Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Screen Dump 626

The view of the river from [insert age here] reloads your page
calibrating the enlargement
of having had the pleasure of their company . . .
None running on empty
None running away
None running . . . running . . . running . . .
The party of the first part struggles with its own lack of identity . . .
its own lack of clarity . . .
Not all that different from the run-of-the-mill 
who look both ways and try to make the most of it
while awaiting deportation to the opening of a one-act play
by your once-upon-a-time favorite playwright
who was last seen loading his autographed remainders
into a cart in a pop-up yurt for ocean kayak rentals . . .
Was the time spent indeed time wasted? . . .
Spin it as you will so as not to provoke a sense of entitlement . . .
Page through the collected somethings of someone
feel the waves of whatever embrace you
and you will be gifted the passcode
to an inner sanctum filled with the unexpurgated thought bubbles
of someone on the brink . . .
Now is the time to return the overdue library books
to their rightful owners
as if the difference between then and now
is a imaginary number . . .

Jarek Kubicki


Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Screen Dump 625

But it's not that . . . it's something else . . .
Isn't it called a fugue state? . . .
To be unmuted without warning . . .
Going here and there and here and there . .  . to quell the anxiety . . .
The conditional . . . always the conditional . . .
How many scenes have you fled . . .
scenes of a crime . . . accompanied
by the lost and found . . . the found soliloquy . . .
listening to the found soliloquy late at night
when the romper-clads invade the dreamscape
and the streets grow ears . . . for tell-tale heartbreaks . . .
When is too much? . . .
I mean . . . wait, I don't know what I mean . . .
The clock counts the pages . . .
and the projects . . . one after another . . . are jettisoned
as if in Spellcheckland . . . can you imagine? . . .
The competition continuous . . .
reminiscent of bantering
without the semi-consciousness of regret . . .
well, maybe after a moment's reflection
the curb building up . . . and you ramrodding
the endgame's absurdist, tragicomic, grotesque story-within-a-story
that you've been working on in a shack in the dunes . . .
Imagining the gloom apart from some unspecified end . . .
There's more . . . wait . . .
The nonsensical that we juggle
and the tribes that assemble . . . at a moment's notice . . . and . . .

Jennifer Flowers in Samuel Beckett's Endgame (2016)


Monday, May 9, 2022

Screen Dump 624

Crating the incidentals for the move
while buckling beneath the ranter's rants from elsewhere . . .
without which  . . . only so much . . . and then? . . .
The seating chart backed up against the wall
covered with the defensive eloquence
of an electric tricycle . . .
Your costume sutured with bird droppings
you enter the fray with yesterday's menu . . .
the dumbfoundedness of the feed . . .
seconds . . . thirds . . . fourths . . .
reaching for cardiovascularity's price point . . .
There's so much at stake
with a walk along the canal . . . drydocked vessels pine
for the podium to incubate nautical miles
where he and she and they searched for missing links
under the banner No More Utopias . . .
Tech support isn't . . .
You immerse yourself in the well's baptismal waters
color-coded for easy lookups into online divestitures . . .
The steamboat sprouts arms
for 15 minutes of infamy on the battle inside your head . . .

Irma Haselberger







Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Screen Dump 623

As if today's sky is an accident . . . Naysayers think it hopeless . . .
propose derailments . . . Fantastic scenes with smudged erasures . . .
You retrieve the moment . . .
Your inner Rapunzel dyes her roots bright red . . .
That should do it
humming All Along the Watchtower
with odysseyites knighting old heroes
brought in to trash gloom . . .
Credits flatten the teleprompter's ennui . . .
Roots enflamed, you become unshatterable
conducting tours of the herbarium at the botanical garden . . .
bench pressing your weight between go-betweens . . .



Friday, April 22, 2022

Screen Dump 622
 
You complain about street stares
the nomenclature of being neither here nor there . . .
a life of surreptitious appropriation
of egress odysseys misgivings
but without which the self-indulgent
click dead links
waiting for a remake of the opening scene
to Beckett's Act Without Words . . .
Postdocs duped into defending their proofs
on the 10-yard line have been given the day off
to search for moments of joy . . .
It's not without benefit, is it? . . .
There's always the captivation of a demi pliƩ . . .
And then you continued with furthermore
adding to the incomprehensibility of Legos
when noodling riffs as ammo
for grandmasters at square one . . .
But it's not . . . Regrettably? . . .
Accumulating insignificant raptures? . . .
You think it possible? . . .
There are enough connections to engage a default
with purveyors of copper wiring cashing out
when storm clouds blunder in . . .
And why is that? . . .
No idea, but it's right here in my pocket protector . . .
Always one to do it up right, yes? . . .
I suppose so, if I must . . .
Have you ever done things that you wouldn't do
under normal conditions? . . .
Freakishly normal, yes . . .
In the company of tight ponytailed cowboy shirts . . .
The script failed . . . to no one's dismay
so we packed up the snake oil van and slithered out . . .

Leila Fores


Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Screen Dump 621

We are all suspect
riding victorious in white chariots drawn by white horses
parading through the streets
earwormed with the caveat
All glory is fleeting . . .
prompting you to reconsider life's Rolodex
with the Titanic's burial soundtracked
not by Nearer My God To Thee as tabloided
but by Archibald Joyce's Songe d'Automne . . .
Oh, to be in England now that April's there, yes? . . .
Here's to April's blizzard
as the tray feeders become high-trafficked areas . . .
George C. Scott's Patton, It was here;
the battlefield was here . . .
A grackle flexes its wings . . . impressing no one . . .
bill tilts abound
all shapes and sizes and ages scatter
with the arrival of a needle-beaked red-bellied woodpecker
while inside the cat chows down on a dictionary
dribbling words from his chops . . .
The meaning of this and that has left the building
on African war pachyderms
crossing the Alps to Hannibalize Rome . . .
A takeaway box and a paradigm shift
and the boiler's red eye reset button eyes you
as if through a glass and darkly
in the darkness of the basement . . .
The voices in the walls guest the power outage
with live links for the woebegotten
waving both hands in the air using a twisting movement . . .

Leila Fores

Friday, April 15, 2022

My poem "Walking the Cat" has been selected by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild for consideration by visual artists from the Upstate Artists Guild to create an artwork inspired by the poem both of which will be included in an exhibit scheduled for September.

Walking the Cat

She prefers to spend her days lazed
in the stuffy arms of a chair by the window
where she can keep an emerald eye
peeled for caricatures in the street.
Her pleasures are unparalleled
though this morning she carried on
about the hot cereal being anything but.
Later, despite the coming snow
she insisted on our usual walk -
the side streets troubled by student drivers
at ten and two, the vacant lot flecked
with white. We stopped for a paper
which pleased her to no end, knowing
it would eventually wind up in her box.
She doesn't seem to mind old news.
On the way home she mentioned
the snow blower which I should have
had serviced in the fall, and her wish
to return to her pastime of compiling lists
of restaurants with take-out sushi
at reasonable prices for friends and acquaintances.
But you know how that goes.

Tara and Corleone

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Blackberries

(reposted from Thursday, August 11, 2011)

When I lived closer I'd keep things cleaner,
weeding the bushes every now and then.

I had this pair of blue coveralls -
Frank sewn in red over the left pocket,

the name of my friend's father,
who repaired radiators

till the acid ate his lungs.
I'd pull on the coveralls,

wade into the blackberry bushes
and pick away, protected.

I've stopped by again today
to see how my father's doing.

It's August and he's eighty-six.
He's asked for some blackberries,

so I'm out here, in shirt and tie,
picking.



Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Screen Dump 620

As if your carouseled life had been nominated for an Oscar . . .
The scene in the supermarket
with triads played out of time
by woodwind player wannabes . . .
Imagine the confusion of recurring themes
delivered post hoc by paramilitarists
dressed to kill . . . and do . . .
Where have all the flowers gone? . . .
C'mon, sing with me . . . if for no other reason
then we're here . . . together . . .
in this cluttered, trampled,
underappreciated landscape . . .
Hey, the re-enactors are still here
and I feel in my bones that they can make a difference
changing the subjunctive as directed . . .
stepping up to the mic
with proper intonation . . .
There's never been a better wishbone, yes? . . .

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Screen Dump 619

You leave them in the early hours
their heads adrift in autofictions
memories of costumes
worn by people of the high Urals . . .
You ride their falsified credentials
into the countryside
open to the sound of your tiny cabin
on the side of a hill above a river . . .
the river you swim in and kayak on
between your missions-impossible . . .
Ghosts keyboard the voices
in your head . . .
Books kindle your world
in the words of odysseyites
trafficking in incidental phrases
and ads for river cruises . . .
At dawn most days you rise
to patch leaks in the clouds
with an awesomeness that grows . . .

Irma Hasselberger


Tuesday, April 5, 2022

 Gone

(reposted from Wednesday, April 18, 2012)

          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.


Sunday, April 3, 2022

Screen Dump 618

This shred of arrogance kept popping up in the living room
as if at the appointed hour
you are the whole in your seemingly illogical . . .
Where do we stand? . . .
There was nothing not to like about it
of course it had many iterations . . .
so many that the scorecard filed a grievance
and left us with little to say
especially when your publicist struck a dissonant chord . . .
With so few clusters you have to wonder
though I suppose one could argue the converse . . .

Leila Fores


Friday, April 1, 2022

Rensselaerville Library’s sixth annual Poem-A-Day Project
celebrates National Poetry Month
with a new poem by a local poet each day for April’s 30 days.
With this year’s entries, PAD will have showcased
180 poems by 110 poets.
Stop by PAD2022 for your daily poetry fix!

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Screen Dump 617

Why page through your wrinkles? . . .
It's late but what is time? . . .
and here comes the morning up the garden path
to help with turning the soil
for the excited plants . . .
And the songbirds . . .
Go ahead . . . Go in . . . Can you imagine? . . .
Yes, things will come into play,
I suppose, and, yes, one day
the ashes will pass Go . . .
But now you're here . . . filling with wonder . . .
Green tea! . . . Don't forget the green tea . . .
It will help you clear the hurdles
with happiness . . . and hilarity
for your glorious head . . .

Deborah  Turbeville


Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Screen Dump 616

You're in a parking lot fingering your phone
directing the play by play by play
the fridge pissing off neighbors with its barking
then this mad cow parks in a handicap spot
Don't have a cow, dude! . . .
Really? . . . I mean REALLY? . . .
The subterfuged world never at a loss for
That's how we do it . . . by the witless . . .
Sputtering with malcontent you take a breather
then, a tearful delivery, a tearful moment
at the whiteboard with a invalid proof
for mathematicians-a-go-go . . .
the bartender gaslighting the hammered
who humble back to their hovel
to be set upon by octopi or octopodes
in the watery world of the socked and soaked . . .
I want to hold your hand? . . . I don't think so! . . .
The world as experienced . . . in all its flatness is so . . . 
Yesterday,
all my troubles seemed so far away . . .
Glass's koyaanisqatsi (Hey, look, a q without a u!)
You enter the world of metal detectors where
fixed income instruments or bonds
follow just intonation
allowing you to nix diversification
and preserve the (High School) Principal
who is poised to flop into bed
with the School Nurse on paid leave . . .
Ba Ba Bond . . . James Bond . . .
Perhaps you should appeal to happenstance
especially after factoring everything down
to the list of pall bearers still In the Still of the Night . . .
It's time once again to head out
to the dollar store for a ramification
or a conciliation . . . or a pontification . . . or a Jorge . . .
Of course you knew him . . . he was one of many
on your to-do list . . . after deconstructing
the ins and outs of the allegorical Lord of the Flies:
Maybe there is a beast. Maybe it's . . . us? . . .
Come down from there . . . to the slots in the casino
where the real is really real
and you'll be as broke and as fit as a broken fiddle . . .
Par excellence the auteur! . . .
I had heard that you had been hobbled by the last stanza
but hey you can always deposit your ashes
in a local tributary and watch them
float downstream as we assemble according
to the directions scribbled with a foreign tongue (ouch!) . . .

Deborah Turbeville

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Screen Dump 615

Tooling along a coastal road on a cafƩ racer
bells whistles lace-up leathers
you speak in tongues to pick-up gamers gaming the small diamond
in view of a creek that runs through the woods
on its way to the river . . . the magic and mystery
of your roadhouse expertise
tipping tampered scales
back when coupes were the rage
and radio stations - the few - had to be dialed in
by turning a dial . . .
There was something about the static - the radio static -
that made you want to engage interior monologues -
iron clad center stage wordless soliloquies - with you
toggling obscurantism
and stepping up to the plate with a full count
mimicking the black and white colorways of radio silence . . .
You seek salvation - fresh and focused - behind Razer glasses
tweaking the list of odysseyites docked for cleaning the roundabout
imagining a four-score and 20 return
on a tracking device that breaks free of the dream
you obsess over with a randomness
whose silhouettes clutter the performance space
with overtures that beg for smoke and mirrors . . .
This will have to do, yes? . . .
This apparition of sliding into decrepitude
as if your time capsule of an apartment belly-flops the water
shredding the pages of your future perfect waking life . . .



Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Screen Dump 614

Where are we to begin? How are we to bring order into this multitudinous chaos?
          - Virginia Woolf

You're taking notes on the straight and narrow
as the detritus of a life
crashes the weight of a wake . . .
Act One Scene One:
We search for younger days:
riding a balloon-tire bicycle through the streets
and into fields of dreams
appropriating clichƩs with reckless abandon . . .
Each day up and out and into the fray
following the yellow brick road
into . . . and beyond . . . the Great Beyond . . .
Masks of pandemics mask stimulus checks . . .
You balk at the thought of yet another move
to quell the restlessness while off script
odysseyites bleed the shoot in a New York minute . . .

Leila Fores


Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Screen Dump 613

No, it's not a dress rehearsal, despite your appealing restlessness . . .

The joy of encryption . . . of scrambling the known
as if Tolstoy's spell-check informs your excitement . . .

You enter the painting
and you're on a road . . . waking in the middle of someone's dream . . .
Snow dots the breakdown lane . . .

          How did you get here? . . .
          How did I get where? . . .
          Here, in this backwater backstory . . .

Your coffee mug dusted for prints . . .
The clock texting like crazy . . .

Your queue is flustered and needs a break . . .
Review the fine print if you doubt the algorithm . . .

Odysseyites have grown bored of Marvel Comics;
they're tweaking the turn of events
mounting arguments against the escape hatch in the limelight
of the final scene for all its worth . . .

You're using an online random number generator to pick lines
hoping the answer will pop out of the mishmash . . .

The surface tension with its stuff of days
swings open the doors to a museum of off-color fields
giving you time to recast the worthwhile . . .

Laura Zalenga


Sunday, March 20, 2022

Screen Dump 612

Camo'd savages launch incomprehensible assaults . . .

The nighttime sky ablaze  . . .

Your apprehension . . . wild . . . .

The past's lessons . . . trampled

Where to go?. . .
as threats from identity thieves pierce your consciousness . . .

You try to keep the plates spinning without knowing the when or why
of machines of annihilation . . .

Foot-traffic chokes the passing lane . . . 



Thursday, March 17, 2022

Screen Dump 611

You follow the lead's decent into raw ambition
to test your stick-to-itiveness . . .
memories of odysseyites piggyback . . .
The play-by-play . . . hyperreal . . . surreal
as if staged in a black box theater
by actors retooling the script on short notice
under a drone's jaundiced eye . . .
The director-cum-auteur, yes? . . .
Intransigents upstage the takeaway
with bolded scribbles on yellow legal pads
as the conceit fractures
with sleepovers and makeovers and takeovers
within walking distance of the spot marked X
while you rehearse the missing pages
with temps who couldn't care less . . .

Leila Fores


Thursday, March 10, 2022

My poem, Cataloguing the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, was a finalist from among 735 entries in the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase International Poetry Contest. Bravo to the other poets, & many thanks to curator Bob Sharkey & his team for a super event!

Cataloging the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Bernini saw it in three-dimensions -
head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted.
Tons of marble floating.

Cataloging the ecstasy of Saint Teresa
you cross over
and find yourself in a choral group

performing Arvo PƤrt’s The Peace.
This is good. This is really good.

The puzzle at the foot of your bed?

You try to recall the connection.
The mystery of happiness without remorse
or something like that. You’re not sure.

Here’s how it’s done, the caped magician told you
after your eighth birthday party.
Misdirection. Misdirection.

Saint Teresa in Ecstasy by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini



Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Screen Dump 610

Why spend this late hour worrying?

The sink drains and you are among the ancients . . .
You are the ancients
headed for the disaster of the unknown . . .
On the road, hands cupped
you find a box filled with moments
of astonishing pleasure . . .
You crack open a can of words . . .
It's not too late
despite the chagrin
on the faces of your stubbed hammertoes . . .
Forget them . . .
The sink finally drains and you breathe in deeply . . .
This day of blueberry jam
of busy bird feeders
sharpened pencils
stoked fire
rescue cats curled in sleep
is here . . . is now
the Jeep warming despite the cold
the trip down the mountain
for ingredients to make grandmother's goulash . . .
It will be OK . . .
There's nothing but a memory
to lay down a dry fly
onto the roiling surface
for a maybe . . . 
a moment of astonishing pleasure maybe . . .
catch and release . . . catch and release . . .



Monday, March 7, 2022

Screen Dump 609

          from then and now

A slew-footed nomad in the checkout line
at the grocery store
just in from a grand pliƩ
lays out lines from Wuthering Heights
or something or other
from one of the sisters BrontĆ«
catapulting you with some sort of Trojan Horse 
into the heather moorlands
with odysseyites who for whatever reason are candying
the ins and outs of pulling U-ies
in front of the camera
grandstanding the last vestiges of roundabouts . . .
Then the illusion . . . and footsteps . . .
You follow them out the door
into a cloud bank from both sides
taking you back to a still life . . .
The teller serializes the ups and downs
of this and that for no apparent reason . . .
The inevitable does not disappoint . . .
You lose yourself in what was lost
reminiscing the unlined and untamed
channeling the shadow in the mirror . . .
falling through the window
into a landscape of porcelains
smuggled centuries ago by traders along the Silk Road . . .



Saturday, March 5, 2022

Screen Dump 608

Why bother the nontrivial effort to traverse text? . . .
The rom-com abandoned in a shopping cart snowstorm
with footnotes on nonergodic literature
where your only responsibilities
are eye movement and the turning of pages . . .
You continue . . . reading . . .
Iterations abound . . . and are important, yes? . . .
Taking it down a notch
much to the surprise of graveyard shift hackers . . .
the gate opens to a railroad flat
where one summer morning
you tried out various yoga positions
from a book you had found under the seat of a rental . . .
That was enough to feed odysseyites
around a fire pit later that evening
shepherding secondhand embarrassment
for the perfect balance between carefulness and carelessness . . .

Wendy Bevan






Friday, March 4, 2022

Screen Dump 607

Trying to come up with the most legible story line
to make it all make sense

the Cartesian coordinates for the remains of our days
pages from a flipbook

stuck to the ceiling of a makeshift hut
in a remote area of consciousness . . .

An idea of who you are and what you will be . . .
How now the edited endgame? . . .

As if you have become a blustery winter wind
a tetchy iconoclast

waiting in lines increasingly bottlenecked
shelves orphaned

cranking the engine of false starts
in a monochromatic world

amenable to dropdown menus of altered egos . . .
Then of course there's the perfunctorily

fact-checking name-checking holding forth
as if crossing the River Styx in a kayak . . .

You emerge from the underworld of basements
the protocols of mimes

struggling to voice an objection
to the end-all be-all of all

with a weary sense of satisfying
a tiresome poetic-novelistic balance . . .

The augmentations should be refreshed post-haste . . .
You assume the polar opposite

the driver's seat awaits your strategy
always a welcomed if exasperating experience . . .

Birds of a feather fail . . .
The nonesuch among us are less and less

a gasp of survival
as the climate zooms in

with countless PSAs ignored by the polloi
who immerse themselves in screens

covered in gabardine for the sake of nothing . . .
We have run out of Blue Books

with which to memorialize the streams of consciousness
tricking through the wastelands of now

the idea howled out of the room had it been suggested by 
first-person shooters captured on camera at checkout . . .



Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Screen Dump 606

Images of war bully your sleep . . .
The ubiquity of tragedy
of not knowing what's coming
the blur of sadness . . .
above and below
a different kind of sorrow
a different kind of disbelief . . .
You view a world in thrall of bloat
segueing between bouts
of then and now
then and now . . .
the digressive components of grief 
appropriated from rejection slips . . .
Why think otherwise? . . .

Chris Abani


Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Screen Dump 605

The sun insists on rearranging your costumes
trying out different colorways to complement the swirl
of coffee from the corner kiosk . . .
Is this an aside . . . or something less? . . .
a digressive, non-essential chunk of junk text
that in the rearview mirror is just plain fun? . . .
You would like to think that it means something -
or will mean something - after it's nested . . .
and maybe it does . . . or will . . .
maybe a jolt to force lunch
with a remaindered novel's author? . . .
But no life is so simple, yes? . . .
Take the lurkers with their magic wands
festering this and that and then skipping out
without paying homage to someone or something . . .
So many arguments bounce . . . yet the words remain
chomping at the bit to take another shot . . .
Bystanders looking askance at the lineup of ghosts . . .

Leila Fores


Sunday, February 20, 2022

Screen Dump 604

It was time to disembark . . . but the clock struggled
with insinuations . . . You knew there had been a mixup
and soulmates seemed a dime a dozen
but that didn't stop the insurgents
who were just as insecure with the gameplan
as the attendees who in no time were paired up for the shoot . . .
The moon seemed untrustworthy
but then they rolled out the Hammond B-3
with its magical brooding deepness . . . and you forgot . . .
You insisted on yellow for the split screen outtake . . .
No one voiced an objection . . .
It looked pretty good, in fact . . .
Extras were brought in for the table read . . .
You sat in the dark . . . loving it . . .
risking the allegation of selfishness . . .
Later your walk along the beach
was soundtracked by the hooped earrings
which you had borrowed years ago from your twin . . . 

Leila Fores



Saturday, February 19, 2022

Screen Dump 603

Your fingers, stuffed with pages, end-run
to reconnect with the day which has taken a knee
in the excitement of a whiteout . . .
The knock at the door . . . again . . . again . . .
Backstory Alice wonderlands the snow
which threatens to crash the system slowly
up the mountain with flatbeds of discards . . .
Rearranging the chapters as work
you revisit a half-finished dwelling with a false floor
in the woods of your dream . . . the soundtrack . . .
loud . . . perverse . . . remainders of your past lives . . .

Leila Fores


Friday, February 18, 2022

Screen Dump 602

You begin collecting words from the air . . .
Someone leaves a lukewarm coffee
in the dressing room
and things topple . . . you are ticketed
for unresponsiveness and held
without bail reworking the second chapter . . .
the chapter that opens with the unkempt . . .
Isn't this more of the same? . . .
Haven't we visited this so-called
House of Mirrors before? . . .
Safety protocols lax . . . and many know . . .
Wanting to wait it out while streets fill
with underappreciated phenoms
on leave with pay
citing The Book of the Dead
may not be the best way to go . . .
So you cave . . . or something . . .
insisting on bothering less . . .
Later the doors open . . . a translation enters
in a modernist suit held high
by surrogates hawking weak passwords . . .
You resort to a play on the word schism
to get the goats of  latecomers . . .
A PSA chimes in with an update  . . .

Leila Fores

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Driving Home After My Last Prostate Exam

My Harvard-trained urologist
straight black hair yet to be peppered
whom I’ve been somewhat intimate with
for ten years now
enters the examination room
looks at the test results
types something into his computer
and says You’re good.
Unless you have a problem, we’re done.

But the shoe will drop . . . someday.
Yes, it will, he says, but not here.
And I’m a bit saddened
not because his words portend my shelf life
but because . . . strangely . . . I will miss him
and my annual visit
to this sad room
with its sad faces
and sad words.

Driving home after my last prostate exam
David Bowie, dead at 69,
sings This Is Not America on the radio.
Head bandaged
buttons for eyes
he lies on a rickety chipped hospital bed
in an empty room
in Lazarus, his last video.
When the cancer spread, he stopped treatment.

David Bowie, Lazarus (2016)


Wednesday, February 2, 2022

 

One hundred years ago today, Sylvia Beach, a Paris bookshop owner, published James Joyce’s "Ulysses," a 732-page novel about a day in the life of Dubliner, Leopold Bloom. Joyce used every trick in the English language to portray the journey we each take from the womb to the tomb. "Ulysses" was banned in several countries and quickly became one of the most important novels ever written that most readers have never read.

Monday, January 31, 2022

Screen Dump 601

You too consider bailing but the last few episodes
of Ho Down reclaim your otherwise
so you face the unplowed streets with takeouts
while licorice stick bluesplayers
shred the changes
ignoring time signatures of mixed martial artists
in gilded cages . . .
The snow continues its deception
the tried-and-true are misdirected
by evil clowns whose words
elbow into cold case files
in forgotten cul-de-sacs around the world . . .
Why not now the nostalgia
for Golden Books
with their little engine that could promises
chuffing in the middle of a chow-down
with smiles-a-plenty odysseyites
around a round table? . . .
Meals-On-Wheels was last seen entering a roundabout . . .
Whoever was there now that the takeaway is moot? . . .

Mixed Martial Artist "Thug" Rose Namajunas


Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Another Ordinary Morning

(reposted from Tuesday, October 1, 2013)

Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing.
          - Mark Strand

The leaves coax the light into a snow sky. A simplicity of one, costumed, belabored, fraught with delusion, lingers in a dream of the shore. The voice at the door continues the story. The organs of day engage a Netflix world, spiriting you away. The cat remains noncommittal. Late at night when you lie awake, tell yourself that you love who you are, that your half-concealed life is not without promise.

Martina Hoogland Ivanow

Monday, January 24, 2022

Screen Dump 600

As resident cartographer you continue to map
the terrain of intimacies 
etching your life
earmarking odysseyites
with aplomb
their cantilevered  promises
rutted and gutted . . .
You as always are elsewhere
changing costumes in full view
your half-track idling in a tow-away zone
on a dead-end street
painted purple in desperation . . .
You have left marks so to speak
on the faint of heart
on survivalists who look away
when dispassionate quatrains
jam the tone deaf . . .
No one is allowed to advance
until your enigma clicks in
with the language of machines . . .
A pileup on the causeway
floods the bedrooms of those
enamored of your signage of confused animation . . .
Your hatcheries of discourse remain on standby . . .

Irma Haselberger


Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Screen Dump 599

Nobody knows anything about the future.
          - Louise GlĆ¼ck

Once upon a time with several backstories . . .
Listening to the pages of books
you want to return to where it all began . . .
How it came down . . . and continues . . .
The survivors . . . masked . . . mundane . . . surreal . . .
Little sense renaming things . . . the overflow gesture
will surely bottleneck . . . not unlike most in the script
which you insist on trotting out . . .
The bus stops though are magnificent
but we must wait for later angels, yes? . . .
A good idea to spend time cataloguing various happinesses
both obscure and profound . . .
And now you endeavor to fabricate your own happenstance
which if done properly can be adopted by others
who have decided to make-do with leftovers from Pizza King . . .
I know . . . I know . . .
Never forget the sound-hemmed
or those who say the least . . .
Ghosts in the green mirrors of yesterday
continue to appear in your Facebook album . . .
Why did you deconstruct the bed before leaving? . . .
Was it the square wooden shoulders peering through the glass? . . .
Darkly? . . . Not to say . . .
Spending the day in a parking lot . . . waiting
for words to arrive on a Greyhound . . .
You were promised a box of pencils when stop-action coydogs
beyond all invention howled the passcode to your hip pocket . . .
As if experiencing tears for the first time . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek



 

Friday, January 14, 2022

Screen Dump 598

The Shining's hedge maze with single digit temps
is a one-way ticket to elsewhere . . .
Odysseyites amuck with Coen's Macbeth
When the hurly-burly's done . . .
all doors open . . . hoo-ha . . .
Again, again, you try to capture the detail
with a nervous camera
like again you're obsessing The Da Vinci Code
earthenware digits reversing
the order of operations
to see if the end product morphs into a takeaway . . .
Trying to restart the Method . . .
Rearranging yellowing photos
from The Land That Time Forgot
(or should have)
you dream witch's garb
contorting into prophesy
with first person shooters at Rodin's Gates of Hell . . .
Flipping burgers in some greasy spoon
with hangers-on from a trilogy
that never got off the ground . . . whose words
are etched in someone's granite . . .
The mirror's images symbolic
of foul but give fair advice to heroes and cowards . . .

Kathryn Hunter in Joel Coen's Macbeth (2021)



Thursday, December 30, 2021

Screen Dump 597

Your memories avalanche . . . their redundancy
taking you by the hand . . . misleading you
through the maze of your heart's back alleys . . .
How not to personify the habitual . . .
goofy shifts and the beauty of the clunk close to convincing you
to dispense with the endgame . . . the proper
though not necessarily acceptable solution . . .
A plague of hideous narcissists enters
full of sound and fury
local littlenesses piggybacked with false promises
take to the streets with anarchic images
from the backpacks of recognizable strangers
who are quick to trade identities
signifying nothing . . .
A contrabass flutist strikes a dischord
and is recalibrated by a wandering minimalist
intent on delusion . . .
The night puts out feelers . . .
Many experience a faux aha . . .
You see it coming despite your backward glance . . .

Paulina Otylie Surys


Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Screen Dump 596

Something about the web of indifference . . .
No retelling the clutch . . . it was there . . . you were there
as if tap dancing in the bardo . . .
Then you dropped the ball . . . outstripping silence . . .
Odysseyites began speaking from hard-won experience . . .
You Ubered home at 1:30 AM
playing stopgap with a year's reprieve
dust bunnies cavorting . . .
Why bother the naivetĆ© of Positively Fourth Street? . . .
You have no faith to lose
in your celebrated future waking life . . .
Can you recap anything? . . .
Is there a documentarian? . . . a videographer? . . .
You are repainting the rooms . . . yes, I understand . . .
The cake was indeed left out in the rain . . . period . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek


Friday, December 3, 2021

Screen Dump 595

On bed or sofa . . . you adjust the volume
to accompany your departure
the departure of others . . .
The stillness captured
epic tales of whiteouts
hunkered down . . . waiting . . .
So now is the time to hoard it in your heart? . . .
Again and again . . .
Let's broach continuity
for the sake of . . . for the sake of what?  . . .
It sounds fishy doesn't it? . . .
I mean when was the last time you opened
a how-to with bits and pieces a-plenty? . . .
Should we go on? . . .
dump everything into a disambiguation machine
and see what happens? . . .
Maybe it'll surprise us . . . though I doubt it
what with the transparency
mottled at that . . .
Bloom of happenstance . . . then the close . . .

Shannon Hartman in Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (2017)


Sunday, November 28, 2021

Screen Dump 594

Your uneducated palette makes haste
and so itself belies . . . snow creasing consciousness
as when lost in the stacks
you made the most of words
the clock flipping the storyboard
awaiting yet another invasion
this one more contagious
outmaneuvering makebelievers
pulled in to make space for makeshift whirligigs
atop unmarked cars . . .
Bells ring unendurably . . . as if entombed . . .
Many try to stay the four-credit course
with a lab from one of those
insufferable unaccountable kennel farms . . .
Those in the wake of your wandering to what end . . .
Just enough cover to be visible
the tracks of odysseyites
cunningly contrived by the unfulfilled . . .

Shannon Hartman in Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (2017)




Thursday, November 25, 2021

Screen Dump 593

You took umbrage out for a quick question
entering a labyrinth . . . the idea sprung from the Middle Ages . . .
Impenetrable to intruders . . . yes, that's it . . .
But what about the audience? . . . those accoutered in chain mail? . . .
Mostly opera buffs
incidentalists who looked after the impossible
years and years . . . and years
when those contemplating bigness stepped forward
drawing lines in the sand
leaving odysseyites with next to nothing
and strange tales of the forgotten who were beside themselves . . .
Isn't it wonderful to feel the first soft flakes? . . .
I mean, prepare yourself for an extended commitment
to combat boots . . . some bearded . . . wearing overcoats
not knowing when to stop and take it again from the top . . .

Marie de France (1160-1215)