i stream the latest
news
on an old tube tv
vhs and cassettes
to better hear everyone's latest regrets
on the clicking of magnetic strips

"i've seen this one"
breath in an empty room
pause, rewind, pause, play
it's on loop
every word any of them say

the short words
click the most
as flighty as birds
but trend the highest
on the billboard

the long words
fall
from the grace
of a short attention span.

Mother pulled the beat to hell diluted blood red minivan containing my brother and I into the darkened parking lot. The car couldn't park fast enough as my brother and I tore the creaky side door open and leapt onto the awaiting pavement. We stepped from darkness into light as we hopped onto a curb to be greeted by the brilliance of neon lights erected atop a single story rectangular building squatting at the top of the rectangular lot like a full measure rest. Glass windows as whole walls teased the treasures that lay before my eyes window-shopping like madmen I felt the objects of my covetry leap from their white shelves into my sweaty youthful grasp. Mother breezed forward, stepping across the tier confidant and disengaged; the front door rang announcing our presence. Two bells sounded: ring ring. The Rhines were here. Like a pistol shot signifying the start of a race, my brother and I scampered and scattered and scuttled like wild animals, scouring the shelves that sat dispersed through the gleaming room consuming with our eyes words that told stories with pictures that danced and sang. Clusters of shelves huddled together under several flat signs hung by frail strings dangling from the ceiling displaying themes that told me where to avoid "Romance" and where to find my beloved "Science Fiction." I halted, realizing almost as if there were indentations within the itchy carpet that had alerted me to the place where I had cemented by ruddy feet countless times before. I took my roving eyes from the stalling ground to peer up into the shelves that loomed over me like giants, arching over my head like holy stones erected atop holy celebratory sites of yore. My fingers traced along the shelves trailing over the innumerate plastic spines that encased my bountiful riches; I mouthed the vibrant words imprinted like cattle on each of them and sang to myself stories that spawned off of each one before finding the paragon that most expertly weaved JR the Raconteur into its fabrications. I bore into its dazzling shell hungrily, gobbling up faces and places and names and dates I spun it over to its backside to read plots to read histories to read legacies to read memories I read and read and saw and saw my mind was never more alive with the astounding conception of limitless potentialities my night was just getting started and with my final selection--and mother's blessing--I would march home victoriously wielding my fortune, my medium for which the pictures in my mind would transpose and dance before me like luminous sprites on the brilliant splendor of a luminescent two dimensional stage that is the television screen. It was the weekend getaway I waited for with anticipation every Saturday; I was an unversed monk relishing in the ancient libraries of History.

I cradled the unfurling shed snakeskin delicately
admiring the imprint of faces and places
swallowed up in time.

An ancient amative light sat patiently
on the blank sheet
before the electric medium;
the electric medium sitting buzzing
eager to tell another silent story.

I wrapped the skin around its spindle;
and from its den I extracted slowly and cautiously,
urging the skin into the hungry buzzing medium--

And minute punctures in the skin,
where the projector's teeth sink in,
whose teeth chatter like plastic wind up dentures
as the skin passes snake-like through its dusty plastic entrails.

The tattooed skin is illuminated at the heart of the vessel--
where the countenance of a single solitary bulb
omits a radiance, brilliant and magnificent--
powerful enough to cast the skin like a shooting star
across the darkened room

onto the patient white sheet
where my eyes await the tattooed memories
to dance before me.

I sit in my torn and weathered leather chair
echoing the silence of the screen--
(hypnotized by the hum of the projector--
an incessant electrical drone accompanied by the bombinate
incantations of chattering crickets.)

The stories are shielded from my inquisition
by layers of translucent grain
that leave textures gritty--
and a soft focus that leaves faces obscure
and expressions ambiguous.

(How clever you are to stay silent,
and leave me in such tempestuous musings!)

Vast pores pop up excitedly burned and scabbed intrusions
and if you linger for too long
the brilliance of the glare will burn into you--

Like the shaman who dances too close to the holy fire.
Like Apollo flying too close to the sun.

I must be careful,
and fully aware--
of your transience.

These ambulant hieroglyphs
speak volumes in their silence--
and I find myself drawn
to the blurry smiling faces
as they peer into my soul.

History breathes.
and History repeats.
but lies silent
in the sands of Time.
Becoming muddled,
but waiting.
for its story to be told;
for the mediums to rise from the grave.

I suddenly agnize myself as the last generation
to have its memories and histories burned onto tape.
and as I sit here I wonder
of the Society
whose soul I will peer into--
when I am unearthed
out of the sands of Time.

I burned my history on tape
I've watched it so much the picture's begun to fade
Every time I hit rewind,
I tell myself it's the last time
When will I move on with my life?

I was a star in the sky
I became a gleam in my father’s eye
I was born out from my mother’s womb
And came into a world filled with doom
Maybe I won’t see my name in a VHS soon
I won’t ever meet Terence Malick
But I know I’ll die like Jack Kerouac