"serif" poems
I WANT TO SCREAM AT
YOUR FACE, THE SERIF SHARPNESS
OF WORDS DRAWING blood.
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 5:46 AM UTC
without you, i am sans serif –
unfinished still, a half-etched glyph.
you are my pitch; i write for this –
each arc and shoulder loops and dips
towards the softest landing of your lips.
Aug 3, 2011
Aug 3, 2011 at 7:27 PM UTC
*Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is
as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip
of my words. My language trembles with desire.
-Roland Barthes*
My language is a skin I have outgrown.
It sloughs off in flakes,
leaving letters or the occasional
ill-suited, illegible word
trailing behind me.
I pick at adverbs and articles
hanging from my fingertips;
This morning I pulled a whole phrase
off my arm like a sunburn.
My language, once alight,
now settles like cinders
on the ground,
around the shower drain,
upon my sheets;
My language no longer serves me.
Peel my vocabulary off my back,
tear my diction from my shoulders,
and my syntax from my chest;
Scratch the punctuation off my face—
my lips are chapped with parentheses.
Tomorrow I will have shed my language—
Unbound from an ill-fitting lexicon—
coughed the alphabet from my lungs
and exhaled the last serif
like cigarette smoke
to find the world new,
uncontained and undefined.
Apr 7, 2011
Apr 7, 2011 at 4:15 AM UTC
She is the typesetter’s “e”
The once-rounded uncial script,
Unbroken like the solemn vow of a monk,
His whisper, a shepherd of words under the cowl,
Murmurations of the Holy Mother to the lambswool shroud of candlelight.
His candle-flock of dreams to some hill of penitent towers, war-cowed
And broken open like faith-unfended helmets, littering the ground,
With their unspeaking tassels in babbling pagan sound of wind,
That hill too, once-rounded bare under the glittering apostles of twilight.
In the abbeywork of air, calligraphy was a cipher of souls,
He unwrested demons from an inkwell of sunsets, smothered them in blotting paper,
Freed the incarnate whole to the book of hours, nib-pointed in quills and illuminated in gold,
Line by line, in Carolingian winding sheets, he returned the misshapen to the fold,
To the carpet page of home and the warm ligatures of their waiting women.
So the shutters of the heavenly house could blow light in slanted rays to a wilderness in storm.
But he never tamed the aero-elongated, descender of Troy in a “t,”
He never knew the unholiness of the underscore or fonts as ******
Or the world unwilling to know itself in serif robes of ancient lore.
His life was a simple rounded-out syllable of one man,
Left in the muddied, unintelligible text of faith and war.
She is the typesetter’s “e” and now belongs to any hand.
Jul 6, 2019
Jul 6, 2019 at 9:21 PM UTC
You can control love,
as you type.
You can change the style,
which evokes feeling.
Script — curvy lines,
fitting for passion.
Sans Serif — Strong,
but friendly.
Grunge — Anger or,
vengeful.
Serif — Elegant,
and structured.
This four letter word —
is a shapeshifter.
Shifting styles, weights and
kerning on a whim.
You can control love,
highlight and change it.
Again.
But, love is fluid,
as fonts are to typographers,
as words are to poets.
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 9:48 AM UTC
The boys, the boys, they can't help but stare at her
as she's talking, she's walking in iambic pentameter
She breathes in italics
Words fall from her lips
San-serif movements
Punctuate her hips
She writes, she paints, her dreams soak the paper
such beauty, such beauty, my willpower waivers
Her eyes tell a story
in which I want to belong
Only she knows the ending
as she has all along
I wish, I want, a new story to start
with her, with her, with all of my heart
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 8:05 PM UTC
this is my art
i present it to you all
SANS SERIF
clearly stating the emotions
hidden under layers
a metaphor
a simile
idiom
alliteration
words thatteachers throw atme to absorblike a sponge
“it’s ur art¡”
“ur own «Iîn†érP®´e´†å†iøñN« “
i like art
it fills the holes that were once numb with feeling.
A
R
T
T
R
A
look at this creation.
all over the place.
i like crying to kahlids saved
i like laughing to jon hughes ferris buellers day off
i like watching
reading
listening to
singing
writing
creating
experiencing
Art
this piece of art.
it’s messy. ive put too few or too many s p a c e s . ive seriously f,u.c/k!E'd up my grammar. Ive used slang and Incorrect™ spelling. my fonts are sometimes hard to read and I haven’t even Began to think about using colour. My english Teecher would hate this.
this piece of art; is a mess
and isn’t it Beautiful
Oct 1, 2018
Oct 1, 2018 at 9:49 PM UTC
Remember all the old familiar faces?
Helvetica's the nicest of the lot.
Gill Sans and Johnston take the second places;
It seems as though the serif has been shot.
Verdana has its own intrinsic glories;
The fairest text that ever left my desk
Was set in these-- for essays or for stories.
But using them for sonnets? That's grotesque.
And gravestones are a special case as well:
A mortal lack of serif fonts would be
A certain kind of typographic hell
With Comic Sans for all eternity.
In death, the Roman lettering is best.
May flights of serifs sing thee to thy rest.
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 6:19 PM UTC
No, I don't want to write a sonnet;
to self-lock in an octave
only clasping a rusty key
-volta-
leading to another office cubicle
efficiently labelled sestet
for its six undone quotas
waiting coolly for my
calculating.
I want to untuck my shirt, Whitman;
to unleash words to gather at seams
then tear them open
like bursting blood cells crowding
out of a wound.
I do not want to fit
flesh into a 'perfect' Barbie membrane,
let me stretch the skin taut as sheets
so I can feel the redness
and gouge underneath.
Clarity glazed the Classical sonata
opaque; staves of controlled fantasy
so imaginable, like an illogically
round orange, sliced
in concaves fat
with pulp, each ripeness methodically
connected by thin breath threads.
This is why we have madness, need it;
bless the ****** of brilliance in Beethoven
symphonies, the metallic muscling
of Ginsberg verses, electronic with strange beauty, holy
and unholy, every ****** mess
in between
The heart can't suffice
by merely inhaling
glitter; I can't dare remember the sane
pretty sighing of a Petrarchan
uttering; canned love,
a predictable malaise packaged
neatly in a bland tome, most likely
beige, with the fashionable odor
of bookish age
And so, serif-writing sweetheart
please don't ask
me to write a sonnet.
too comfortable to tuck my shirt in,
I won't touch I won't touch I won't touch
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 4:38 AM UTC
The sound invades my audio waves,
Distorting the tension,
Erasing the lines
Between the drudgery and the constant,
The eternal struggle and daily events.
I’m blind.
Utterly confused and
Sans serif.
A matter of happenstance.
Degradation of mental cells
Imaginary particles, dancing.
Vibrating in one big **** of a dream.
Mar 30, 2010
Mar 30, 2010 at 8:53 PM UTC
The jelly-jiggling slop first had to flop
before it could waddle
ashore into this muddle of last gasps
and becoming
where middling deaths swaddled in gauzy breaths
emit a consonant-rich sussuro:
*If you don’t recall the swirl-swept depths
where we furled it,
can you keep that promise in shallows pocketed?*
So we began, and with the begetting
a rosy cloud plumed forth from our two
terraformed lips,
its delicately distinct petals mushrooming out
with a thorn-less, serif-soft voice
to bestow this frothy font of atomic confusion:
*Let the forgetful sea rinse over now-handy fins
to hard-edge etch
their starfish straight lines in a slurp of soggy sand.*
The mothering molecules haven’t lost
their smothering ache to forgive
our thickened skins
and they still cling to us, cooing about a lulled drift
past bye when we’ll climb the thinning links
back to homes cloaked in a sifted light:
*The loves of your heart-filled heads, no matter
how starkly pled,
all waste away to join us in our timeless waiting.*
Jan 7, 2011
Jan 7, 2011 at 7:56 AM UTC
Shhh!
I'm straining to hear
(I admit, this is my greatest fear)
thundering, rolling silence
boulders loosened
parched from a dry spell
not able to find the words to tell
nor a drop in the hollow well
a writers ramblings that freely clutter
thoughts, ideas, those clever lines I mutter
All taken for granted, perhaps there's just nothing more
needing to be said, it never before felt like a chore
Comfortable as clockwork, like a heartbeats drum
Absent, broken, chaotic ideas now that make me look dumb
A river of words, a waterfall of passion, that carries me
taken by the current now lost at sea
Dry and dammed, a beavers work,
also called 'writers block', a place where evil idleness may lurk
Reassured by friends and family to not worry
it will be back and come in a flurry
But they don't hear the voice
or comprehend inspiration is not a choice
Yet I should confess
I am responsible for this lazy mess
It's not as though I haven't tried
"I wrote a little today," I lied.
Sterile white paper mirroring my thoughts, blank stares
inky shapes, pixels, sans serif, no one cares
Interrupted by any distraction
Even the most tedious jobs holds some attraction
Mopping, scrubbing, fluffing, dusting
Acid in those scribbled notes on torn paper rusting
**** in chair with rolling fingertips like the roll of a drum
Waiting for that muse, my writing voice to come...
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 6:01 PM UTC
*oh, what glorious things the canadians and americans think of the british, in their set narrative when a tragedy plagues these isles; mainly stressing the british concept of tolerance. well... perhaps the morbid politeness toward muslims, that the hindus didn't get, back in the 1960s? hmm... or the bourgeois media class... with their affectionate portrayal eastern european builders... well... **** me, are all my brethren builders? we all seem to be builders all of a sudden, like that's something to demean people of skill. you know how degenerate english builders are? how unskillful they are, in the roofing trade? my father can show me roofers with 20 years worth of "experience", and the photographs are worth a good long pause, and lament... they were changing the tiles on my roof, and one night, with heavy rain pouring down, water was seeping through my ceiling... scots were known to be the best roofers in the 1990s... replaced by poles.*
anyway, talk of graphemes...
polish has, in all honesty,
four potentials to become graphemes,
i don't know how, but they could become
unique script elements...
alas
sz cz rz dz
are in their own category, distinct from
the category of grapheme...
it's almost a shame,
the four being digraphs...
oh... and you know that there's a trigraph
in the english language?
you know it, i'm sure...
y = why,
but no one will tell you that that is a trigraph,
even the dictionary won't tell you it's a trigraph,
it'll tell you why is either an adverb and exclamation
or a noun... but never that it's also a trigraph
of what is also a monograph, represented by
y... and perhaps, just perhaps,
this is just one of those mysteries
worth excavating from the tombs of the tetragrammaton,
and set against a rosetta stone of the modern
era... in what becomes of
the hebrew serif י...
perhaps, well, only possible
in english the trigraph why...
encompassed in the monograph that's y;
and that's only one h short to complete the equation.
Jun 5, 2017
Jun 5, 2017 at 1:03 PM UTC
Coming home to find that you had changed all the hinges
Was worse than losing a limb.
For six years, the sound of your door creaking
Open at three AM signaled me to
Pretend to be asleep, to hang up the phone or
Close the book and squeeze my eyes shut.
I knew if my sister left her room, I knew
When my mother was cooking dinner.
Now the silence is a personal affront, the opposite of ma,
this is the terrible discomfort of not knowing who is coming or going.
When my sister was away, hearing her
Door squeak open on occasion made me
Feel as though she still resided here
Her ties have finally been severed, and she
Hasn’t even finished undergrad yet. This is akin
To replacing all of our larynxes with computers.
When we open our mouths, pale blue text
Boxes with rounded edges and sans-serif phrases
Float out and hover noiselessly.
Feb 12, 2010
Feb 12, 2010 at 7:52 PM UTC
slumbering cream-cheese on the tip of
an unhungried tongue... in past lives,
we met and you called me crazy. for
once, we are on the same level and
neither of us are not untethered in
the nether of whenever. kindred
souls know how to laughalot,
whereas unkindred soulzzz
bite each other with
elongated continuities
of 'Zed.'
we are perhaps both of these
at different times, but there
is never a lack of love tho
a lack of passion might
have done us well as
well as done us
harm all
depending on how
bent-outta-shape we'd
cared to be. there is
nothing inside of me
that says winter more
than holding yer hand
down the length of the
pole-line while you wore
flats and freezed and
I was too afraid to talk
very loud becuz a small-
town meant solitude and
I couldn't stand solitude
as I wasn't a solid, but a
gas and a liquid too afraid
to become the temporary
icy toothache of a transient
season.
I will love you forever,
but don't tell yerself that.
there's a dead guy in the body,
but he's only fast asleep.
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 3:58 PM UTC
I knew you before we ever met.
I felt our feelings,
Ruminated over our thoughts.
I clung to our convictions,
Was crucified for our flaws.
I didn't write for you,
Yet was delighted
When you understood.
I gave you my hard copy,
Creased down the middle and bent from nervous energy,
Typed twenty-six point font
(These drunk eyes of mine strained for less).
You gave me your hard copy.
I never saw it coming.
Neatly kept,
Typed with handsome typewriter slab serif.
Bursting with honesty,
That person-to-person
Truth that I value over all.
The occasional typo
Revealed to me the process,
The ecstatic pleasure in creation
That I've felt before.
You on your typewriter,
I in marker on the window's glass canvas.
The next night
We joined you for drinks and for good company.
Talked poems,
Talked Whitman,
Talked dumb society,
Talked records.
In drunken elation seven true hearts
Howled to heaven,
Played music,
Performed clumsy art.
I had more drinks.
Relished the night
Shared with kindred souls.
The night went on.
You asked for your coat,
Which I mechanically retrieved.
Stepped out and into the cold
With no coat of my own.
As you nervously lit your cigarette,
I knew something
Was amiss.
"It's nothing."
That's how I knew,
It was everything.
Nov 24, 2010
Nov 24, 2010 at 6:43 PM UTC
What was about 2 a. m. that always inspired her? Why did the sky have to be pitch dark for her to finally find her answer? Why couldn’t she simply control her mind at her own will? She wondered all of this as she lay in bed; her room was completely obscure, her computer screen the only source of light. She continued typing, the keyboard composing a uniform beat as she translated her abstract thoughts, regular habitants of her subconscious, in to words. Dark san serif characters that by themselves meant nothing but united could open worlds that have never been conceived before. She sighted pausing as she realized a word didn’t work at all, she racked her brains till she found a synonym that enabled the harmony of the prose to lighten. She smiled as she always did when she realized how writing was an intricate and bewildering process. How it took a life of its own and made her simply a tool to the construction of whatever was dying to get out of her limited human intellect.
Jul 15, 2011
Jul 15, 2011 at 7:41 AM UTC
I’m trying <!DOCTYPE html>
<html> Baby, I’m trying <head>
<!-- HTML Codes by Quackit.com -->
I’m trying <title> to see through
all the weeds "width=device-width">
<style> of our modern landscape
but I know my search {:left;background}
is a futile effort.{font-family:Arial, sans-serif}
{font-family:Georgia, serif} This is our world
now, and I’m just trying ;14px;font
</style>
to see
</head>
through
<body>
the madness
</body>
of the weeds.
-Ron </head> Gavalik </body>
Dec 22, 2018
Dec 22, 2018 at 5:12 PM UTC
I've been known to
write stories
Instead of moving
Like my bending wrist
Knows just what she's
doing
Reality is there
Smothered under a blanket
Of scribbles and drawings
Some hopeful dreams
I think I made this
More than it was
Meant to be
(Writing
about writing
is so cliche)
But I cling to my words
Like I'm dangling
High up off the ground
Holding tight to the edge of
Serif-fonted letters
I always thought you knew me better.
And I've always tried to see the light
but in doing so
I never saw the darkness
For what it was
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 2:52 AM UTC
She sits and ponders
What she might do
Gets nothing right
Falls out of love
With life
She reads books
Attends sessions
A bystander
Empty handed
If and if only are her motifs
She writes in sans serif
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 12:54 PM UTC
Boom.
No corners, no spine.
Flat letters, soft edges.
The pineapple floats because it forgot how to sink.
Trebek nods—final answer.
Mother Teresa blinks twice and folds into the wallpaper.
Nothing left but a doggle.
Sans serif.
Sans meaning.
Sans everything except the blorp.
Mar 4, 2025
Mar 4, 2025 at 4:48 AM UTC