"fluorescents" poems
Semester Exam
Fluorescents flicker and fall upon bowed heads
And printed letter-paper, organized
By title, paragraph, number, and line,
Interrogations set in Bookman Old Style
And then words fall, flung bravely to each sheet
As desperate, inky thoughts flailing for breath
While to battered be by split infinitives
Demanding an A, praying for a prom date.
The paper's a mess, one’s mind is in shreds
Fluorescents flicker and fall upon bowed heads
Jan 13, 2017
Jan 13, 2017 at 1:55 PM UTC
i like it ickity split
mad to exceed the world
in dark dreams ******
to evoke blood wet mouths
insertions paradise of fluorescents
in a dark aperture
her pudenda
a rolling hill
gaudy wound like a smash mouth crying
split torn tearing, pink estuary
for gluttonies' joyride
that can hardly be endured
twisted tongue spice melts and glitters raw
the sheets soaked through
matted hair in saliva
blood and eggs
the screams of monsters rapture
oh feral abandon
every thing else a toil
winged genitals
hell toys for mama
like heaven cant know
his *****
like hanging bats
Nagasaki goes off in her ***
bodies; quake in silence
the bedroom; a chaotic bathroom
tulips shrill flutter
gulp and swallow milks flame
rosy welts laughing
flushing orgasm's
shoved urns
all spilled libations
touching and *******
crimson **** runnels
in bathhouse foam
down the drain
to earthen bowels din
where the dead push up daisies
i am the worm in the fruit
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 8:09 AM UTC
With red and blue side by side
Who’s to decide my secret ballot
With respect and disparage likely never to divide
Choose or die I feel like pratchett
Natures evil so grossly present
With my eyes blinded by political fluorescents
Alone in a box, with an unchecked sheet
Now I understand... were all obsolete
Oct 10, 2012
Oct 10, 2012 at 11:44 PM UTC
This terribleness. The blur of traffic lights and puddles paints Los Angeles on my face at night. It's so hard to know who will doze in my blind spots. Sunflower seeds and ******* lining the carpet. I sat on the front porch for five hours gutting the wolves from my appendices. Usually the headaches go away with the squashing of the lights. Fluorescents are the worst, halogens second, and 60-watt 120-volt light bulb the bane of my existence. I look at my phone but I cannot summon a quirky 120 character quip. I need excedrin but all I have to grape flavored children's aspirin. I should have asked for the water. How many unfinished glasses of water have I left around this world?
Maybe Bruce and I will squash after work. I can hear his weekly catalog of two night stands with those married transient women who drive from Santa B. I hate golf, I could have made carried a career in this resentment. Maybe rolling down the window will alleviate some of this pressure. Maybe it's barometric pressure, The Baby is here in time to drag the houses out to sea. It feels like Michelangelo is carving The David in my head and it's the chiseling I've never wanted. It's Tuesday and the drugs were horrible. They killed five of them today. We wrapped their heads in blankets from the Thrifty, and had to have the interns find clothes that would fit for the Christian caskets. Two days until Giving Thanks Day.
I am wrapped in copper and stuck in amber. I am acquitted by nonsense and stipulation, sick with nausea and pushing my forehead into the steering wheel. This is all terrible. The lying I've never told myself. The people that don't even know it's lying. Her and I always seem to escape with our happiness and pleasure in tow. The odds are slim, but our clothes have never fit too tightly.
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 2:54 AM UTC
How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander
the halls of the skull with the fluorescents
softly flickering. It rests on the head
like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel
and awkward as soon as one stops to look.
That pile of fallen leaves drifting from
the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove,
to the grooves in that man's voice
as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves
of books with moonlit opossums
and Chevrolets easing down the roads
of one's bones. And now it plucks a single
tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet
*itself is a swarm, a pulse with no
indigenous form, the brain's lunar halo.*
Our compacted galaxy, its constellations
trembling like flies caught in a spider web,
until we die, and then the flies
buzz away—while another accidental
coherence counts to three to pass the time
or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine
strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped
in the brain's gray pool. How it folds itself
like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds
a fraying map from the pocket of the day.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 6:02 AM UTC
After Pamela Sutton’s “Forty”
Since when are words lost, numbers dominating?
Until today, it was vernacular, not mathematics.
All changed at 18
when numbers engulfed my life like a tsunami.
1 life.
1 drive to school, traffic on the 405, 25 minutes;
10-minute parking; first class at 8.
8 dollars per hour x 3 day work week = no shopping.
Under my parents’ life insurance,
for now.
One life.
One dream of commencement, a sea of black and gold;
students as adults, graduating, growing up,
careers: the only things that matter now.
One dream of wheeling a patient into the OR
and he grasps my hand.
One saved life.
66 specialties for a nurse.
8 stories in CHOC Hospital;
279 beds.
One goal for everyone; nurses, patients, families—
disease-free, healthy.
One hospital specializing in children;
one in Orange, thousands of facilities.
One late night in Riverside the kitchen fluorescents
slowly brings the eyes of two, one father, one daughter,
to a close.
58 notecards, handwriting messy and smudged.
12 prefixes, 37 roots, 9 suffixes.
44 years: 1 student: Dad.
The point where my future was clear.
One goal, one career,
one life.
The subtle hum of the white lights lulls us to sleep
as the room slowly darkens.
September 2013
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 1:33 AM UTC
Alex 2 breathes, stacks and unstacks papers, distantly
Alex 1, front cubicle, coughs, clicks his mouse
Eddie pulls out his drawer, pushes it back in, clicks his mouse
Alex 2, yes two Alex's, saunters up to the coffee machine
Alex 1, head down, clacking his keyboard
Mouse clicks, keyboard clicks, electricity
Monitors glow, fluorescents never flicker
Alex 1 opens a new file, two clicks of the mouse
Eddie sips his coffee, puts it down, clicks
New folder, new file, new data
Data entry, spreadsheets
Alex 1 asks did you get the email
Alex 2 has his coffee, his white shirt, under the fluorescents
Statics noise, static, mouse clicks, keyboard
Every new click, new file, new data, new folder
Data in, data out, file, click, the static electronics
Alex 2 clicks, files, new folder, new deal, new data
Eddie clears his throat, softly, the static noise, flickers,
Every new love story is a tragedy
Alex 2 opens a new folder, inputs data, spreadsheets
Numbers in, Eddie clicks his mouse twice rapidly
Stale effluvia coffee, static noise, electric light
Alex 1 sniffles, clears his throat, the clock ticks softly
Eddie opens a new file, the electric screen reflects his fixed eyes
Alex 2 sips his coffee, opens a file, clicks, keyboard clacks
Stasis, complete stasis, electricity, nodes, linear graphs
Numbers input, data, new file, file transfer
Every old tragedy is a ghost story
Alex 2 sips his coffee, breathes, clears his throat, data
Spreadsheets, monitors, electricity, static, data input, output
Every ghost story is infinite
Alex 1 gets up for a new coffee
Eddie inputs data, spreadsheet, file, new folder
Electric lights, stasis, data, file, click, file, input exp..
Oct 18, 2020
Oct 18, 2020 at 10:21 PM UTC
Dear, dear, don’t go out, dear
don’t move don’t play don’t do
stay, stay in my embrace, is my caress not enough for you?
i’ll hug your frame till the inside it flees for good
safe and warm and safe and warm
they’ve come and i’ve no way to go, stay
the door is closed, you see them drift by but don’t go, don’t go
heady bright fluorescents that drug, stay planted
with me dear, with me, don’t go
hold me back, closer, i’ll drop a kiss on your blank forehead
dear i love you, i love you, i love you
live thunderclouds in the sky, killing rain solidified underneath
they play haunting un-music, the silence absolute
and dear stop asking questions,
don’t talk about them don’t break under curiosity, stay still, stay silent
stay here in my embrace and let us comfort each other
dear shh, no don’t, don’t talk, because they’ll know
they’ll know they’ll know they know
dear you left me, i told you not
to go but you went through the door like a storm
and you closed it; the room is electricity as
i watch you move; cobbled streets
and then you are there in front and i wasn’t enough as
they reach tendrils to your cheeks and whisper the universe
you laugh and tessellate
and then you fall and crash and dissolve
dear i am alone
i still see you out there sometimes, purple and black
and blue where they loved you
a delicacy; escargot for the new reign
of apathetic gods who love and then forget and
dear, dear the house creaks where they brush by and i
miss those questions, wind in my ears
not silent prairie of fear and loss and grief
dear i love you
dear i am not enough
dear i am sorry
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 2:45 AM UTC
Over the heads of 3am stoplight dancers
through the viney brick pub where Verily
bleaches the bar-tops by beersign fluorescents,
past the last streetlight to blink off where Hope
is marching brisk-ly through the muddy dark,
under the first confused crimson leaf to fall of autumn
with not an eye to see,
upon the sill where Early leans/
checks the time and sighs smoke behind the window,
through the Oaken Chapel doors where young Clöse
writes his first sermon and cries,
out in the alfalfa field where the fireflies whish
and Sol says goodbye to them again
hoping one day they’d take him too.
Beyond the yellow hill
Where the homeless sleep alone,
Illumination strikes the lens white
And they are new.
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 6:43 PM UTC
You know,
Maybe,
It’s just me but I guess I just find it
Funny
That people say it’s girls who have loose lips
When the boys at this table have mouths
Like open caves
With stalagmite teeth
Bats come flying out
I guess,
Maybe,
It’s just my magic trick,
The way I become invisible
When the boys
Sit down for dinner
And they open up their backpacks
And their gym bags
And pull out butcher knives
That shine like brand new quarters
In the cafeteria fluorescents
I’m not sure,
But maybe
The churning of my stomach
Is a sign
That there’s sharks
In these waters
I feel my wet socks in my wet shoes as I jiggle my knee
And watch the boys
With their knives
Start chopping up girls on the plastic top table
They cut slices off of Julia
and Megan
And Kara
and lob them across the table
to their friends
Just Like the men at
Pike Place Fish Market
Fling whole salmon
Into each other’s gloved hands
I saw them do it
When I went to Seattle once.
I feel water climbing up my legs.
I see a shark fin.
Did I blush red?
Maybe,
When the boy next to me catches
Katie’s legs
In his calloused hands
And laughs a laugh that sounds like
An out of tune violin
They’re all laughing now,
Like car horns and fire alarms
Laughing about
Katie’s legs
And Kara’s ***
And Megan’s hips
And Julia’s ****
It’s the ugliest orchestra I’ve ever heard
And perhaps,
Maybe,
I’m the only one who’s noticed,
But we’re not in the cafeteria anymore
We’re right there
In that room
In that bed
In that moment
With
JuliaMeganKaraKatie
And I don’t want to be there.
And I know,
For sure,
No maybes,
That If JuliaMeganKaraKatie knew
We were all here too
In her room
In her bed
In her
That she’d cry enough saltwater
To flood the whole earth
And wash it clean.
We leave the table
Bones on the floor
Shark boys clean their teeth with toothpicks
My clothes are soaked
All the way up to my neck.
-I never go in the ocean, I’ve seen the sharks when they frenzy.
Dec 20, 2018
Dec 20, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC
It's a bit past midnight -
So light under these fluorescents, but so dark in my mind.
On a couch in college, I am reeking of ****** deeds earlier, -
and of avoidance too.
Eyes drooping to a standard hibernation position, I try to sit up to let my hands finish these questions on the latest Middle Eastern borders.
Yet, still there is left a dent in my heart for all the **** that happened in the past week.
A sociopath with morals.
A ********* wanting to reconnect.
A friend with overbearing qualities.
A mother dying to love me.
An idea with no promise.
A bucket of philosophy.
I hope I'm not the only one coming up with ideas of how to escape.
Feb 1, 2013
Feb 1, 2013 at 12:16 AM UTC
Cloud-light fluorescents,
And sunscreen-scented, dust-polluted air,
Bones protruding through the skin,
Blue plastered on every surface,
Of every doe-eyed skeleton,
Wrapped up in white ribbon,
That burns holes in their spines
Feb 28, 2012
Feb 28, 2012 at 2:29 AM UTC
*they're staying up all night
ripping their skin away under
fluorescents
trying to
make their
words more
jagged*
May 1, 2017
May 1, 2017 at 4:24 PM UTC
You
Freckles That Are Scattered Like Stars
Ancient Ruins
Slow-Healing Wounds
You
Lonely Nighttime
Flowers That Weren’t Forced To Bloom
Flickering Fluorescents
You
Inferno Eyes
Gray Sunsets
Silent Admiration
You
Glow-In-The-Dark Passion
The Color Of Cigarette Smoke
Voices Of The Past
You
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 6:00 PM UTC
there's a strange and beautiful light in the building this morning
as i walk down the hall lined with empty offices all dark
on my merry way to my morning coffee
it's dark and storming outside
sweet Summer rain
heavy dark, almost night
and that odd, grey-cast half-light
that is not quite shadow but neither true illumination
filters in through the tinted office windows
into the hall
into my eyes
blending on the way with the white bright from buzzing fluorescents
that draw a dotted line down the halls' ceilings
so that the colors from within and the colors from without
merge
to form a singularly beautiful light that glows in the air
only on days like this
dark rain
morning sky
fluorescent light
off-white walls
and i'm suddenly lost in that ethereal glow
drawn back in time to a memory i had forgotten when i was still young
of the time when i had first learned to love this light
though i didn't know it then
and couldn't have put it to words even so
i was still only learning how to read
and the school day still included a time specifically for "napping"
but i knew that rainy days were different, somehow special
and not only because we would have recess in the gym
but because everything about this strange new world that i was shuttled off to every morning
Looked Different
on these dark rainy days
everything glowed in a strange way
and it wasn't like that when the sun was shining bright through the windows
and most days were sunny
it was only sometimes, only in the once-in-a-while
that the sun would hide behind the darkness
and the wet would come pouring down on us
and the class-room would glow
and i would feel the strangeness of that rare and special light inside of me
my tummy would roll and quiver all day in anticipation of
nothing in particular
my young body would vibrate to match the frequency of the fluorescence humming above me
overwhelmed with exuberant expectation
i couldn't have described it, couldn't have said what it was
i was still only learning to speak
but i knew something was different in my world
i knew it was rare
i knew that it did something to me
i knew that i liked it
and i came to realize that is what the word "beauty" meant
and that is where "love" came from
and though i didn't know it then
couldn't have known it then
now i realize
i've chased that strange and beautiful light
every day since
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 5:17 PM UTC
lovely ladies bleeding
sad rhythms fast times
on the dance floor
blind
by shakes & strange
oozy
drinks that drip trip slow
& melody
& beats
of bad boys
disko
mama is dead
she died on
the
dance floor
big mama is
dead
she was queen
in her
head
but the drugs
told her that
& now the sirens
buzzard
the fluorescents trash on
people fly from windows
fly home.
to beat
the wrap
until next time
which is already tonight
Jan 6, 2010
Jan 6, 2010 at 7:46 AM UTC
You glanced at me with wonder, curiosity
There was a look in your eyes that I've seen a few times in others
When they've looked at me
I saw a gleam in your eyes that proved my prayers weren't wasted
At least not yet
But it could have been only the fluorescents
Jun 23, 2013
Jun 23, 2013 at 4:01 PM UTC
A Dairy Queen Waitress in Tuscany
Eat, drink, pray, love, hamburger, shake, and fries
Boyfriend, baby, trailer park, sad tired eyes
Creepy men, cranky boss, and ice-cream floats
A wheezing Honda with overdue notes
Cinder-blocks, fluorescents, grilled cheese to go
No child-support this month, another cup of joe
Ten-year-reunion, can’t go, how time flew
Two shifts that day, the trailer rent is due
Baby at Mama’s, boyfriend still in bed
He’ll look for work tomorrow, that’s what he said
“Order up!” the fry cook hollers, and she
Dreams of a someday-summer in Tuscany
May 31, 2017
May 31, 2017 at 4:10 PM UTC
I’m back in a hole.
I can’t feel myself,
my thoughts are lost.
The fluorescents of the city shine so bright because they **** the inner light from each soul wandering through it's streets.
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 11:03 AM UTC
I am the rat that escaped from all of these
Bottled diseases. The flash eating organisms that have wasted the others.
But I was unable to escape the memories, the scars,
And the aftermath. I still have the sickness; the antibiotic did not complete
It's process of healing. The caress of chemicals
Inside of my bloodstream did not satisfy the lust for life I had always suffered through.
Never have I seen a light other than the fluorescents hanging above the steel table
As they dissected my friends. They only ones I have ever seen alive.
The factory settings of their decomposition have been restarted and they erode as if
Made of dust. They basically are at this point.
The rustling of papers sickens me, recording everything the scientists see; they study us
Under a microscope. They smell of rust and sawdust, old and crippled. Cruel.
They keep us in glass boxes and torture us with everything we fear.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 9:47 AM UTC
what the label doesn’t mention is that
with rouge comes bone-white knuckles and a strangled reality:
saran-wrap and powdered lemonade,
and bleach white soles shining through closed blinds
and closed doors that meant nothing until we begged of the key
and found the rooms to be empty--lit by only the fluorescents
and also the ceilings with the stars which I know now are made of plastic
dreams that dangle above
too many heads who have not shaken,
too many fingers glued together,
too many arms anchored
by all the silly things i should’ve buried along with
my listless apathy.
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 9:52 PM UTC
the walls are white
it's cold
I thought the sheer amount of people
would keep this warm,
but no one is really here
is it an asylum?
does being insensitive
not drive you insane
is it a prison?
the rows are straight
all surfaces are hard
the clocks tick
the bells are deafening
the fluorescents are blinding
immersing into the masses
another brick in the wall
education, the most powerful tool
traded for memorization and regurgitation
cookie cutter people
tossed into the world
told to be innovative
think outside of the box
we put you in
the rows we sat you in
the white walls we trapped you in
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 12:31 PM UTC
faces buried deep beneath the fluorescents just barely listening to the wires falling from their
brains with mundane expressions smeared instinctively across the ridges on their skulls and their hands
fiddling rigidly with the space between their thumbs and I wonder if they ever miss their
stops?
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 11:21 AM UTC
Closed and opened
Enter, Exit
The yesterdays
Of fluorescents
Passing headlights
Advertisements
To a stranger
(Flash and heading)
Conscious flutter
While time doubles
Jan 26, 2019
Jan 26, 2019 at 5:09 AM UTC