Free Needs Improvement by Jon Paul Fiorentino Page A

drowns in dregs of position.
    He’s a tethering device, a wireless frail man.
    Recursive, explicit, dismissive
    of growth of reason of pleasure.
    The ailing therapist’s notes are clear –
    he’s a victim of planned adolescence.
    A kind of old early that’s best
    synthesized through tropes that sing the
    recursive, explicit, dismissive –
    one red
     Lego brick, calculator watch, burner (phone),
    commemorative 1976 Olympics tumbler, generic name tag.
    â€˜Hello, my name is
    recursion.’

TENANTS
    An odd dream
    with only characters, no self. Yes, I am
    aware it’s not interesting.
    There were three men and one
    woman in a shared apartment, itself
    an odd dream.
    Each of the tenants’ rooms was
    decorated peculiarly, contained its own narrative
    aware it’s not interesting.
    The first was draped in pure simulacra –
    the woman’s with wallpaper of a photocopied letter telling of
    an odd dream.
    In which the third was adorned with anachronistic
    Xmas and the last with just one sad halogen placed
    where it’s not interesting.
    The simulacra slayed me – here was this man
    with mad props of bed, books, art. Present in so little,
    dreaming an odd dream
    unaware it’s not interesting.

THOSE ETHOS IS SAD
    Take one and stall – you want
    an antidote to your
    customs, habits, mores.
    Love to text and other verbs
    in any order, you powder addiction –
    take one and stall all. You want
    restraint, income, imperative
    productivity, tacit ascendancy. You gut new
    customs, habits, mores.
    Have you ever delved gutter depth
    well beyond your shelter level? Dive –
    take one and stall all you want.
    Drag your way toward grown-ups –
    they can’t love you as per their antonymous
    customs, habits, mores.
    Focus. You aren’t the focus of this epistle
    you haven’t the synonymous heart to
    take one and stall. You don’t want more
    customs or habits anymore.

OPEN SOURCE
    Would like to be open heart
    ready, click-giddy, prepaid and pleased but
    haven’t the firmware
    to chance it. Never ever
    no one like that sad semaphorist who
    would like to be open heart
    willing, instead of flailing dead signals
    at newly commissioned drones that
    haven’t the firmware
    to land a line, or break a phrase, or
    unsettle a simple notion like unfair.
    Would like to be open heart
    able, bogged down in emotive
    drive, unabashed, aware, hinged, yet
    haven’t the firmware
    required for entry or trance, yes, land.
    No, there is no point. I
    would like to be open
    source firm.

CONCORDIA
    Salvation through harmony
    is a fallacy: skewed, satiric saltire, a
    royal gift
    of cigarettes and dep wine
    and the knowledge that any kind of
    salvation through harmony
    would not require you to learn
    notation but your tone-deaf
    royal gift
    grub, cross-clutch self
    would no longer stand.
    Salvation through harmony
    can only be a sick twinning –
    an abstraction, a don’t, a receipt for a
    royal gift
    unopened. What more do you need in this
    anachronic city of tracts proclaiming
    salvation through harmonious and
    royal regifting?

BYSTANDER
    Diversity our strength through
    civic shame, vigour on
    stand by.
    Toronto – bold and brackish
    monolithic, lithographic witless
    diversity our strength –
    a platitude poem etched on the QEW
    a blow torch to transport.
    Stand by
    for further failures, greater
    hit and run – our
    diversity our strength
    in number games, or
    faith in prime numbers, so proud to
    stand by
    and see real people scurry as one
    unreal person peddles responsibility – no
    diversity; our strength
    a bystander.

SALTER STREET STRIKE
    One with the strength of many
    alone in the distant North End.
    People before profit.
    It’s a seemingly endless descent.
    Marlyn’s streets do not resemble
    one with the strength of many
    morbid singularities
    entirely unaware of
    people before profit
    motive or profit projection or
    the very ones who long