Scene 1

Shot 1:

It starts with a close up of grass.

Its early, the sun hasn’t come up yet

Track shot moves up in slow walk. With purpose, emphatic. Without haste.

Observe the glistening dew on each blade.

Watch it weigh down the blades of grass,

Force them to lean and bend.

Notice the disarray. All blades pointing in directions of the dew’s choosing.

The grass abruptly ends.

Shot stops moving.

A pockmarked pavement.

The potholes of a longer winter

Not yet sewn up by the town.

Jagged like teeth

In a malformed palette.

Cracked,

Split in the little fissures from ice

and salt

and the scrape of winter’s grip.

It’s quiet.

Shot 2:

Broad shot.

Long, gravel driveway to a farmhouse, as sun sets. An old, prominent tree off to the right third of the shot. Radiant in the fading sunlight.

The house:

Beige Paint peeling. Window on the first floor, right side of the home, with wide gash in its pane.

Clapboard siding sagging on the opposite side in a dysfunctional patterning.

Camera begins to zoom.

The sound of the old porch’s settled wood creaking. An evening breeze only noticeable because the sun’s influence has cooled.

The sound of water dripping somewhere off of a worn gutter.

As the camera zooms to the front door. Slightly off of its hinges, an unfinished, cheap wood. The creaking sounds become more frequent, the wind’s squeals more pronounced.

The creaks become the sound of sharp cracking.

Water drops are louder now.

Building in percussive power.

The sound of small animals rustling off camera.

Louder now.

The camera speeds up and reaches the door as a crack, longer and more pronounced, rings out.

Screen goes black.

Shot 3:

Black frame, the sound of squeaking bike pedaling begin to trickle in.

Light fades in. Mid-morning on a sunny day.

In the left third of shot: an older, prominent tree. Leaves brown in the colors of autumn.

Nothing moves on the tree.

The squeak of the bike tire rubbing the Frame of a bike.

The clicking of the spokes against a worn gear.

The tree does not move.

The leaves remain still.

The wind has gone away. Resting

Faintly, the sound of dull tapping.

The sound of gravel shifting.

The sound of the bike

The wail of the brakes meeting the wind’s return. Carrying the sharp, sudden hiss of travel interrupted. 

Envelops the still action of the shot.

A cracking of wood. Once, twice, now in uncountable procession,

Descending into the sound of wood snapping and collapsing in. Creaking away from the confines of nails and wood glue. A structure rendering itself as rubble. A return to modest origins.

The screen goes black. The wind’s shrieking is heard and a slow fade in of footfall on gravel is heard before silence.

Miracles of Gardening

I have no ill will towards

anyone,

anymore.

I have buried it in my front yard

next a Japanese Maple.

I placed it in an ornate box with

a metal clasp.

My ill will

will ooze out of the boxes sharpened 

corners.

It will meet soil.

Feel the truth of the universe

Note its sustaining nutrients,

Its nourishment. 

an opportunity for growth.

It will grow and bloom-become a daisy,

maybe many of them.

It will drink the Spring Rains.

It will be a joy to the eyes of each passerby.

A vision of peace.

I will no longer dwell

next to the tree, near the dirt mound,

feeding the ground with my tears

and my trepidations.

It is time for me to notice the maple’s pink

leaves and how they reach out around them.

How they call to us.

How they let me know that I too

am planting something of myself

in this place. I am becoming a piece of

It.

Joining the procession

In a joyous hymn

And using percussive accessories.

Becoming the spectacle 

We all deserve to witness.

Coda with Vibrato

 I know this glance of yours.

Without a word

We are in the dangerous rhythm.

It brings

An invitation

To explore

The same thought

We know the other one is having.

No one is going to be happy

When one of us or the other

Loses their edge,

Explodes in a fit of nervous, uncontainable

Laughter. Sweating with the effort to stop.

Face flushed with effort

Willpower overcome but still revving the faulty engine.

Silence will be cremated.

All of the collective focus of this room

Will go the way of the dodo.

We will both be held to account

In the eyes of those whose moments are stolen from them.

There can be no sympathy,

There will be no quarter.

Just the shock of fits and starts

Failing to control themselves.

And a new communal rage seeks to devour us.

Please, look away.

Breakdown (Now in Drop D)

Earth is throttled

Torn,

Ripped and screaming fire.

Clouds drop from the weight of it all.

The Impact is a sound of crumbled foil shattering a windshield.

Our words,

No longer

Heard,

But long before

A fault line-turned-chasm grew between them.

Shifting with the undulations of another world. A dying star flailing without dignity somewhere above the crust of the earth.

Earth rises and falls

With unyielding speed.

Here the dirt and soil and rocky past grows in melody, a choir of voices building, approaching the space between us.

Something grinds and roils beneath the otherwise

Pleasant, rolling hills.

Watch it on its set path

To disrupt the dying gasps of day

With its teeth

And the shriek

Of a primal history

Momentarily misplaced 

but returned by the

Ground below.

My, how we will remember

What we thought we understood

Between us!

It is tangled in deep, winding roots of ancient trees,

Now Cracked loose and splintering in its journey,

Unwound, and 

Rupturing up from the firmament

High into the shattering sky,

Arcing away.

Watch its bend,

a moment of inflection 

and the splendor of stillness, brief,

a set piece at equilibrium.

Watch it resume

Time catching it

Then quickening its free fall, spilling out to blot out the remaining light and to remake the places

We are unlikely

To ever find again.

Love in the time of Hamilton

I tried to make you an elaborate musical number.

Full on dance-battles.

Madrigals meeting breakbeats.

Set changes at the key change.

I was going to show you love through the power of spectacle.

You would know the depth of my feelings.

The actors wanted these things called directions.

The musicians wanted sheet music.

Set designers needed paint.

I probably should have booked a venue.

Needless to say, it was more complicated than I was thinking.

I also cannot sing or dance or paint.

All I had was a feeling.

All I have is this feeling.

Held deeply, resolute in my spleen and other organs in that region.

So I’ll share it with you,

At the table tonight with the dinner you’ve made us, in the home we share, in a life we are building

And hope that it is enough.

Nonets are good Nets

Egg is a birth and egg is a food.

Crack in the pan, permanent choice.

From a choice already made

By someone far away.

With a firm grip on

Resolution.

Go ahead:

Start your 

Feast.

Omni-Ego

My image

Through a glass 

Distorted in a trick of an eye.

Somewhere in the glass.

A faraway place

Unmade on a map.

Unknown in the words of others.

A copy of the copy staring back at the original.

Looking to speak.

What will I tell me?

Wisdom, lean forward.

Whisper gently to my forehead.

Words in the flow of the River

Caught in the rising of the moment.

Traveling beneath the ground

Weaving through eroding limestone.

Feel their ebb and flow

In the finery of words.

In the cadence of the spoken.

In the truth of the soul.

I’ll project an image

Onto this hanging sheet.

It will show the same clip

Forward, backward, unstitched in sequencing.

The audience will evaluate

It.

Give it shape and a role.

New possibilities will join the timeline.

What this is was forgotten

What this was is knowable.

Glass, shift the image when taken and 

Repositioned.

Another new life has begun,

A process of refraction.

Reflection becoming a reality.

A slight differentiation

Another opportunity.

I am me and he is I and we are the same.

And I too, will receive this name

Given to me.

I will go

Will move through one of these new worlds

To seek our destiny.

Proverbs and Regular Verbs

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

Observe:

His meticulous use of pitchfork.

His sagacious methodology of flame.

His adroit frolicking from foot to foot, revelry in the authority of his wiles.

My rib cage has known his blows.

Grown intimate and familiar with his scourge movements.

The joy in meting out his edicts, his rewards, his punishments.

An unholy trinity.

I am familiar with these methods.

I know the hum of his torture,

The counter-harmonies of his manipulations,

The melody of the misery he causes me.

Sharp, perspective slaps.

I sing it as a funeral dirge each day. Echoing off the Canyons of Hell’s Mountain Ranges.

His is an artisan’s work.

Bespoken in mass-produced quantities.

Precious in its value, not in its availability.

And, Business is booming.

You might console me.

Say, The pitchfork to the knee

Is an impersonal thing.

You might try to say: This devil, flourishes aside,

Is one that has invited you

To break bread

And bones.

To build 

Community

Then dismantle it.

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of another?

What new strings will be pulled to create a new song to scream to no one, but all will here?

You suggest:

He is a known quantity in the eternal misery of this place.

I advise you

To come on down here,

And experience it with your own skin.

Be flayed, listen to more nu-metal, get the whole package.

You might find yourself wondering:

Does the devil make a damn bit a difference?

Im not a gambling man anymore, but I think you too will be,

Just like the rest of us,

A fiend,

Clamoring For a new devil’s whims.

After all, we’ve got all the time in the world

And I think we all deserve a change around here, anyway.

You will too.

Labyrinth and Coffee

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was to play with acrostic poem form.  

Episode 1: The Origin of All Advice

A pig in hand is worth two in a bushel.

Heavy band makes light the road.

Kiss, and smell.

On your base, belongs to us.

A filament of your imagination.

Loose, lifts shrink skiffs.

Good spruce makes bad headlines.

Time cries.

Episode 2: The Greek Chorus

The Rain in Spain falls plainly on the main.

Way down on the whole.

Out on the silent planet.

Is someone in the wrong side of the bed?

This, Only?

Time healed all wombs.

Episode 3: The Re(solution)

I won’t dress up the sentiments any longer.

I see your confusion.

I am friend and not a foe.

I am but an honest passenger.

I will address this fleeting moment.

I am your guide.

Another mottled enemy in opportunity.

Only get closer to the truth.

Phase Out

Fade in

Fade out

Look between the cracks in the sofa

Take what we have left behind 

And see it if will get you anywhere.

Minotaur at the ATM

 Quick shout out to NaPoWriMo.net for featuring my poem from yesterday! Go on there and check the links on each page and the participants for some GREAT WORK!

Hell beast!
Dreaded Minotaur!
All muscle, horn, teeth.
Each bend in the form, a spring.
Poised for recoil. Sharp, precise.

TD Bank vestibule,
Wall to ceiling to floor
Unmoving, placid green.

The line for the ATM has thought better of itself.

The beast,
Reaching into its studded-leather wallet.
Inside a matching black jacket.
Ringed nose billowing smoke.
Eyes are blood
Eyes are seeking
Thumbs are fumbling.

Fingers too large for the pin pad.
Locked out of account.

A transaction is needed.
A sacrifice for sustenance.
The Beast hungers.
It did not escape the maze
It did not drink mead from the skulls of its foes.
It did not rampage the countryside by night and fill out the complicated paperwork for an account last Monday,
Only to be coddled by bank teller
Darren.

Requesting Social Security number
to quest for a solution.

The Beast will be satisfied.
It lowers its head.
Snaps its left hoof back in scraping motions.
Darren flees.
The smoke from its nose is filling the vestibule.
The beast opens its snout and lets forth
A wail of eternity’s lament.

Beast meets ATM.
A musical of electric zaps and fizzles,
Crunch of metal and hard plastic.
The scream of a toddler. Terror
or the demand for an encore?

Dollars of unfixed denominations
Falling like snow
Or ash
Or stars,
Littering the remnants of the massacred ATM,
As the Hell beast thrusts open the door. Glass splintering and clinking around it. Something has reawakened within it, and with this truth revealed,
It steps into the world to end its hunger.

Instructional Video for Your Poetry Adventure

VCR begins to hum and a light appears on the screen.

“Hello, Poet of the future. I'm NAME REDACTED, and I will be your host for today’s poetry adventure.”

Sound of glimmering horns plays.

“Before we begin, I’d like to thank our sponsor NAME REDACTED. When you need to ACTION REDACTED in a ADVERB REDACTED, look no further than NAME REDACTED.”

Sound of horns ceases. 

“Today we will write a special poem. It is about a dream you had for your adult life. If you are not yet an adult, think about something you want to do with all of your heart. You can write about that. Got it? Good, now follow my lead:

1. Go outside your home and check the mail.
2. Look at the mail.
3. Shout: ‘Alvin has never lived here!’ at a piece of misaddressed mail. It doesn't matter if the letter is properly addressed, or even if your name is Alvin. It is, as they say, part of the ritual. 
4. Begin weeping with great violence in front of your mailbox. You may consider movements such as: 
   -Raising both fists to the sky.
   -Shouting the word ‘why’ in the same direction
   -Trying to pry your mailbox away from its post to throw down to the ground and stomp it out.
   -Some combination of all three.
   Consider the choreography of combinations. Act with reverence and zeal.
5. When your neighbor comes out to check on you (perhaps mid-stomp on your now broken mail receptacle) or, if you live on a busy street, a Good Samaritan pulls over in their 2013 Hyundai Sonata (Certified Preowned and purchased at NAME REDACTED), accept their gentle, worried affirmations that are made out of a combination of genuine care and moderate sense of obligation. Yes, you are correct; they do not know you at all. Yes, you might be broken beyond repair.” Sounds of Glimmering Horns “Turn it off! Don’t hit play until I tell you to.” Vague mutterings, the music stops. Excuse me. No, that does not mean you should chase the helpful hand on your back away with primal yelps and the large rock and/or pieces of the mailbox at your feet. 
6. Wipe your tears away and mumble thank you. You will need to rehydrate for the tears that come another day.
7. Go back inside your home.
8. Stare at your surroundings. Your couch has seen better decades. The walls, however, clean like the day they were first painted. That day was not today.
9. Go to the kitchen and prepare your dinner. It is leftovers that you need to microwave. Place them in a glass container, set the container gently in the microwave, and set it for 1:23.
10. Watch your food spin around in the yellow light inside the heat bath the microwave has created. Wonder: What does food dream about before it is rendered unable to do so any longer? What if its dying wish was to move on a circular ceramic plate in dirty light? Would it have died happy?
11. Take your food out of the microwave with extended fingers. Be careful, the glass is sometimes skin-melting in temperature. It really depends on the day, though.
12. Eat your food, preferably in silence. You should take a cooking class, or buy a better class of foodstuffs, or one of those fancy food delivery services.” Camera Falls. Ominous crunching sound. “Did you even check the balance on the tripod?” Muffled sound of a voice. “I told you I wanted production OF value, not value production.” Phone rings. “It’s just a telemarketer.” Muffled sound of a voice. “No. Just keep it rolling, I know your hourly rate. Where was I?
13. Open the mail. It is filled with bills and special offers for things you are not currently interested in, nor will you be without a radical intervention in your life. Credit card interest rates sounds like a layer of hell you know you will one day visit. Oh, this one has a handwritten return address! Go ahead and open it. You’ll be dismayed to find that it is just an attempt at personalization from a contractor. 
14. Wonder: Is this all I have left?
15. Go to the living room and watch SHOW REDACTED. They have it all figured out, even if this is scripted. A life of foibles and grandeur on display in a commercial-ridden hour arc of sound and picture. This is what I’m talking about when I say ‘of value,’ NAME REDACTED. You and the swines at your billing department should take note.
16. Go to bed.
17. Repeat until you die.
18. At your eventual death, imagine the feeling of being placed on a ceramic plate. Bathed in a wash of heat, and rotated in a clockwise circle. 
19. Be consumed. Alvin, of course his name is Alvin, is hungry and has had a long day.”

VCR whirrs with vocal aggression Tape unspools begins to smoke

Glittering horns stab in and out as the picture sheets diagonally and mixes with a deep static grain.

“This has been another poetry adventure with your host STATIC INTERRUPTS…thank you and remember, we are…”

Tape ejects without prompting. It is smoking. The VCR clock blinks 12:02 AM.

Clearing

Inspiration for this take on a "Glosa" poem comes courtesy of this poem from The Germ of the Idea 

Simple movements

Darting in balletic spins 

No more wandering eyes

I am furtive, I am seeking

I am absent of intention.

Puzzle Piece lost before completion

Known and unknown

The cover of darkness.

Returned in shivers.

The temperature around this time of year

Calmly reintroducing itself

From goosebump to limbic system.

Will you remember?

Will you warm the fire for me?

I am all velcro and cheesecloth and this

Proves a poor insulator.

By now,

most movements minimized.

Ice wind/sheets of frozen rain

Pounding friend and foe alike.

It knows the other times as preamble,

What was a simple reintroduction,

Now a sharpened point:

The stiff cold of winter amplified.

Creak, snap, settle.

Shift, recompose, be still

breathe breathe pause breathe

slink back into a hole of the past

The sound of the evening has moved through you,

burrowed into the earth and moved beyond.

And now there is just waiting-

over the steady buzz of silence