Day's last thoughts play
through the creases of my sleepy mind.
Questions pile like the flakes
on the sidewalks outside.
Square of purple light in my white wall,
                               painted night grey,
glimpse of snowfall--a buzzing, fuzzed-out
scrambled teleplay.

Through interference I'll slide
                                      eventually
          ­                                          down into
                                                     dreaming.
and change the program.
For now, the channel remains right here.
The Winter flickers 'cross my face.

And that window's purple
                              square is a small piece
of a tired world just trying to fall asleep;
A single view of a wider picture
that covers miles. Bends lines into a face.

Impulses race through a fading mind.
Snow is piling deeper
on the bike path outside.
Retrace my steps as eye lids close
                                over distance
Still that square glows--a buzzing, fuzzed-out
scrambled episode.

Through interference I'll slide
                                      eventually
          ­                                          down into
                                                     dreaming
behind the credits.
For now the channel remains right here.
Half-smile flickers 'cross my face.
A different place and some different ways
to transmit greetings across this space
and to broadcast all our withheld wishes
                                             would be fine.

                       But tomorrow I'll wake up.

             And these re-runs never stop.

And that window's purple
                              square is a small piece
of a tired world just trying to fall asleep;
A single snowy, interfered picture.
                   A half-formed question:
     Are you watching this same thing?

We clocked in
(Punched in the older guys said)
And sat in a circle of orange plastic chairs
Hubbed by a thin morose
Befuddlement of a team lead

“An hour, just what is an hour?” he asked to begin the weekly meeting
I wanted to say, “A unit of temporal measurement that comprises -- or is that composes? -- sixty minutes,”
But held back
Knowing the obviousness of the query had to be a set-up

The befuddlement sighed in frustration
An understudy to my English III instructor
(the one who gave me an F- on the Emily Dickinson test)
Then said, “Okay, just what can be done in an hour?”

Then the youngest kid who always kept quiet
But who had enough scars -- had to toss in a lurid touch didn’t I --
To imply that he might have more experience than the oldest said,
“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, then just what is that contraption on the other side of the bay?”

“An assembly line.”

“And what does it do?”

“It makes a 30centaurpower indivertible that runs on Gila monster spit.”

He nodded.

He considered.

“Okay, then, let’s punch out and come back tomorrow. Maybe then we’ll really have something to do.”

(And - oh yeah -- putting on my hat as a frustrated teleplay writer:
Those scars showed that he could handle himself.)

POEM:TELEPLAY ME. can you understand my screenplay;KING,you are in my **** way:do not read my manuscript;the show will go on:keep in mind that;i am the QUEEN my book i will i will teleplay me. good by ! essay

POEM:LILA. ? ACTRESS ? i am acting out my line;teleplay teleplay this is the right line for me;kiss in tell in tell me why ? you smell like coronavirus:sick in sin you are not my boyfriend;i have my on plan;teleplay me actress that me.  ? ESSAY

for David Smith*

as I wait for what this painting reminds me of, a stickman with a short straw works my mother’s head injury into his teleplay of snowfall and crow.  asleep, you must be in the ambulance outside my father’s church.

We’d stumbled upon it simply by chance,
Playing on a channel heretofore unknown to us,
Almost as if the remote, in a final, desperate attempt
To escape the CGI-augmented Britneys and Biebers,
Had taken matters into its own hands and steered us there
(Indeed, when we tried to find that channel later,
It had gone a-gleaming, replaced by some lower-case Telemundo)
Presenting no outsized and over-decibeled spectacle
But a stark, quiet, indeed all but silent black-and-white panorama
Where a distinctly un-scrubbed and un-homogenized Santa
Delivers no new cars, no cartoon-mouse vacation cavalcade,
No million dollar prize from some scripted faux-survival experience,
But those things from the realm of the small, the subtle:
A sweater, a meal, a bottle for those not overwhelmed by the contents,
All courtesy of a purveyor of gifts seeking nothing more
Than to provide some measure of comfort and joy
For those who were well short on either.
It all tends toward the romantic and maudlin a bit,
One could contend
(And, indeed, did not the teleplay’s progenitor
Insist on spending his eternity on a lonely hilltop,
In order that he could have an unobstructed view
Of the cold, narrow lake
For which he’d formed such an improbable and irrational fondness?)
And those who take such a position may very well be right,
But it is equally likely that we could be better men in a better place
If the notion that we could rise above
Our tin-can and yowling-tabby tribulations
And embrace that within ourselves which is child-like and yet saintly
Was submitted for our consideration on more than an annual basis.

(POSTSCRIPT TO AUTHOR'S NOTE:  As the bit of my brain which allows me to actually complete a piece of writing seems to have gone on hiatus, this chestnut is re-submitted for your approval)


We’d stumbled upon it simply by chance,
Playing on a channel heretofore unknown to us,
Almost as if the remote, in a final, desperate attempt
To escape the CGI-augmented Britneys and Biebers,
Had taken matters into its own hands and steered us there
(Indeed, when we tried to find that channel later,
It had gone a-gleaming, replaced by some lower-case Telemundo)
Presenting no outsized and over-decibeled spectacle
But a stark, quiet, indeed all but silent black-and-white panorama
Where a distinctly un-scrubbed and un-homogenized Santa
Delivers no new cars, no cartoon-mouse vacation cavalcade,
No million dollar prize from some scripted faux-survival experience,
But those things from the realm of the small, the subtle:
A sweater, a meal, a bottle for those not overwhelmed by the contents,
All courtesy of a purveyor of gifts seeking nothing more
Than to provide some measure of comfort and joy
For those who were well short on either.
It all tends toward the romantic and maudlin a bit,
One could contend
(And, indeed, did not the teleplay’s progenitor
Insist on spending his eternity on a lonely hilltop,
In order that he could have an unobstructed view
Of the cold, narrow lake
For which he’d formed such an improbable and irrational fondness?)
And those who take such a position may very well be right,
But it is equally likely that we could be better men in a better place
If the notion that we could rise above
Our tin-can and yowling-tabby tribulations
And embrace that within ourselves which is child-like and yet saintly
Was submitted for our consideration on more than an annual basis.


(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This poem owes a considerable debt to the December 23, 1960 episode of The Twilght Zone.  The episode, entitled "The Night of the Meek", features Art Carney as a decidedly down-on-his-luck department store Santa who receives a helping hand courtesy of Messrs. Serling and Claus.)

There were a surfeit of items
Sufficient to raise eyebrows or cause comment
Among the few staid members of the Mulligan clan:
The appearance of siblings or cousins assumed (or at least hoped)
To have preceded Thomas to the choir invisible
Two or three women genuinely surprised
To discover the existence of one another,
One young man with an extremely disconcerting resemblance
To his “Uncle Tommy”,
But the entire affair carried on with something akin
To the requisite solemnity
Until such point that a couple bottles appeared
(The consensus being that the good Mulligan
Had somehow found a way to secret them in)
The end result being the proceedings
Subsequently devolved into an Irish cop wake-esque teleplay,
And in the midst of this fol-de-rol, Tippy Phelan,
Who had framed walls for generic bank buildings
And grunted and swore while cobbling together
Unnecessary cupolas and wholly superfluous cornices
On the McMansions of the small town well-enough-to-do
With Tommy (as well as, on Friday lunch-times
During the slow season, sharing a thermos
Containing a mixture which drew narrow-eyed stares
From lenient if still unhappy foremen)
Stood the final toast for the good Mulligan,
Intoning There’s a land of the quick and the land of the lost,
The trick being to build a sturdy span between them
So it’s only proper that Tommy was a ****** fine carpenter.

POEM:VARIETY. HOLLYWOOD HERE I COME;WITH MY HOLLYWOOD BOOKS:ME IN MY MANUSCRIPT;I AM A ACTRESS WITH A BOOK;SCREENPLAY ME TELEPLAY ME I AM PLANNING TO BE A SUPERSTAR  THAT ON A REAL SIDE;I WILL **** MY ON RIDE;ON THE REAL SIDE;SCREENPLAY ME. POEM/ ESSAY