight
boys and girls, children of all ages

Tintern Abbey

Woman XXXVII

She pores over Kafka's words,
muttering something about
an unreliable narrator,
tells me he never read ads
because he didn't want to want.
She quotes him and says
a book should serve as an ax
for the frozen sea within us.
We become vegans.
She starts calling me Gregor.

Irma Haselberger

Incidental Music

How often this frivolity?
This bluntness of perception?
Compared to what?

Just the other day, we were up, up, and away.
Our eyeballs free of regrets.
The breeze through the open window (finally).
The discord quieted.
Trees resonating.
Nothing foreshadowed
yet the evanescence of the moment with its free passes
to the matinee of your choice at the Bijou.

Here the limo awaits with the patience of a koan.
The driver unruffled.
Dare you pass?

Later, with the grocery shopping behind us
a quick jaunt around the lake
(which wasn't there yesterday)
the well-oiled machine and all that
out of hock, out of doors, out.

Poring over reams of paper stockpiled on the rolltop.
The dusty charm of leather
and you with your amplitude
whispering through the moonlit eve
mourning doves having flown the nest.

How could they not?

So many newscasts bubbling past.
So many identity thieves lurking.
Are you sure you are who you think you are?

The roadways befuddled.
A class action suit ready to take you to the cleaners.
Is there anyone at your beck and call?
Is there anyone you can call?
Where is it written?

The final quarter ticking down.
The prize vintage uncorked.
A riff coloring the enigma
floating balloon-like over a distant hamlet -
a woman in white, a small boy, a girl, a small dog.

Where did all these lawn chairs come from?
And who at last is responsible for this moratorium?
This quiver of insanity?
This obliviousness?

The workaday as always waiting around the bend in the river
engaged by the same old same old
sloughed off while running after the runaway train.
Cable streaming with life.
Finger-licking goodness edging out the competition.
Birds of all feathers flocking.
Bike messengers weaving.
Traffic lights like cluster flies.
The edge of illusion with its quick fix
beguiling residents on their off-days
leaving them remixing covers.

The invisible pleasantly besotted.
The Dairy Queen in her opulence
and the nonchalance of cats
especially the super's
who comes and goes as she pleases (don't we all  wish we  could?)
counting her change
while inspecting trash cans for late night tête-à-têtes.

Why wait for the next four-star melodrama?
Why worry the convalescence?
The wingnuts?

Going to the dogs in a handbasket isn't out of the question.
Isn't beyond the realm of the usual.
So what, you say?
Far too many have gotten away with it
winsome though they were
without flinching (come to think of it)!
A right, a left, and it was out of the park.

Look at those cowpokes at the barre honing their plies.
Imagine!
The other state of Dakota
with it marvelous saplings
waiting to be embraced.

And who disguised as Clark Kent
in a double-breasted suit so yesterday?

A voiceover from your past reminds you
to pick up a quart of milk on the way home.
A spate of unemployed fact checkers awaits the starting gun
checking off their mealtime selections
while checking into detox units at the local Motel 6.

You have no messages.
No texts.
No tweets.
Nada.
And there's that voiceover again.
And here comes another lucrative deal.
Another leveraged buyout.
A garbage scow chuffs across a dingy harbor
then lapses into a hissy fit.
Such behavior will no longer be tolerated.

Butterflies caressing winter's dwindling sun.
A baby carriage with the brake on at a bake-off.
The Post with its stark reflection.
The checks cashed, the tollbooth looming.

Herve All

Vis-à-Vis

Promises among the often forgotten?
Air brushing the aftermath?
The preening of memory
scanned by recent CIA graduates
bemoaning the downsized menu -
seemingly blue in the face of going green?
Did you think it would last?
These are a few.
There are others
simmering on youth's backburners.
Try motoring absentmindedly
or while perusing the Greenhouse Effect.
The insinuations are marvelous,
and neat to watch
from the deck with a cold one
night after night after night waiting.

E. Wiskovsky

A Woman Leans Over

A woman leans over to paint blue curves between her legs.
          - Lyn Hejinian

So easy to misplace the definite article
in the folds of flesh that titillate you
juggling five balls
while trying to answer the 20 questions
from this morning's inbox.
Enchanted by the movement
of the moment
the slightest twitch pinning you
to a recurring dream
dressed in the cloth of summer,
it begins.
Your online backordered item has finally shipped.

Bill Brandt

With the Creek Rising

          for Dennis Sullivan

Somewhere Hannibal is negotiating with elephants -
gunmetal gray in their magnitude -
worrying the guest list for the weekend barbecue.
He has texted his lawyers
whose pop-ups intrude upon my online reading
of Anna Karenina.
Someone has just chimed in with something
about the London Tube
but that's for another poem.
I was thinking - among other things -
about high water marks
and whether they will make the grade.
The semester is almost over.
I guess I could shop at the greengrocer's
or refer to Ed Smith's BIBLE (yes, all caps!),
and begin building a raised bed.
It's all about wide rows, deep soil, and organics.
Not unlike most things, yes?

The Blue Terry Cloth Self

I'd be at a loss to put my finger on the precise moment.

In those days reliability was an add-on
not unlike cargo pockets on your camo shorts.

I'm not saying they don't aim to please
but doesn't it seem as if
showering has become a retreat into the self?
In Walter's day, for example, we switched on You Are There
and popped Orville's corn.

Options trumped options
which stymied some
mostly those who were on the cusp
of an ah-ha moment.

3-In-Oil was touted as a multipurpose lubricant
ideally suited to multitaskers
who were good at jigsaw puzzles, PB&Js, and transformations.

Nothing was said about seductiveness.
I guess it was assumed a given.

What better way to spark the mood?
To face the mix?
I'm sorry. What was your question again?

Deborah Turbeville

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia X

The dance, of course. Always the dance.
And the new steps.
Always the new steps.
Taking notes.
Out of habit?
Trying to recall the sequence.
How we got from there to here.
How we got to where we are.
How we came to know.
You too have become curiouser and curiouser.
And now the fourth quarter.
Out of time-outs.
Out of recaps.
The dress rehearsal scrapped.
The rainbow's armature ascending.
The grammar ungagged.

Irma Haselberger

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia IX

Your accusation is a bit fuzzy
but I'll wear it anyway
like a noisy suit of armor
scarred from battle.
The moment keeps recycling.
Groundhog Day's petty palette of inconveniences.
You could have at least given me the heads-up.
Do you believe in magic?
Of course you do.
My blindside rutted with trespass.
Again? Did you say "again"?

Irma Haselberger

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia VIII

Each rewrite hazards an equation,
irrespective of the aftermath
which enters the room as an  attraction.
But I thought we had agreed.
Well, yes, my mistake.
The flight leaves in two hours.
You have just enough time to learn your lines.
Just enough time to re-sketch your image.
Not to worry.
The world as furrowed brow.
Think of the indecipherables and ephemera,
all eBayed.
Does it matter?
Did you even know they were missing?

Deborah Turbeville

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia VII

. . . most people come to know only one corner of their room.
          - Rainer Maria Rilke

To know more than one corner of your room.
To see yourself as you were 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Or as you would like to think you were.
How you adjusted the lens to correct the distortion.
To ease the passage.
We've all made that mistake.

The angles spellbinding, infectious with singsong.

The comings and goings.
The melodies familiar and unfamiliar,
mixing with the then and now,
growing fainter with each season.
The inertia left flopping around in the culvert.
You are about all that matters notwithstanding anything.

Irma Haselberger

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia VI

Ghosts of the silver screen populate your jottings:

the time-traveler as long distance runner, no longer worrying the endgame.

When to appreciate the mirror's music?
To press the reset button?
You begin scrapbooking your gazes
blue penciling ads in fashion magazines as an homage
to the mooring of starting out.
This time you will not be unhinged by reflections of your former selves -
a good thing - big and leggy and good.

Edie Campbell by Peter Lindberg

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia V

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, . . .
          - Rainer Maria Rilke, Autumn Day

Your enthusiasm follows the plot of matching neckties.
I would like to have thought otherwise
but you unfold as expected
as items on a grocery list
which falls out of your pocket
as you bend into your seductions
connecting the dots between us.
The distance halved again and again and again.
The point lost among footnotes.
The letter-writer writing long letters into the night,
struck inarticulate, caught off-guard,
wandering the boulevards, up and down, restlessly.

Paolo Zerbini

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia IV

The miniaturist in you argues for further downsizing:
the shoot skewed
bottlenecked with citations from the OED
your last run-through a wrong turn
over the top
PowerPointed no less.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I've learned not to doubt much.
Not to doubt the power of the costume.
The power of the makeover.
Walking in on reservations.
The differences.
Butz, your two-year-old poodle, knows.
He's been channeling Schopenhauer on his afternoon constitutionals:

          Hi-diddle-dee-dee
          The best is yet to be. . . .

Catherine Keener in Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia III

And now you're inventorying survival gear
as if your past lives left instructions on the answering machine
rekindling memories that years ago
provided you solace for something or other,
for what, exactly, I can't remember.
The clock's face again pokes in,
disregarding my previous comment
awash with remorse.
I'm trying to reconstitute myself as another -
another with tickets to a double-header.
Nothing better to short-circuit unhappiness.
Not unlike us, yes?
Off-hours, you choreograph untried virtues,
tweaking missteps to captivate.
I backpedal. Indifferent.
How will you write this up in the final hour? -
the final hour, when distracted by claims of melodies,
you will be assisted by members of the alphabet
selected at random from drive-bys.
You'd think by now they'd be as encumbered as you and I.

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia II

The symphonies continue to symphony,
memorializing cloud banks
that rolled in with the coffee.

Have you finished looking at the photos in the Warhol-like box?

Pedaling along the shaded streets you slow
to admire a tiny fresco
of woolgatherers.
You know they know.

The page curls, so too the rigmarole of the encounter.
A collage of texts interrupts.
With this humidity, you begin to reconsider the line drawings.
This zero tolerance thing is tough to play.

So, tell me again, who said your take was "spot on"?

Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethrope

Retracing Our Steps to Utopia I

. . . you nevertheless go on, walking towards Utopia.
          - Marguerite Young

You scripted our combinations, our permutations,
the topography of us as mother tongue
following birds and Simon and Garfunkel,
retracing our steps to Utopia.

You played the audience with your seasoned self
ordering room service with another's voice:

Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

Your wings became alternative mysteries
dissected, examined, reassembled
into what we dubbed The New Next.
Or so we thought.
But then someone was shaken down, and the clock reset.

Alexi Lubomirski

From the Docudrama: Can't Blame Them, Can You?

I have no idea what you're talking about.
No idea what the reader is reading.
I don't understand.
I should be able to understand.
I don't like it.

I ordered the special, and expected enough for a takeaway.
It wasn't easy ordering in the middle of this chaos.
The wait staff can't hear us.
They can't hear what we're ordering.
Everyone seems to think that's OK.
It's not OK.

Grow up! Life is not a takeaway!

But I love to start the day with a takeaway!

Someone just texted me: take your time.

Yeah, OK. I'm always on the clock. We're always on the clock.
Is there an innocent bystander who could take the hit?
Doubtful.

Everyone's trying to hide
not necessarily to shirk their duty (isn't that a cool word?)
but maybe because some feel untrained and humbled.

(A statue of a police officer appears.)

Now what?

You're becoming curmudgeonly.

I'm becoming curmudgeonly? Is that a Maslowian stage?

Yes, the cardboard people on stage are paintballing the audience.

On top of that many are being stepfathered in.
Everyone is Facebooking like crazy.

And that surprises you?

From Alix Pearlstein's Moves in the Field

Desperately Seeking [TBD]

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
          - Yogi Berra

(Action)

(Commence psychobabble)

I'm sorry. I didn't realize this was a counseling session.

I need to flush the system.
Yes?
I need to flush the system to begin again.
Yes?
You know like Finnegan Begin Again: The Prequel.
You mean that works?

Open your books to page 45.
Erik Erikson's notion of "moratorium."

Take out a sheet of graph paper. Map the terrain of your heart.
You're kidding, right?
Wait to be cued. You'll know when. You'll just know.
Huh?

(Apparently, this is an either/or system.)

How coolly Kierkegaardian!

The lights blink.
The kittycats are frightened into Deep Listening.
The network yaps: Me! Me! Me!
The placeholders insist: Look, I don't have all day here!

Risking vertigo, of course, I vacillate.

Anna Levine and Madonna

Slipstream

You ignore the sermon, then think, Everything's riding on this.
OK, that was over the top, but what did you expect?
Waking into a dream saying, You can have anything you want?
I think not.
Distract yourself next time with befuddlement (if nothing else is handy).
It was so thick you befriended a minor player in a minor drama
played out in starts and stops.
And now look at the wake: eenie meenie miney mo!
Fragments floating by.
Forget the freebies. You were psyched out by them.
Yes, you'll have plenty of company when you crash and burn!

Dariusz Klimczak

Pretending Otherwise

1
It's as if you're driving with a rain-soaked windshield.

2
How to get close?

3
Why not others?

4
Climbing into a dream.

5
Losing count.

6
Climbing out of a dream.

7
The imagination, a progenitor. Grappling with bookmakers as if there were a window.

8
Dogs curled in the driveway.

9
Where the hell is this?

10
She was fond of the term irregardless and used it regardless.

11
Now, every dream begins with a caveat.

12
Not much to do about that.

13
Hunker down as if life depended on it.

14
And then strolling the aisles, fascinated by the stamped cartons of everything.

15
Well, maybe not, but still.

16
OK with me.

17
Tell you what. With everything blemished or soon to be, we could pretend otherwise, look the other way, begin again, only this time with a metronome.

18
I'm thinking herbivores, doubtless because of Anne Carson's intros and outros.

19
It wasn't meant to be?

20
A Month in the Country. He shy, she faithful.

21
She couldn't handle the pretense. Does that make sense?

22
I got it. Next time follow the instructions.

23
But even so!

24
The happenstance in the trees is so captivating that you won't hear the other shoe drop.

25
This times 20.

Dariusz Klimczak

I Take That Back

Subtleties aside, the grounding should have made a difference, the verisimilitude coloring the encounter, releasing the amplitude from those cheap enclosures. What's your experience been like? A crap shoot? How about the documentation? Does it continue to brittle, as the museologists said it would? Interestingly, the path, once overgrown and impassable, welcomes us with benefits no less, some of which are far too outlandish to even consider. As it should be, I guess.

Dariusz Klimczak

 

The Fine Line Between

What is it then between us?
          - Walt Whitman

And so we engage in distractions
in deadpan reticence
in loose-elbow canvases with splashy palettes
boarding the airship
waving bye-bye to the good, the bad, the ugly
to those near and far
to those costumed for the haunting regularity
hands held high
the music a light summer rain.
The curiosity welcomed, celebrated,
upholding the meaning
preserving what is done
and what will (or could) be done.
The windiness of cities
of passersby with eyes locked
or heads bent
that this could be otherwise
scripted in good company
without indulgence
without insouciance
or concern or worry
with nothing lost in translation then or now.
The entire palette sprung
all colors
some identified by the stenciled name of another
applied with the transport of an ode to joy.
In the final scene an ice storm dialogues
limbs bend, break, fall
viewed as spectacular
the curtains still'd
the music muted
the congregation assembling
to review the packet of algorithms
signed, sealed, delivered
by a company of like-minds
who now (we can only hope) will see it through
settling on the iced leaves of grass.
Perhaps we should email one another
touch base
make sure the network is up
and only then resurface
duly recognized and accepted
without qualm, without condition.

Dariusz Klimczak

A Vast Someone

The rudimentariness of our arrangement
a coherent jumble
the laws of attraction misconstrued
which you insist is OK.
A vast someone has reappeared
with a memorandum of understanding.
I dawdle, hem and haw,
find too much air in the sonatina
soundtracking the flights of dirigibles.
What am I thinking?
You make a mad dash for your new hairstyle,
your new look, your new persona,
jotting notes in the margins
translating some obscure writer as if
the time is opportune to think about what
we thought we had wasted, I mean, wanted.

Anja Niemi

Runoff

And wait to watch the water clear, I may.
          - Robert Frost

Evidently, things changed while you were gone,
while you were out,
while you were opening channels for the runoff.
I know what you mean.
Something about the water rippling along.
How it seeks whatever it seeks,
while others present their offerings, then step back
and wait to see what happens.
And wait to watch the runoff.
Not a casual thing.
The devil-may-care attitude. Inscrutable.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Say What?

You know full well what I'm talking about.
The run-through was a disaster,
with all roads leading to a sidebar,
which in another time and place
would be tantamount to reruns. It happens.
And it's happened again.
But this time the reset button was disabled.
There was no turning back.
No backpedaling.
But we do have a window.
So as Mr. Bowie suggested, Let's Dance.
Or, at least distract ourselves with the remote.
Channel surf to our heart's content.
Your entourage - whomever they are - is stalled in traffic.
They may never get here.
Everyone's walking on eggshells.
What recourse do we have? Let me think.

Say What? by Tom Corrado

Woman XXXVI

Like Carl Jung on the racquetball court
she drops archetypes into the airspace between swings
eyeing me through the handcuffs
of her pink-tinged goggles
while adjusting the shiny black Lycra tubes
encasing her cardio'd and tanned thighs.
I am singed by a sizzling serve,
bug-eyed, hyperventilating,
and down for the mandatory eight,
sucking a vitamin-stuffed antioxidant energy drink
laced with enough omega-3 and ginseng
to keep all NFL linebackers
for the next 50-plus years
happy and healthy and erect,
as the bell steps in to save me from total annihilation.

At Higher Elevations

Layering is important
but not so that one abandons anti-realistic fiction
or the eyes as pools of desire.
The refusal to let go refuses to let go.
You block out time without a second thought
and reconsider re-clapboarding as a career.
It's enough for some.
Think momentary suspensions
and the offer to remake the self as a weekend project.
There are far worse things.
High cholesterol, for example,
or inconsistency.
You probably feel the same way, yes?,
strolling as you do down the avenue at dusk.
I for one want my writers blocked.

Gotham Chamber Opera's production of Eliogabalo

So Soon?

The late season snowfall nearly imperceptible.
Turning, you realize the door is locked
and, as you watch, it morphs into a wall
which you scale to no avail:
The view is gone.
Not the first time.
You've squandered elements of then to barter for what?
Cue the ventriloquist: But this is how I see it!
Bravo!
Crouched like a scaredy cat on the deck of a ship
with Dylan singing, I'm sailing away, my own true love.

Anita

Turn

Again your delusion bicycles through the old neighborhood
blabbing to those curbing dogs
some costumed as silent film stars on holiday.

Tying up loose ends was never your forte.
Loose ends? 
Come clean and you'll advance to the next level.

Why so serious? asked the Joker.
I have many to-dos on my plate, so there!
And then?

Look, help me out here. I mean help me out of here.
There are several noncommittals choking your version.
Some reluctant to return overdue library books.

I find that appalling.
Chill, already!
In no time chores will begin piling up on the loading dock

and you'll be spending all your spare moments rehearsing,
cheered on by those in absentia
whom you enjoy texting at all hours

thinking yourself a cinematographer of the inner orphan.
But Garbo insisted she said I want to be "let" alone, yes?
Picking nits.

Regardless, turn the page and begin coloring your world
of ifs, ands, and buts.
A world of objects with shadows, smudged and faded.

But, sadly, that's the way it is.
Really? Check the pub date of your coloring book.
Things have changed.

For better or worse?
Dunno.
Peel back the label to widen the imaginary surplus

and in no time you'll be on your merry-go-round way.
Give or take a few understudies
who are chomping at the bit to begin rehab.

On Good Friday

Fifty years ago, a friend and I
walked 15 miles
to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs
in Auriesville, New York.
We did it just to do it.
The road was dusty and salty;
the day warm enough
so that we stripped down to t-shirts
as we climbed the Hill of Torture
to sit on a bench
overlooking the Mohawk River.
It was a beautiful day.
Five-hundred years ago,
Issac Jogues, Rene Goupil, and John LaLande
came here from Canada
to convert the savages to Christianity.
They were tortured and killed.
A large round church commemorates them.
Inside, an altar is surrounded by 1500 candles
which can be lit at the touch of a button.
I picked up a pamphlet
titled Mangled Hands
describing the barbaric torture -
his fingernails torn out
and fingers gnawed
until the bones were in splinters
before his thumb and fingers
werecut off with a scallop shell -
and death - from the blow of a tomahawk -
of Issac Jogues
whose zeal was so great
that he ignored possibilities
of escape.
The pamphlet was well-wriiten.
In the gift shop, I bought a small plastic bottle
of blessed ravine water
drawn from the ravine
where Issac Jogues buried Rene Goupil
to give to my grandmother
who was good at slipping me a few coins
for ice cream
which I used instead to buy cigarettes.
I bicycle to Auriesville most summers,
to sit at the top of the Hill of Torture
and enjoy the view
of the Mohawk Valley.
A couple years ago they moved the bench
several hundred yards to the right.
I have no idea why.
The view is not as good.

The Hill of Torture at Auriesville

Tweaking the Algorithm

Tell me again about tweaking the algorithm
so that streets turn into symphonies for ukuleles
and roller coasters line up to spin us
though the old neighborhoods
where our past sells lemonade curbside.
There are moments of madness in each of us
that some can't say enough about.
What do we talk about when we talk about us?
Everything? Anything? Nothing?
The tide turns just when we think
we are home free, when virtual hills
challenging our identity flatten as one who knows
about things cardio has told us.
Regardless, let's give it a shot.
Who are we to downplay the Hallmarkian tentacles?
At this stage, it doesn't matter.
Perhaps at an earlier stage we thought it did
and were trumped into thinking out of fashion
and that has obviously made all the difference.

Anja Niemi

People First

He could give two shits about her lack of legs. . . .
          - Jeff Niesel

And then there's this scene in Rust and Bone
where Alain and Stephanie go to the beach
and Stephanie begins swimming away from the shore,
and you think, Here we go.
And, as expected, the camera begins panning
those on the beach, and you wait for the reaction,
but there is none.
Stephanie is out there,
enjoying the water, and the day, and Alain.
And you think, Yes, dammit, this is good, this is good!

Armand Verdure and Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone (2012)

Tubbing with Ziploc'd Kindle

Maybe it's nothing more than addition and subtraction, the artifacts from kiosks visited in times of dissonance, the incidentals clomping around in UGGs off-season clamoring for spectators and for those dealing from the bottom of the deck with stashes of empty cereal boxes tucked under both arms. You could have picked Door #2 but instead went with your hunch and ended up with a one-way ticket to Palookaville where nights over chessboards get hazy and strangers lean in with offers of whatever your little heart desires: summer days with nothing to do but catch rays on the back deck.

Josef Tornick

Leaving the Airport at 5:30 AM

You keep replaying the opening bars to Chet Baker's 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 hard to imagine how anyone could have nailed it so perfectly,
but he did,
because it's one of the closest things you've encountered, and,
for a few moments, nothing else matters.

Chet Baker

Step Page 3 of 12

Can I bum a smoke?
          - Anon

He/she has refused to sign for your autobiography,
and will continue to chip away
at your ice sculpture until opening day,
when the winners will be announced,
and he/she will disclose - to the world, I might add -
your innermost workings.
Brush-hogging aside, the light has changed,
so get going. You don't have all day anymore.
You have bummed your quota.
These small facts are not canonical
but, once vetted, should be enough
to secure a small stipend to tide you over.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

The Calculus of Togetherness

It's as if someone turned on the light,
and you awoke,
and the book you were reading before you fell asleep
fell off the bed, and you lost your place,
and now the image is running down the street,
broadcasting your dreams.
The fundamental theorem of incompleteness
out the window, yes?
No need to re-do the math,
to revise the derivative. No need
to walk single file along the path through the trees.
These small victories have staying power.
These small victories are the real deal.
Pick one of those days when the sun
peeks through the clouds
and people are chattering as if it mattered
because it does.
One of those days when the bends are out of earshot
and Little Miss Muffet is at the bus stop,
with curds and whey, waiting.

Robert Frank

In Snow

The crows are saying something,
something about Rothko's rooms,
how the rearrangement made a difference
and he continued, and how they
continued. You need this
or something like this.
So you cancel your appointments
for a still life. It's quiet.
The crows seem to know.
Far off, a snowplow suffers a concussion.
The flakes, indifferent, continue.

Crossing Against the Light

Floating down the condiment aisle
you take an exacto knife
to a jigsaw puzzle
then kick back in your cork-lined study 
and examine the refractory periods
of passersby in your dream.
It's not the first time.
Your hope of rehabbing yourself
was pre-empted, the stalled vehicles
edging into the crosswalk.
You've received accolades for revamps,
revamps that will fail to deliver
as if the last actor on earth
is auditioning for the part of you.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Separation Anxiety

You present with symptoms of naiveté.
A late-night phone call. Texts. An early-morning phone call.
And, voila, you're seduced
by the immediacy of the overheard conversation
the immersive apparatus engaged
knocking the corners off the foundation.

But. But. But. But, what?
But the symmetry is off.
So? It doesn't take a Sherlock.
Why should the party of the first part party?
A minimum of two, or three, or five? You're kidding, yes?
Perhaps not. Perhaps the disingenuous are hardwired
for tolerance or at least stick-to-itiveness.

Regardless, take a hike.

The evergreens, frosted, await your passing.

May I Have a Word With You?

Your passion has yet to be downsized or frozen in amber.
I too have been away from it all
the opening dialogue an experiment in plenitude.
At least that's what I tell them.
And the loneliness? A gambit
that should you wish can be spun into silver -
not unlike the earrings -
with a tap of a magician's wand.
Reminiscences aside, you trickle forward remarkably well.

Anja Niemi

The Whole Nine Yards

Several weighed in but are still out.
As irksome as a waddling equid.
I guess things have improved
especially since the restructuring.
Circumlocution as earworm, yes?
Filling in the blanks
with nonsense syllables.
Trumping away at revisions.
Could be fun.
But will it fly, she interrupted?
Little matter.
Even buses tune in
and tweet their little hearts out.
A few endearments, please.
They sometimes do the trick,
and certainly can't hurt. Tell me
about the cute anchor
with the ink.
Wait. You want out
but you're not sure from what?
Nothing new.
Review the nominees.
We'll see what happens.
I'm sure you can't wait to get going.

Joyce Tenneson

The Befuddlement of Enjambments

I cannot make it cohere.
          - Ezra Pound

Your co-dependency index jumps off the charts.
You no longer care or feel obliged to write your own words.
Collaboration as crooked smile.
To make ends meet you take up origami
and deliver e-meals-on-wheels
to the marginalized and semi-marginalized
who will feature at Friday's open mic
along with the cigar-chomping Viennese neurologist
you freely-associate with.
He knows - or thinks he knows - the secret of the Sphinx.
For him, everything is a cigar.
It's as if there are no connections -
only superficial encumbrances
whose patina changes with the seasons
and can transport you to the Land of Oz
where the good doctor spins aphorism upon aphorism
underwritten by neurasthenia and by people like you.
Soon you will be carried to distant shores in a tiny ship.
Say nothing. This will be your 15-minutes
of a new and everlasting covenant.

Roberto Kusterle