Screen Dump 569

You nudge the narrative into the uncharted waters

of a world in which even the least consequential seems precious . . .

Why the homing in on the narrow corridor of sleep? . . .

Have you documented every prompt that makes you smile? . . .

Timing is everything . . .

And what about the coffee shop on the corner

that continues to email you BOGOs

which are fiendishly autodeleted? . . .

You're not sure why . . .

and you're not sure about the address

which keeps changing . . . along with the artisanal blends

seeping into this poem . . .

It's all here . . . in the reworked script . . .

following a plan where a plan seems to fit

or making it up as you go . . . again

capturing overheard music . . . the same tonic and dominant

of loneliness and nostalgia . . .

traipsing through a wetland drenched in blue . . .

the same blue from the Book of Blue . . .

Your foodie friend blabs that reheating and plating carry-outs

feels almost as if you've made it yourself . . .

One can only suppose . . .

And fewer options reduce the tyranny of choice . . .

the shorter leash of the disembodied eye shadowing your search

for the solution to today's Puzzle-Me-This . . .

It's all good, yes? . . .

Irma Haslberger

All the Lots With Wall Power Sold

(reposted from Friday, July 8, 2011)

A rickety tom looks up at the returning geese
from his curl on the porch. Blackbirds pick
at the front lawn. A glider creaks. Etudes flow
from an open window. Two cars get hosed.
The shutter speed quickens, the shelf life
logged with cereal boxes, coffee grounds.
But the pictures fade, leaving us with ticket stubs
and appetites. Witness the laundry
with its plausible conclusion. I remember
when the machines were installed and how
we laughed at the delivery-man-cum-circus-clown
who arrived with twenty other twenty-somethings
in a dinky car straight from the Sullivan show.
And to think it was time to reshuffle the cards.
Driving away with the two of them sitting
on the back deck surrounded by honey bees
buzzing the refrain, But I'm not doing anything!
And the bridge came tumbling down.
Hula Hoops like camshafts under street lights.
We carried salt shakers for pilfered tomatoes.
A cherry bomb exploded near a stand-in's ear.
I caught hell from two old biddies who ran a still
out of their greenhouse. Was it you who organized
the weekly neighborhood quilting bees?
Of course, there were clarinet lessons
and the drop-off disrupting the watching of
Of Mice and Men with Malkovich and Sinise
riding off into the sunset on the waves at Provincetown.
Pizza vendors, waiting to board a Whale Watch,
sitting on the curb, people-watching. Is a chapter
a week do-able at sixty-seven words a minute?
There never seemed to be enough paper
and important messages were always
being whited-out. Fortunately, all the lots
with wall power sold. We found ourselves
in the boss's office with seven sets of twins
rehearsing a Doublemint commercial.
Once gainfully employed as a retractor,
he disappeared and hasn't resurfaced.
The pond got murky. It's been that way for months
despite the carnival atmosphere. Next time
I'll return the typewriter carriage myself.

Gary Sinise and John Malkovich in Of Mice and Men, 1981

Screen Dump 568

[audio]

Since when the marginalization . . . rooftop days

midtown with odysseyites collecting wrong returns

only to be redirected to restart? . . .

Someone riding shotgun on the freeway . . .

You ask How many are trying to engage? . . .

How many are trying to escape? . . .

The next gambit . . . as if paraphrasing

or pulling together backstories . . .

randomly selecting a layover . . . ongoing . . .

in an effort to teach people how to support one another

and to be supported . . .

Armed with what against mass shootings? . . .

Pulling us along from nothing to nothing . . .

Do the young heed the words of the old? . . .

>>> Insert buzzer here <<<

You have a bunch of blank pages . . .

Unafraid to be lost

as if dismantling then reassembling the craft

to voyage out . . . perhaps beyond the script . . .

Irma Haselberger

Screen Dump 567

It's all about the inventiveness of angularity, yes? . . .

I know you agree . . .

You recently joined the ranks of the wide-eyes

bottlenecking drive-thrus at Dunkin'

with blue-penciled drafts

soon to-be-returned to students in the final throes of MFAs . . .

To think about building almost into a poem . . .

The days commiserate . . .

The cityscape welcomes . . .

Surely this will be memorialized in someone's journal . . .

You begin taking dictation in the back seat

with a mellow intransigence

that belies a joyful entanglement . . .

You know what I mean . . .

Again, the enigma of who, indicative of autofiction, confuses . . .

How to represent without sanitizing the story? . . .

As if odysseyites would suddenly agree to therapy

to tease out whose swollen ethics will set them free? . . .

Thumbing through the catalog at the exhibit

you stumble upon text that you are sure holds the key

to kiosks belching their goods . . .

their lines ultimately stretching out (a good thing)

after the monochromatic lifestyle shutdown

imposed upon us by aliens . . .

You have always been one to seek growth

always ready for a new take on tradition . . . knowing full well

that reading a poem will seem like rewriting your life

not unlike playing with materials . . . pushing paint . . .

making habitual gestures to get to the surprise gesture . . .

And this so-called anti-self awareness trend? . . .

The obscurantism unintentional

though some - many? - would disagree . . .

 Happy Birthday Walt . . .

A lonely 36-year-old closeted homosexual from a family of misfits, a printer, an editor, a sometimes teacher who hates teaching, loves opera, oratory, the streets, the rivers, bohemianism, reads widely but indiscriminately, an inveterate scribbler, note-taker, self-promoter, huge ego, reinvents himself in a poem, becomes the poem, concussively confident, gutsy, enthusiastically high on life, a Kosmos, embracing everyone and everything, celebrating everyone and everything, inventing a distinctly new art showcasing a presumptive “I” and an  assumptive “you,” unshackling the line, the rhyme, the rhythm; its utter wildness changing the course of world literature; embodying the ideals, attributes, subjects, and speech of his native land, America; foreshadowing Allen Ginsberg’s century-later pronouncement of spontaneous and fearless first thought best thought: his 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass is far and away the best of all nine; later versions suffer bloat, hamstrung by self-indulgence and overwork; how he did what he did as mysterious as how Shakespeare did what he did; as rivetingly inexplicable as what his contemporary and fellow literary revolutionary Emily Dickinson did; Leaves flips poetry on its head, turns it upside-down, becomes the Holy Grail before which other poets prostrate themselves. (Click here for copy of Poesy Cafe report)

Screen Dump 566

Have you bitten off more than you can chew? . . .

Not that you would return to the fine print of the Return Policy

or Photoshop the graduation photos . . .

Which reminds me . . . aren't you going to be late

for the cap and gown? . . .

The well-wishers with their well wishes and all that . . .

Talk about a full plate why don't you? . . .

Back at the showroom someone is running numbers . . .

Who authorized that? . . .

I'm not one to consult about grammar's gray areas but I have to ask

about the proposed colorways . . .

The Zero Theorem (2013)

Screen Dump 565

Your red hair speaks to the Pythagorean notions

of immortality and reincarnation . . . transporting

the fork lifter to a world waiting for

a not-so-hidden table-read

as if dog-walkers claimed hair extensions

in a sultry salon overseen by a Rod Serling lookalike . . .

Weighing the pros and cons and then some

the arrangement of bronzes so as not to provoke

remorseful buyers at checkout . . .

The neighborhood is good to go . . .

You encourage misstatements

and continue to worry bandwidth and board games . . .

Natalie Westling

Screen Dump 564

Your pretend pudding has long cooled

but hey there's an abundance of what's needed

and isn't that what it's always been about? . . .

I mean we could summon the imaginings . . .

Use a granny gear, I suppose . . .

Are they in place . . . as you had suggested? . . .

I hope so . . . This time tomorrow will not be enough

for an overhaul as predicated by the slots . . .

You have been admirable on countless occasions

opening doors to happy landscapes

applying house paint with a wide horsehair brush

feathering the breaks to blush them . . .

Yes, I think this will work . . .

Chloë Sevigny

Screen Dump 563

To Whom It May Concern sparks suicidal gestures

as if writing code for mental health players . . .

The scene begins with koi breaking the skin of a pond . . . 

You plug gaps in dreams with dissonance

compose drops with sounds . . . not symbols of sounds . . .

the common denominator I saw him/her

a dead end confusing your understanding of place . . .

the place you want to escape to

with Laurie Spiegel's nine-minute Sediments

recorded in the '70s on an analog synthesizer . . .

It speaks to dystopians and soundtracks

the Cornucopia scene in The Hunger Games . . .

otoacoustic emissions spilling over . . .

How do you propose to mark the memory gaps

that seem to have appeared overnight with pods of how-tos

jostling for attention . . . their talk the color of backstory frescoes

unloading demons of erotic curiosity

chalking a pool cue for nine-ball . . .

The clock is relentless . . . too easy to fail at composition

when OS upgrades abandon Music Mouse

and odysseyites enjoy a sabbatical in the Land of Yee . . .

Laurie Spiegel, Electronic Music Pioneer

Screen Dump 562

The paradigm shifts to a bus trip

to an deserted mall

leaving a ceiling fan on the west bank

of the Schoharie servicing

lapsed coders on alternate Thursdays

when buy-ones are put on hold

with heavy metal

for make-believers flown in

for the playalong . . .

This immersion in fantasy is less a chore . . .

a  silent comealong

drenched in line dance

sucking you into a drone's eye . . .

Maybe it's a dress rehearsal

or the beginning of a  two-step . . .

Were you told this at the outset

or after the chapter's chapter? . . .

I didn't think you'd remember . . .

Celebrate the upgrade . . .

We've yet to see beta versions

fill paradoxically . . .

Eugenio Recuenco

Screen Dump 561

I am I and my circumstance.

          - José Ortega y Gasset

Your insistence on redaction conjures the Frankensteins we create . . .

speeding the bus off the razored lot

as if OCD were a cup of tea . . .

The finer points of incidentalism last seen exiting a 7-Eleven . . .

A nine-year-old . . . LOVE imprinted on her t-shirt . . .

We are the sum, if you will . . .

If I will what? . . .

Anarchy . . . how about that? . . .

OK, go on . . .

How about anarchy as an appropriate negation of indifference? . . .

as an affront to indifference? . . .

Indifference? . . .

Catapultists cite the Order of Operations to justify smiting roadies . . .

Bystanders aim smartphones at one another

and TikTok their way into the Hall of Disdain . . .

Conversations continue . . . while awaiting parole . . .

on streets in rooms . . . if I do not save it, I do not save myself . . .

The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

In the April 20, 2021 Pine Hills Review:

Screen Dump 504 The World Fills . . .

The world fills with Eleanor Rigbys

buried without funeral . . . without music . . .

with fossilized smiles

while looters . . . making off with paper weights

disguised as MacBook Pros

demand compensation . . .

Barricades seethe with anger . . .

Your favorite things lie smashed curbside . . .

The healing grows incredibly slow

as if cells object to expending energy

on a jalopy en route to the junk heap . . .

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? . . .

Screen Dump 560

The off-road drive-through

the pomp and circumstantial evidence

all mitigated by the thrum

of seeing it disappear . . .

The protocol for riding the rails

reviewed and submitted

for publication

seeks refuge in footnotes . . .

It was the least you could do . . .

A frozen shoulder barks

and is placed on the stand

sworn in by the vicissitudenous

and released on its own recognizance . . .

You try to imagine more

realizing perhaps too late that there's nothing

like putting off a journey

until some convenient interruption

falls off the edge

and walkways lined by tall spruces

install what-have-yous

in the middle of it all

making progress arduous . . .

Liliana Karadjova

Screen Dump 559

The Last Will and Testimony of A. N. Incidentalist

(clear throat)

That you are driving a car-jacked Zamboni through

a museum is a dream . . . has always been a dream . . .

despite embellishments

entanglements

despite hankerers hankering to be repercussed . . .

The blurb reblurbed on the back cover knows this

and knows that there's a motion to redirect

Court TV bingers into a state of submission . . .

or oblivion . . . I forget which . . .

Your acquittal awaits a mistrial

as unnumbered numbers

undocumented

hobbled by ataxia

are cuffed and tagged by rip-roaring

root canal specialists shadowing jut-jawed

body-cam’d body-armored Captain Midnights . . .

We have become incidental . . . and less . . .

written up, photoshopped, parsed . . .

unable to pick up the missing pieces

without being spec’d by facial recognition software . . .

Holding cells belch out closing arguments . . .

It's enough to turn the stomach of a drone . . .

to return the stomach of a drone to the sender's

unknown address . . . this unreasonable specimen

of force smartphoned . . . suspended

in formaldehyde . . . encased in a hidden panel

in a room off-limits to the public . . .

Did you say it couldn't be done or shouldn't be done? . . .

Maybe just for the heck of it by long-limbed dendrites? . . .

I can now imagine the unimaginable . . .

Jarek Kubicki

Ezra in Exile

(reposted from Friday, February 11, 2011)

His conch collection cameoed in Warhol's Sleep.
He worries the acqua alta and is in demand
as an expert witness on pencil shavings.
Retractions fog his windows.
Cantos clutter the corners.
Mornings, with Olga off to the bakery for violin lessons,
he conducts his words
while tabbies skirt the canals singing his lines.
CPAs rethink their numbers upon hearing his rants.
His blog is blank.
Sundays, he phones his mother
and tells her how much he misses her
potato pancakes and tall tales.
The Coen brothers pester him
for the particulars of his caged life at St. Elizabeth's -
a life spent helping others while pissing them off.
Vendors moor their gondolas outside his palazzo
waiting for him to pass
in cape and broad-brimmed cappello
hawking images, making it new.

Ezra Pound

Screen Dump 558

You disregard the cautionary Don't even go there . . .

blind to the blind alley

after which script in hand you dial in an offhandedness

and exit into daylight . . .

the crucial moment reminiscent

of the timelessness of the dance floor . . .

the choreography effortless

as if from a roomful of rehearsals . . .

This moment-to-moment ritual

that opened doors and eyes

on what was never meant to be

was archived . . . to be pulled out

years later . . . again and again

with a nonchalance . . .

a tribute to the resilience of the script . . .

But several times is several times, yes? . . .

The oddity of the re-entanglement . . .

Where were we? . . . ah, yes . . .

The parties engaged fulfilled detached . . .

the dead end irrelevant

the strangeness . . . fodder for documentarians . . .

Anka Zhuravleva

In April's Chronogram: 

The Dogs in the Trees

The dogs are in the trees again
and they’re barking
waving to their friends
refusing to come down
scratching shedding ordering Chinese
hounding me
to do this
and that.

Screen Dump 557

The problem is not the linebreaks . . .

The problem is the testimonies that are about to begin . . .

Odysseyites wait for words

from a drone streaming hilltowns

covered with backstories . . .

You return to the library's 800 stacks

and experience a momentary lapse . . . relapse? . . .

Why the break in continuity as if a dead zone? . . .

Redundancy resurfaces with flashbacks

of spring afternoons when you tried 

to let your fingers do the walking with études

on the Bösendorfer

in your piano teacher's front room . . .

There was an allotment of sorts

the otherworldlyness of Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert

the innocence of a walk on a tightrope . . .

Screen Dump 556

Low-keying the doggerel day with indie riders

made-for-TV floaters

notwithstanding nothing

you chat up the circumstances . . .

Costumes tell stories . . .

You stopgap disengagement

with eyes on the guise

as if by happenstance a reshuffling . . .

words guaranteed to trigger images

or your money back, yes? . . .

Ruth Bell

 

Screen Dump 555

Then I went off to fight some battle

That I'd invented inside my head

          - Sting, Fortress Around Your Heart

You tongue the moon . . . and revisit the porcelain day

when you did nothing . . . could do nothing . . .

but move forward into a maelstrom . . .

the initial fascination stripped

compressing the algorithm

which bumbled along

with Wiz Khalifa's Black and Yellow:

Everything I do I do it big . . .

Indeed . . . the door opening to a windowless room

on the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge

soundtracked by Sonny's tenor . . .

You tried to cut the verb free

but you remained Faustian below the surface . . .

a green glow as if from a disemboweled tanker

which began life in the name of the father

as part of a re-enactment in a hotel room

accoutered with sparkling cityscapes . . .

You counted ripples from swim fins in the East River

but managed to enjoy most of the close encounter

ears stuffed with cotton à la Tarantino

as if under the ruins of a walled city . . .

You spent the afternoon riding the L train

rehearsing your lines in French

to embellish the mystery of the audition . . .

Jan Scholz

 Screen Dump 554

You skip the review class on Skunk Hour

move into a yurt in the Adirondacks

and assail the seasons

with a hulking ribbonless Remington . . .

The days of wine and roses jacknife . . .

Note-taking turns illegitimate

so you make up what you think

the fourth wall wants to say . . .

It's all about The Art of Losing . . .

losing yourself again in a mirror

losing yourself again in a house of mirrors

listening to her voice echo

through the barbaric frat house . . .

the privileged unhinged . . .

The House of Crazy welcomes us . . .

welcomes overcorrection

where menu options are grayed out

but little matter for the unstoppable

who are seldom stopped . . .

The watchers at the gate continue to look the other way

as Jung's collective unconscious vacations

between the lines of this poem . . .

Try not to let it all bother you? . . .

A judge will be the judge of that . . .

given a script and asked to assume the position

of elementary my dear Watson . . .

Jarek Kubicki

 Screen Dump 553

But what of the depressive realism of social scientists

suggesting that depressed people see the world more clearly? . . .

The dunes hustle geometry

vacillating between high and low

overthinking the moment instead of living in it

as if claustrophobically trapped inside yourself . . .

Again, Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes . . .

You have come to enjoy the space between thinking and doing . . .

The odyssey . . . once exciting now cacophonous . . .

trains and boats and planes

opening to the carefully choreographed . . .

Your notes . . . illegible . . . but you knew that . . .

You blew them off

and Facebooked the afternoon

trying to control the center of the board

lip-syncing Benjamin Clementine's nemesis

after binging The Morning Show . . .

March on

March on

It's complicated . . . or it's too complicated these days . . .

You're bogged down to a near standstill . . .

critics arm wrestling odysseyites

go-betweens taking notes . . . their faces a rictus of joy

continuing to take notes because they have nothing else to do . . .

March on

March on

Screen Dump 552

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari opens with a re-do

of the last scene in The Last Picture Show . . .

the story-within-a-story

about your own Paris, Texas in upstate New York

the unreliable narrator spinning Canterbury Tales

from the looms of Mohawk

with a walk among the clouds

after a Saturday afternoon 25-cent

creature double feature in all three theaters

Mohawk . . . Tryon . . . Rialto

a head-on crash course for clubbing

with inside-outs mimicking trailers

from Alt Cin 516's

visual texture and brooding menace assignment

due Monday . . .

The Creature From the Black Lagoon

teases Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents

bemoaning the convenience therein

for backseat drivers into and out of the City

excepting those staying after for extra credit . . .

the morning after coffee

from the corner Dunkin'

comparing notes and how-to's

using the Law of Small Numbers

to randomize call-backs . . .

The fun-filled auditions were indeed fun-filled

yet when the real runway called

you ran away with your Regents Review 2.0

mouthed the words that fell out

and tried to adapt to Ivy Leaguers . . .

the groves of academe morphing into the graves

with a segue to a second tour in Viet Nam

taking a shrapnel while on reconnaissance 

dying 35 years later at 57 without a memory of a parade

because there were none . . .

Screen Dump 551

Everyone's desperate for a foothold in this huge, wild conversation.

          - Alena Smith, showrunner, Apple TV+'s Dickinson

You enjoy a kind of invisibility as if you had never existed . . .

a stand-in for the person-of-disinterest

an Emily Dickinson shadowing Lady Madonna

legitimizing your essential strangeness by respecting boundaries . . .

Outside your bedroom window agoraphobes

pitch headstone rubbings capturing

what had once maybe slipped through the cracks . . .

A transformational grammar for pilgrims, yes? . . .

Odysseyites shelve quips in the cereal aisle at the supermarket . . .

eyeballing masked auditioners wielding shopping carts

with the naiveté of neighborhood know-it-alls . . .

Recognizable voiceovers nix invitations to the dance . . .

the sun wakes to discarded dance cards written up as nuance

an opening to squeeze through whenever

with your doctored script for next season's miniseries . . .

ideas appropriated from unreliable narrators . . .

Return to the photograph of the wedding party . . .

The rehearsal was an empty place setting . . . more or less . . .

 

Screen Dump 550

Produce carts drive the day . . . in streets painted over

with matte Rothkovian black on grey

and someone somewhere with Ticonderoga #2s

etch-a-sketching their way through a biopic

streaming on Netflix for I'm not sure what

jots notes to be archived and auctioned off . . .

You appear pocketed wearing Palladiums

insisting on retracing the backstory

which held promise for temps forecast in the 50s . . .

Indeed, spring is springing . . .

Renewal advances with drum and bugle

while odysseyites toes spooning mud enter with arms waving

as if fist-bumping butterflies flown in for the shoot . . .

Schiele's Ghost

After he died from the Spanish flu in 1918 at age 28, the ghost of artist Egon Schiele, whose painting "Houses With Colorful Laundry (Suburb II)" sold at Sotheby's London in 2011 for $40 million, moved into my neighbor’s pigeon coop. The pigeons were racing homers. My neighbor would let them out every day to exercise. They would fly in circles above the neighborhood. Schiele would sometimes help. On race days my neighbor and Schiele would transport the pigeons to the starting location, release them, drive back home, and wait for them to return. When a pigeon returned, my neighbor would remove a band from its leg and insert it into a time clock. Finishing times would be recorded and compared to determine the winner. The pigeon coop had a coal stove. Schiele would warm his hands over it. I liked to dribble spit onto the surface and watch it bounce around. This would annoy Schiele. Schiele lived on blueberry pop tarts and Austrian sausages. He spent most of his time drawing female nudes. A book I looked at in the library said that Schiele's art was noted for its intensity and raw sexuality. That was good enough for me. I liked Schiele’s nudes. So did my neighbor. Schiele gave my neighbor one of his drawings in return for rent. My neighbor said that Schiele could stay in the coop for as long as he liked. My neighbor's wife didn't like Schiele. She said he was not welcome in the house. She wasn't happy about him living in the coop but tolerated it because of her husband. She said Schiele's drawings were disgusting. They were the work of the devil. I would visit Schiele most days after school and on weekends. He was usually happy to see me. He would say "Welcome to my studio." He didn't refer to it as a coop or loft. He called it a studio. He would offer me some leftover blueberry pop tarts and Austrian sausage. We would chat for a bit but not for long because it was hard to hear one another over the cooing of the pigeons. Then he would get back to drawing naked women. I would keep one eye on the naked women and the other on the lookout for my mother who didn't like me visiting Schiele. Like my neighbor's wife my mother didn't like Schiele either. She too thought his drawings were disgusting. She said that if I looked at Schiele's naked women drawings I would go blind. That didn't stop me. Schiele loved magic markers. He had tons of them in all colors. He would use them to draw the naked women. He would draw on a drafting table, on top of his small refrigerator, on a shelf, on the floor. He would sometimes climb onto the roof of the coop and draw there. He usually drew from memory but would occasionally bring a woman into the coop. When he did he would say that he had to concentrate, and politely ask me to leave. He once invited three women into the coop. It got really crowded. The pigeons got really excited. They got really loud. My neighbor came out of his house and knocked on the door of the coop. He said something to Schiele. The women left. That was the end of Schiele's life studies. After that he drew only from memory. A few weeks later a circus came to town. Schiele became smitten with the bearded strong woman. He drew her day and night. He was fascinated by her triceps and calves, her facial hair styled in a Van Dyke, and her baritone voice. He loved to watch her "pick things up and put them down." Schiele joined the circus and left town. After my neighbor died, his widow got rid of the pigeons and paid me fifty bucks to knock down the coop.

Egon Schiele

 Screen Dump 549

Serialization began in Anderson and Heap's The Little Review

on the Quaker Weaver's dime . . .

A good day? . . . two sentences . . . woo-hoo! . . .

Within reach . . . or so it seemed . . .

bespoked flatware for HCE . . .

digress to the window shade that nearly did Trismegistus in . . .

Imagining Emily's frigate . . . and then some . . .

Hi from brother's brother in the weight room . . . waiting . . .

translated from the short-short The Night Of . . .

then, on to today's virtual with open to

as images of reps of what might have been flood the gym

leaving odysseyites stranded in the stacks at Barnes & Noble

paging through How To's as if words could rewrite history or his story

deflected because Anna Plura

espied a tête-à-tête among the free weights . . .

Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby & Widow Wadman

 Screen Dump 548

The rendering captured the rift quite compellingly . . .

No one was being promoted

on the breakers at all hours hoping

for a green light

from the series of quarantine streaming on Amazon Prime . . .

Stop with the punctuation already . . .

Take a moment to paint by numbers . . .

Making progress despite the animosity

in the shredded documents . . .

How did you know? . . .

Was it that apparent from the color-coded Venn diagrams? . . .

What about that time you followed the green footprints

painted on the floor and were forced into a toll booth

strip-searched and released into a short circuit

upsetting the cart comparing apples and oranges . . .

Or those moments in time when foreplay was unnecessary

yet desirable despite being blue-penciled

and stuffed into marble composition tablets . . .

Jarek Kubicki

 Screen Dump 547

It didn't matter . . . the shifting of your tectonic plates

leading to a blind alley with a blind singer with a menu . . .

There once was a crooked cat

but she skipped Chapter Three

and held out for more . . .

as if walking through a wall and resurfacing

with the closing credits . . .

I was happy not to be there although I didn't know it

with the outage and all . . .

It's not unlike anything else . . .

trying to fit into the costumes dictated by a half-eaten script

just enough dialogue I suppose . . .

You were able back then . . . but now with the wearing away

it's doubtful that the resumption will be approved

by the self-appointed trigger-happy usurpationists

with their philosophy of blah posting remarks made in haste . . .

Jarek Kubiki

Screen Dump 546

In the film you return to the temple

where an Egyptologist decodes the symbolism

in the placement of lines in this poem . . .

The dig fills with tana leaves

for a confusion of mummification . . .

You begin counting hidden chambers

crowding meaning off the grid

the elements of your Honors English style

tossed out the window

along with friends with benefits

at six degrees of separation

or five degrees of freedom

the statistics course from your first semester

troubling you with symbols

from the professor who wanted you desperately

to publish and perish

after leaving academia

for the bright lights, big city

of Alice's Wonderland

where socially-distant rehearsals

for an adaptation of King Lear in mime

took on a life of their own with wolves

howling silently like crazy for Cordelia . . .

Andrea Riseborough in Luxor (2020)

 Screen Dump 545

The reader peering out of the lines

of this poem filled with happenstance

steps back 60 years

to a wiffle ball game on a dead end street

in an old neighborhood . . .

A viewer pausing the stream

to raid the fridge . . . reminds us

that syntax creates tension . . .

backpedaling on a polished surface

as players shaking in their

Chuck Taylor All Stars

step up to the plate . . .

It is a time of ambiguity . . .

episodes tumble out helter skelter

for analysis by anchors

broadcast live in fuzzy black and white . . .

The wiffle ball game began

in the heat of noon

and continued into twilight . . .

Stoop sitters . . . with drinks . . . watched . . .

among them long-legged Trudi

who lived alone in a first-floor flat . . .

a regular . . . cigarette in one hand

Zippo in the other

in curlers, mascara, and white short-shorts

zippered in back

who later slid into the back seat

of a black DeVille

leaving the players with two men on

and a full count of 14-year-old wet dreams

sucking on plastic-tipped Tiparillos

pilfered from May's News . . .

a front for numbers

on the corner of Hibbard and James . . .

the backstory left sitting alone

beneath the dim dead end street light . . .

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976)

Screen Dump 544

The day . . . drenched in AI . . . opens with intermissions . . .

Someone somewhere over the rainbow perhaps is soliloquizing . . .

This shift in paradigm is busting out of jail . . .

The omniscient one . . . elsewhere . . .

continues to worry the lightening-fast script changes . . .

needless . . . by most accounts . . .

Your text flips the conceit of strangers passing you around

in the language of tractor trailers with assigned seats . . .

Big rigs . . . come and go . . . flustered . . . idling the early morning fog . . .

The ice rink looms . . . festooned unexpectedly . . .

You will attempt a pirouette sometime today and get YouTube'd

and your aside will begin . . . trapped in imperfection . . .

It was here . . . yes, here . . .

Roberto Kusterle

Screen Dump 543

Why bother with the acquisition list? . . .

The pixilation is out of control

last seen heading north on Main . . .

We can try to maintain the pretense of dumbfoundedness

but that might backfire . . .

Remember the incident with the globalists

who insisted on pawn to queen four

as a way into the Annuls of Memes? . . .

You were always good at connecting the dots

using that app you had introduced

to the excavators when they were called in

to bid on the burial mounds that you insisted

had appeared overnight . . .

Carey Mulligan & Ralph Fiennes in The Dig (2021)

Screen Dump 542

The kitties have had enough of that meteorologist

enamored of Kelvin . . .

Funny but the third quarter is where it's at

or at best where it was . . .

Shouldn't we release the system stats? . . .

I mean we're talking the second floor here, yes? . . .

Those fortunate enough to read the Snellen Chart

have a foot up on the competition

giddily floating in acqueous humor . . .

Combining a beret with lugged combat boots

is awesome . . . the ensemble filled

with short stories of artsy types

inhabiting cliffside villages . . .

I can see a skiff in the blue Mediterranean of your eyes . . .

Let's head into town before the snow

for a glass of red . . . masked of course . . .

Screen Dump 541

The disclosure clause upended terrestrial inhibitions

carrying us through the hump day

with its inane number of edits . . .

You'll know something perfectly well

and it will drive insinuators crazy with its fill in the blanks . . .

It too was created by looking back . . .

But don't try that at home . . .

The endpoint visited many times over the years . . .

Now what? . . . Appending a blurb to the latest? . . .

The past, as thick as chowder, clings

especially when the image staring back at you is scary . . .

There once was a way around . . .

and its accomplices knew the ins and outs

as well as the bluesy flatted third played at the audition . . .

Liliana Karadjova

Screen Dump 540

The graying grave of dawn plays undress

rehearsal . . . costumes pretty much black . . .

impossible to rock the magical mystery tour

as the snow deepens . . . muffling the lines

of odysseyites penciled in to break

the ennui buffering an a capella . . .

the religion of the flesh vaporizing

the loneliness of cancelled trampoline Q&As . . .

You enjoy the tease of a hungry eye

the person-of-feigned-disinterest sideways

in an eChair . . . your erotic other

suspensefully suspended

taking notes for up-and-comers

who appreciate the coziness of UGGs

before engaging a KenKen puzzle

not unlike Scheherazade's 1000th story

wherein players applied essential oils

to glide their choreographed arms and legs

glistening in a mirrored room . . .

The disrober again as sage . . .

while in the dimly-lit hallway you play

cat-and-mouse with the ease of a stroll in the park . . .

Liliana Karadjova

Screen Dump 539

Is it simply a question of repagination

or a readjustment of logistics

a tweaking of the inbetweeners

pirated from Pixar? . . .

The thrumming of errors . . . the backrooms of denial. . .

silenced momentarily by the ecstasy

of Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa . . .

Walking on the beach . . . dipping dangling curls

in the surf . . . comparing biopics

without fear of fallout

from clashes . . . or clichés . . . despite

the rampant insomnia . . . however interpreted

by different metrics . . .

exemplars off the charts . . .

No worries . . .

The missing five easy pieces have reappeared

and are ready for their audition

as the chicken salad sand held between your knees . . .

Have you again misplaced the script? . . .

How not to undo the override . . .

the misdirection way more than it's cracked up to be . . .

more than the lockdown days of COVID . . .

binge-watchers glued to screens

of two roads diverging into The Twilight Zone . . .

The Twilight Zone

Here's the poem our sixth and youngest inaugural poet Amanda Gorman delivered at President Joe Biden's inauguration:

The Hill We Climb

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry.

A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:

A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

Our blunders become their burdens.

But one thing is certain.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sun-baked South.

We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

The new dawn balloons as we free it.

For there is always light,

if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Amanda Gorman

Emptiness

by Hana Sheedy-Corrado

For three days

I have been unable to put my thoughts

into words.

My mind is loud

but I remain quiet.

It runs in circles.

It makes me feel small

worthless

pathetic

but most of all, hopeless.

My mind feels like Times Square -

busy loud . . . and scary.

Yet here I sit

in my own head

screaming

crying

begging for help

as everyone walks by

as if they're unable to see how close I am

to the edge.

All I feel is emptiness.

But the silence . . . the silence

is loudest of all.

The silence is what will push me

over the edge.

Screen Dump 538

The seventh circle . . . violence . . . ugliness . . .

examining the evidence . . . reviewing the images . . .

shapes and sizes and disparities

in what we remember (or choose to remember)

until memorialized in the fuzziness of language . . .

You think back . . . and experience the urge . . .

For what? . . . Happenstance? . . .

Suddenly, the labyrinth . . .

They were dropped into labyrinths, you said . . .

labyrinths of suffocation . . .

of  anomalies of closets filled with costumes

balancing the compositions of others from those years . . .

those far back years . . .

Gustave Doré

Screen Dump 537

You are inundated with incomprehensibles

while stand-ins flown in for the insurrection

make do with backyard gymnastics . . .

texting backups for the inevitable underpin . . .

It seems unsafe to pick up where we left off . . .

the peacefulness kicked in the groin

by known assailants sucked-in by promises

of fields of dreams . . .

Rhetorical questions hold the answers . . .

The Fall of Rome

Screen Dump 536

The why of long haulers . . .

Everyone is hunkered down . . . and masked

as craziness plunders the world . . .

You wake to unawares

without notebook or pencil . . .

wearing a cold . . . worrying compassion . . .

What is the most we can hope for? . . .

January 6, 2021