"plexiglass" poems
Mario hits it with the sounds
of bodies hitting plexiglass.
My horses hit it without a sound. They want to escape it.
And I am trying to drive this dune buggy
off this cliff, but the clipping is strong here.
In Pac-Man, the tunnels were circular. I don’t know
if people realized that they were trapped in a sphere.
In Asteroids when you get to the edge of the universe,
you begin again.
And that Snake. His body could stretch all over his world
looping, but he could never eat his tail.
If all your electrons were in the right place, and all the wall’s
electrons were in the right place. You could feasibly walk through
the wall.
What would you do while in the wall? Think. Fear.
The superposition could rip your body into ragdoll parts.
When I turned clipping off, I expected the freedom to walk through
the wall and suddenly the floor
fell out from under me.
Every time I respawn I feel like my inventory is heavier,
and my flamethrower burns colder.
Jul 21, 2011
Jul 21, 2011 at 7:08 PM UTC
The attendees are told, in a manner befitting a high mass
You have been finally set free,
(Although, in truth, free is a very large and entirely vague word),
And the message is sent forth from all comers in all corners:
Vendor and visionary alike,
German socialists who left university to ride boats for Greenpeace,
First lieutenants doing their level best
To appear at ease in civilian polos and khakis,
But no matter the vessel,
The message is still the same.
The tyranny of cables and storage space is dead,
It is all but shouted from the lecterns,
(Although it is noted, in small print and sotto voce
That there are certain requirements
In terms of hardware and licensing)
And it is stated by Those Who Know
In tones which neither brook nor invite contradiction,
That they have surmounted, all Hadrian-like,
The alpine divide separating mere data and magic.
Two or three blocks down the street from the convention center,
In a narrow storefront housing an exhibition of ether-only comics
Which have broken the nettling constraints
Of editors and syndication,
There sits, under a somewhat opaque
And slightly scratched piece of plexiglass,
A yellowing comic strip of uncertain vintage,
In which a frowzy cat,
Free of the constraints of panels, gender, and standard grammar,
Is the recipient of a mouse-tossed brick
Whose flight, unfettered by physics, probablility, indeed time itself
Ends striking its mark right between the x’s of the eyes
The projectile itself an inexplicable alchemy
Of confusion, mirth, frustration
And the impossibility of an undeniably pure love.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 9:29 AM UTC
they let their sticky humid hands
hold my glitching hologram body
against the scratchy playhouse
walls and drag their clammy
claws where no child should
think to rub all the while
whispering into my vacant ears
how they would beat me and
bite me and cut me and kick me
if anyone were to ever find out
our little game as tapeworm
tears sludged from my sickly
sweet rotting eyesockets and
down my shiny shaking dust
stained cheeks silently over my
cold and closing throat and
when my dad finally ripped the
splintering wooden door across
the sandy shifting floor i was so
pale pink blue i could have been
six hours dead save for my
fracturing porcelain and
plexiglass heart destructive and
bashing and shattering itself
through my frail and brittle
crumbling ribcage whispering to
me how badly my dad would
scream at me for the way we
were playing
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 11:08 PM UTC
at standard cruising altitude
sipping my digestive
after a quite decent hot lunch
on the flight from Vienna to Athens
I gaze through the scratched
double plexiglass bulleye
shielding me from the outside world
and try to pierce the blinding haze
of a lazy spring afternoon
hiding from me
the people shot by snipers
the shelling of suburbs
the burning houses
the crowded hospitals
of Sarajevo, Gorazde, Mostar, Zadar ...
suspended in diffuse light
all I can see is
the silhouette of an occasional
snow-capped mountain range
there is no sign
of human suffering
May 1992
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 3:47 PM UTC
You are a sprawling backyard
and I am a toddler
and I just learned how to run
You are a four inch thick piece of plexiglass
and I am a wild animal trapped behind you.
You are a seventeenth century novel
and I am not making sense.
Oct 27, 2011
Oct 27, 2011 at 7:48 PM UTC
****** again,
Post-hasted doubting and raving,
Confused why I torture myself so –
Truer words never spoken as lies,
The dull, pumpkin-glow of the broken lamp casting ghosts,
Filling my visions with demons I’d thought excised.
****** again,
Alone in its tendrils again,
I travel –
Travel through ideas shattered and plexiglass melting,
Singing and burning as it covers my senses like a myelin sheath,
Conducting protons-only,
But my brain is slow and the receptors dull,
And the raw input manifests only as trails of spirits.
****** again,
The madness thick as bog sludge,
Stinking of scorched sulfur,
It kicks corroded and dead gears into spin,
Generating false ideas and wild delusions
That I know aren’t real but –
Nothing else here is, either, especially not you,
Disembodied you, listener.
****** again,
But not alone this time no,
Her idea ghosting simulacra,
Taunting me with her shortcomings and spitting like venom
Those thousands of details I’d always hated while
Refusing acknowledgment, but
Like a brick golem she’s got a core,
A conduit of last-year’s hopes, and I flee, panicked –
****** again,
The clouds high above the ruined October grass,
Laughing like spaceships, and returning me to boyhood fancy:
I’ll never be an astronaut.
Jul 4, 2010
Jul 4, 2010 at 12:25 PM UTC
She is the epitome of awesome, the essence of beauty
the look in her eyes makes me feel alive
She is different, and independent
She has her good and her bad, and even her sad
She's not perfect but that's alright i think that's what makes it right
but alas she is surrounded by plexiglass
and I cannot get through what else is there to do
besides Give up
Oct 23, 2012
Oct 23, 2012 at 5:54 PM UTC
The sunflower dreams disintegrate, leaving dust. I see you there through the plexiglass wall, and wonder if you can see me too. The wax drips from the tip of the candle. Five spots, six-seven. Nine. I burn for you. The red runs crimson down my thigh. I reach for you through my condemned klonopin haze. Once again, I was too weak for you. The pressure builds, forming cracks in my psyche, making me wonder who I am or where I’m going.
Blank spaces. The canvas between white and black, the words that don’t fill the spaces in between I love you. And I don’t know what you want me to do, so I sit outside and chain smoke and listen to the birds who are confused, because it’s raining. I’m sick, you say, as if that straightens out the jumble in my mind. We’re solving the world’s problems one puff of nicotine at a time.
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
My fingernails crave your skin
Hard red assassins
My fingernails sweep your skin
Texturizing our love
In every corner of your body
Your breath is twitching
Melodiously
You fill with air
Speak to me in tongues
On a plate like a breaded chicken breast
Marinating in a fine Italian wine and Balsamic Vinaigrette
Sauce craving an open flame
Homemade.
I'm falling asleep
I'm falling asleep
To the digging of a Disco party on a late
Friday night in yellow polyester baby blue You forgot
To pick me up, again but it's okay 'cause I'm
Stayin' Alive.
In a plexiglass life.
See right through it, it's translucent
Then never look at me again.
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 1:02 AM UTC
Like a 21st century Snow White in her crystal casket,
You can find me in the frozen aisle, lying on a bed of ice cream tubs and chicken kievs,
Unconcious.
Slide the plexiglass door open,
Pick me up.
Do not worry if your freezer looks too small,
I can bend, I can fold.
You can consume me tonight, tomorrow, next week, six months from now and I won't expire.
It doesn't take too much to cook me,
Yet it shows you haven't done enough cooking in your life to know
That once meat is defrosted, you can't freeze it again and expect it to taste good.
Jul 30, 2021
Jul 30, 2021 at 3:53 PM UTC
He had no idea if he would...
If he could actually do it...
When the time came,
When his sergeant gave the nod,
Let slip the dogs of war,
Unleash the copper bees,
Send missiles hurtling up or down
At targets moving now...
On men who may be wondering
If they could fire the same,
When the time came....
"Steady, men!"
"On my command."
He lay there,
On a roof,
In a ditch,
On an open field,
Crouched inside a turret,
Bellied down in a plexiglass ball,
Hurtled above a world mostly covered in cloud,
Standing far below the earth in silo'd steel,
Seeing still, through satellite eyes....
Peered into the mil dot scope,
Ignored the cross
To see through the center,
Found the circled aperture,
Punched coordinates into a seeing machine,
Saw green circles on the screen...
Aligned the circles....
Tried to breathe.
So that was how it was
For farm boys, Mowers of hay,
Grocers' sons, smashers of ants,
Carpenters, hammerers of nails,
And bakers' boys, cutters of bread,
Just in from shooting marbles and BB guns,
Transported into war,
Fed soldiers' ration:
meat and bread and beans,
Five cigarettes apiece in boxed MREs,
Sent off to **** and to be killed
With mothers' tears still fresh upon their cheeks,
With lovers' ache still glowing embered heat.
Training fresh,
Waiting command
To fire only when the order came...
To remain firing til the order came...
To hold the breath and squeeze...
To hold the sight just so...
To squeeze...
And to reload
Keeping head low,
Eyes on target...
To ignore all but the sergeant's yell,
To think of squeezing on new targets,
To wait awhile to process coming hell....
And when the time came,
He squeezed,
Felt the sudden life,
Heard little but the sound of
Clean ejection ...
Saw his bullet,
Saw his missile,
Saw his target meet,
And in the meeting,
Red,
And in the meeting ,
Fire and smoke,
And in the meeting
Knew that he could do
What soldiers do.
This boy
Now cutting hay,
Now stomping ants,
Hammering nails,
Cutting loaves of cooling bread...
Caught in the maelstrom of war
With no moment left but now,
No possible tomorrow...
Only targets,
Only targeted
In ferocious winds
Of battle.
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 21, 2014 at 6:52 AM UTC
I saw a man once,
walking slowly.
and
once behind the plexiglass wall of a bus stop overhang
I saw an advertisement that read
BLONDE IS GOD
and the model was thin- and her skin was enhanced by zeros and ones-
and I was entranced by her.
and she was GOd
and she was made to be beautiful.
and she was made out of beautiful.
and then, on my way home I passed by the place again and her picture was gone
and instead was the image of a raven haired beauty-
***** and lustsome with bedroom eyes
and she looked at me and said,
I AM EVERYTHING
and smiled, adding bluntly,
BUY MY BODY AND DRINK MY BLOOD.
I gazed upon her airbrushed ******* and breathed,
No,
I refuse you,
BLONDE IS GOD
and bleach touch-up foam, Our Savior.
and *** is God
and the Natick Mall is my favorite place to be
and I love you.
and I am i
and barely . -
and
YOU ARE EVERYTHING
and I will always adore you.
and
everything i have ever done, becomes quantified in this, tell me how to be beautiful- tell me how to be worthless- tell me-
once, behind the plexiglass wall of a bus stop overhang
I saw an advertisement that read
BLONDE IS GOD
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012 at 2:40 PM UTC
Somedays I feel like I’m
Huddled in a corner
staring wide-eyed
At the world passing by
watching me through
Plexiglass walls
and spotlights blaring down
all hours of the day and night
all I have ever wanted was to be natural
An apostle of instinct
Fighting back using the laws
of claw, and gnashing fangs
But instead
I’m met with cattle prods, and steel chains
I’ve learned that the world just doesn’t play fair
I’ve learned that love and loss come with the same price tag
You lose parts of yourself either way
So many people want to take others
out of their habitat
And put them on display
I have spent far too many days
in other people’s possession
and now I am finally breaking free
I just need
Someone
That will hold me loosely
Someone
Who will let me live free
Someone
Who can love me
For being wild
May 4, 2019
May 4, 2019 at 7:02 PM UTC
He hoarded fingernails he bit off or found
in the curtain-less showers in a pile in his cell,
like a pixie collecting shrunken satyr horns.
He ate only the cheese at lunch and pulled
off the white fat bologna and let it sweat
in the sink.
His markhor beard held dead skin and peanut butter
clumps and it refused to grow anymore.
Behind the rosewood door
he stood on the steel toilet and stared into
the sun-glow bulb dimmed behind plexiglass.
When he was tired he slept under the bunk
like a frightened child.
He was allowed an hour a day
to stretch his harpy legs,
he’d hop to the phone and talk
to the dial tone like it were a confessional
to John Paul II,
“God doesn’t know, God never knew”.
I found him on a Tuesday afternoon
after lunch cleanup hanging by a shoelace
from his light fixture,
curved like a sunflower.
I cut the stem from the pseudanthium
and it wilted into my arms.
His neck looked like a corseted waist,
and when I loosened the shoelace
his dry mouth opened and he coughed bleu cheese
returning life into my face.
His teary mud colored eyes rolled forward and we stared into
each others as I cradled him like a baby.
He later told John Paul he wanted to quiet the voices.
In ’97 he took his ***** girlfriend’s crying three
month old and quieted him by crushing his
skull in a dresser drawer.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 7:45 PM UTC
Well organized and tidy
Murals, collages, trophies, crafts
Feelings, emotions, blood, sweat, and tears all captured , saved and put on display
Studiedly I walk station to station in amazement
Recalling and recollecting, but hesitant to reminisce on the bliss and carefulness that's swept and swift
Taken out of humanity to share, and placed into a strategy for only eyes to stare
So the only way that we can become engaged is on field trips or when we vacate?
Hands off the glass , and please no pictures sir!!!
Is the blockade
Well may I at least purchase a souvenir?
But I Thought love didn't cost a thing?
I also thought love was suppose to be balled into my heart , not placed onto the wall for art.
This museum has artifacts that date back; way back , prior to the common era in fact
Love was used all over the world, evidently it didn't discriminate , but it separate ones from others, sometimes it hesitates because of it's density , because if no reciprocity then the love become logically lessened
Love taught a lot of lessons , and raised a lot of personal questions
Hearteologists seems to have it all figured out
They say centuries ago love evolved with a color , a shape, a phrase , and a holiday.
An image
More so an image and no longer a feeling
The image that allowed Hearteologists to dig up, find and study any evidence , empires, households... the culture of love
The past half of a century the television developed and became everything except supplementary
So as viewers look at the screen they witness love as only being inside the characters jeans
When really love is hereditary, a trait that we all carry in our genes from the first beings
Now to be placed on the wall, behind plexiglass
Only to be put into perspective from 10am. until 6pm.
Mondays through Saturdays
As for the human race
You, I and true love can never link
Love is in a museum because love is extinct
Apr 20, 2013
Apr 20, 2013 at 4:30 PM UTC
It sticks to the back of my throat
like peanut butter
It sits back there like a frog
and I croak croak croak,
but it never escapes my quivering lips
It never leaves me
It never makes itself known
But it hopes like every little insecurity I've ever owned
that you will see it one day
accept it one day
read bedtime stories to it
feed it food from your dinner table
cloth it as it wants to be clothed
support it like you are the keystone
to my door
to the world, I deserve to belong in
yet I still only manage to look at it
from the blurry red plexiglass windows
I hear voices from beyond it
Be brave.
Be brave.
It gets better
little one.
But when I look out that window
I hear the depressions and suppressions of a people
gunshots and violence
and somewhere off in the distance
I hear the singing laughter and joy
Be brave
Be brave
little one
but they are as far as my voice is trapped and away from me
and as tangible as the frog in my throat
Stuck in Pandora's box
with a million others just like me.
Aug 29, 2018
Aug 29, 2018 at 10:50 PM UTC
Wipe my pollen dust
From your lavender scented
Christ ****** fingers
Milk knuckles shredding
My wings
Like sunburned bible pages
Sighing much like an owl
At 2PM
Or the honey badger
Chewing frozen mice
Behind plexiglass
My heart is a massive
Black bull
Pacing the ring
Always waiting for the sword
Ah! Not anymore!
I am bored of the crawling clocks
I am bored of your necessary
Torture
Today i will call in sick
Burn my wallet
And dance naked
Until moon drown
Im taking my bright orange
Black striped
Silk dotted
Heart back
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 8:58 AM UTC
You are not God but play Him so well
I'll be Jesus if it suits your will
You sacrifice me to save my people
You're only saving your personal steeple
I'll die on a cross for you
You won't lift a nail
But if you are not God, then who?
Your mission will surely fail
As I thought to myself
In her silver chariot
Gazing at the sun between the giants
I recall saying, “I am free from God.”
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
grotesque characters smash themselves against Plexiglass windows
the sheer mass bowing and distorting the transparent protector
squeezing into the darkened faux-cave for a glimpse
of the last starfish in the Pacific –
droopy fingers cling desperately to transplanted basalt
slow death from radiation poisoning
the future picture for all of mankind
little Cindy sheds a tear as discolored water flows, unfiltered
saline ratio destroyed by the introduction or pesticides
and straight petroleum
reflective properties shifting the absorption rate
oceanic temperature altered
the tree so memorizing
no one notices the inferno on the ridgeline –
facilitating the fall, politicians look to tax carbon emissions
pretending to understand
while Jupiter develops another eye
and the storms on Venus have gained intensity at a steady rate for 25 years
blaming the diesel SUV, sun worshipers get skin cancer
and ulcers –
unrepentant hordes of sheeple march through drive-throughs
signing up for the slaughter
the gods of old are coming home
and blood sacrifice is all they accept –
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 12:28 PM UTC
You showed me your private-joy,
your clear blue-plexiglass,
battery-powered,
vibrational-toy
& I became enthusiastic
with how skillfully
you played with it,
moved to the buzzing noises
with your own sweet sounds.
Your sighs were fantastic darling,
they put me in a finer state,
a beautiful romantic mood
to make love.
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 5:00 AM UTC
we went to hiroshima
to look at salvaged pieces
of mangled corpses,
twisted limbs
that were once controlled
by human brains
we lowered our heavy heads
and squinted our blood shot eyes
to read the time frozen on
the wristwatch of a
severed arm,
10:18
it was 10:18 twice today,
it will be 10:18 twice tomorrow
and my arm is in its socket now
but when will my watch stop ticking?
when will my wrist disintegrate
so much that the tan leather strap
will cease to be strapped to anything at all?
as if my senses have been
heightened in this instant
i can hear the faint
whisper from my arm,
"tick, tock, tick, tock"
i am older with every slight
motion of each narrow hand
consistently aging,
rhythmic like perfect breathing,
always dying,
always dying
there is no space
that time doesn't occupy
but we went to hiroshima
to look at salvaged pieces
of mangled corpses,
twisted limbs
that were once controlled
by human brains
and we were comforted,
all gathered between museum walls
to see the depth of our mortality,
without really having to feel it
here,
we were safe,
at least we pretended to be
because here,
we were looking at death
encased in glass,
death right beside
a hanging sign that read
"do not touch glass"
in red ink
here,
we could see death
but we couldn't get too close
and to us that meant
death can see us
but it couldn't get too close
so we stood before
every expression
of frozen time,
the end of time,
the continuation of time,
with this plexiglass shield
that we thought was immortality,
drunk on this illusion
that we were somehow
being protected from our own
inevitable doom
by some material
produced by men in a factory,
and held down by two screws
on either side
every time we inhale,
every time we exhale
the unpredictable moments
that cradle our glass lives,
while reaching over
glistening concrete
where we can turn into
a heaping pile of blood
and sharp edges,
losen their grip
every single time
we inhale,
every single time
we exhale
we can pretend
that air is endless,
and i guess it is
but individually
it can't be
individually,
air is limited
each one of us
are only allowed so much,
some of us less than others,
but for all of us the same rule applies,
each breath is spent,
never lended
each breath
is a breath we will not
be reimbursed for
so,
we pay to
scrunch our noses
up like sleeping bags
and open our eyes wide like
neglected *** holes,
at the sight of
time all caged up
cause we need to
believe we have a say
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 12:56 AM UTC
I see my life through plexiglass
Trying to bulletproof the past,
Nostalgia? No, but I recall
That rising up precedes the fall.
But the films I watch inside my mind
Are missing parts I cannot find
So I fill the blanks with what I see,
I fill it up with what I need.
Now is it truth, or is it lie?
I like to think that I am right,
But I’m not the well-oiled machine
I used to think I used to be.
Jun 13, 2024
Jun 13, 2024 at 8:47 PM UTC
we call these stars.
white strips of clarity bursting through pinpricks
spotlights through feather falling dandruff
thunder buckles the plexiglass sheet with it's shoulder
crackles little eggshell triangles past the dancing dandruff
pale veins spread like ink in fabric
thin burnt parchment
holding back thudding pulses from the Amniotic sun
We call this a sunrise
when the Sun hurls the final flaming shoulder into day.
Not the giggling gums of a baby faced Tele-tubby sun
not the serenade of "goodnight moon, and goodnight you"
My sunrise is A dragon-glass egg,
pulsing to the drumbeat of a feathered heart
A tea-light spider spinning webs into an inferno shoulder
flexing flamesilk muscles through each pinprick star
lamp posts hum a prismatic prayer
Grassy fields catch light with their fireflies
old country porch lights attract moths
dust hung in stasis
starts feather falling when light catches
tubes of Mercury fashioned into bar-signs
flicker as ghosts hum on the gas
poets flick cigarette ashes
call in stardust for the wind to carry
up
to Gatsby it up in the pin ******
there is nothing more beautiful and warm
then stardust Dancing rich in the suns desperate pinpricks
Watching the Debut of struggling birth
throwing itself against confinement
shedding light, on the tiniest flurry of dandruff
before filling each vein of the broken sky with fire.
I love to watch gasoline soaked parchment
curl in on itself like an old handwritten letter.
I call this the night sky.
Catch the falling ashes on my tongue like snowflakes.
If I swallow enough of them
a tiny pheonix fire in my belly can hurl it's little shoulder against my rib cage.
Pounding until it bursts out through all these pinpricks.
I will call out to the mothsdust, dandruff and fireflies
invite them to dance in the combustion.
If I am anything like a starlit night.
I will buckle before I burst
Thunderclap an invitation
Shatter the street lamps and mercury tubes
with the winding bass drop.
direct the audiences attention to dust hung gentle in a cold still sky.
feather falling in silence
A blossoming caged sun.
No one expects a gentle sunrise
Jan 2, 2018
Jan 2, 2018 at 2:59 AM UTC
The starlings rising from the fields,
white sky and bare trees that are almost purple
from a distance.
A certain tint in the light,
sad in the way a happy memory
can be sad.
Have I fed your ghost because
it makes me feel deep and depleted,
the way starlings and November
fields make me feel?
A peek at the mystery;
alive in that melancholy.
Are things that are beautiful to me
always sad?
Is that why I built a museum for my
love of you?
Framed my evidence in gold
and set the times we’ve touched
under plexiglass?
A personal history,
a relic to marvel.
In museums you can live in your head.
Love is easy because
symbols mean something.
I press my lips to the print of yours
on the glass you left at my table,
while my husband sits in the other room.
Birds rise from the fields,
my soul feels far away.
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 3:17 PM UTC