Ode to the Serif

There are those I have heard that just couldn't care if
There were no letters left that featured a serif -
Old fashioned and useless and a bit of a joke
Those last little marks at the end of a stroke.
This is the age of Sans serifs designers may shout
(Sans being a French word that just means without,
which is odd in a way cause the word serif is dutch
and the Romans invented them - mixed up very much?)

Serifs are busy, Sans serifs are leaner
Sans serifs, they say have a more hip demeanor.
But I beg to differ. (you suspected I would)
I think that serifs are perfectly good.
They have class and panache and a long history
while Sans serif letters lack all mystery.
Imagine a monument - maybe marble or bronze
with the name of the hero set in bold comic sans.
So be like the Romans, who in sunshine or drizzle
just finished each letter with a smack on the chisel.

My Vellum

Alluring and demure
In your virginity
Never yet
Creased nor crumpled
Your tight young corners
Remain stiff and pert
In their newness
Your long lithe sides
Tense for my careful touch
Lest blood be spilt

My gold nib
I dip
In midnight ink
Piercing its surface skin
And lift

It drips
One

Two

Black
Secrets
Back to their bottle

My hand is poised
Over your pristine smoothness
And with calm precision
I carve broad majuscules
That twist and cut
To hairlines of breathtaking
Intimate intricacy

Quick teasing serifs
Long lingering descenders
Strokes of tactile
Joy

Then stand back

Empty
In wonder at
Your calligraphic beauty

I want you to see all the stories I’ve written for you

But I’m scared the characters will chip and fall apart
Serifs sharp like broken glass
Are you still breathing
while you drown in me?
There is a curve
In soft vowels that create you
and any letter that drops below the baseline, like a sinking rock in the murky shores
My words more often than not drift like wood at sea
Part of something once
But no longer whole
And crushed constantly by blue waves of doubt
That pushes and pulls me
Into every direction
Every lighthouse I've ever seen
has never shined bright enough
to guide me home

My lover saves his words,
he tucks them under his tongue

I chew on his serifs,
Aerated, punctuated, hyphenated
His desires, they get caught in my teeth
the boldness of them wearing on my enamel

And then,
his smile melts onto my tongue
I push it behind my cheek, our own
little secret, sweetheart
Now I’m smiling too

And he hasn’t said a word.

my fingers tap dance on the keys
hopefully the rhythm rhymes
wrapping words round the relief
my sans serifs have symbolized
if i can alliterate the literacy
& make allusions to my usefulness
maybe it will hyperbolize the symmetry
& let similes diffuse the mess
so please believe in paper wings
ink blots will not weigh me down
i'll deceive with dialogue & themes
while i antagonize the ground

I am not
the prettiest girl
or the sexiest

not the smartest
or most talented

but I am a unique
array assembled
of whozeewhatsits

(razor blade analogies
fluorescent petal lips
coloring book flips shifting
hues and lines in real time
intense passion pigments
softened by maniacal sillies
black glitter, tears, tongue, teeth
synaptic syntax screams
billowing belly cavern
sacred swallows swimming
serifs seeping thru sweat
into fluffiest warm cotton
pinksugar dewbloom)

that will render
equivalent yet opposing
inverted complementary
juxta pair of anglepants

exquisitely speechless
with sheer me-ness

hallow mirrors blinding
four egoic eyes igniting
incinerating the dim

and in that stillness
I will feel their them
and feel it feeling
my me

betwixt twisting
our empty brimming
with eternity

...

or maybe
that happened

already

The first time I say your name, it is a new sound on my tongue.
I take it and roll it around a bit, mispronounce a few syllables.
The marks on paper that define you are an absolute work of art.
It is curious and new and alive, and so are you.

I say your name thousands of times, then; again and again
til it is worn thin with familiarity.
Soon I no longer need your name at all: I have expressed
your entire existence in a single breath.

Your name becomes a formality. Like clothing, it is not
entirely necessary. You do not wear it to bed.
On the streets, it is how people recognize you;
but I do not even remember its fullness any longer.

Something changes. Speaking your name is an insult,
a raised voice, a painful twist of annoyance.
I hurl it at you like a sharpened knife and it sticks
deep in your chest, tearing through the parts of you
I once knew with such certainty and confidence.

Then it is a plea for forgiveness. I use your name
As an item to trade with: I will whine out your existence to you
And in return, will you return?
Please say yes. (You don’t.)

Empty beer bottles line the corners of your name.
Sleepless nights fill in the dark serifs and smooth lines.
Your name makes my heart ache in my chest
where it has broken in two, due to you.

The last time I say your name, it is the name of a stranger,
someone I once knew but no longer care for.
You will always be with me, but your name
has moved on. Someone else wears it now.

Consistency is a lie. Your name is a different moment,
means a different person every time it is spoken.
I do not trust in the undefined words that define you,
instead, you are to me still that single breath of pure existence.

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.

Most of the time,
I find it difficult to harvest
the proper words from the curve of my neck
where the skin dips down
and shakes hands with my chest.  
The fine hairs raise and fall,
the color of wheat,
exhaling what others want and inhaling what I need.
In,
out,
in,
out.
Using my primitive tools,
I rip
the necessary parts of speech
from my throat
and use the so called precious arterial mud
that is equatable to manure
to fertilize my lungs
so that although I am dead,
my voice
is
not.

Sometimes,
I can pluck
proper phrases
from my eyebrows;
I can hunt them
through the tall grass that sits
upon my livid plains.
I imagine my pencil
is a spear
and try not to look
when the graphite
pierces their pure bodies,
killing the meaning
as yet another mediocre artist
paints them upon the lines of his notebook,
wounding
the effect words have on the world
because if they are used too often,
they mean nothing at all.

Occasionally,
my ink pen
forms a circle of deep blue
into which I can cast my line
and retrieve the perfect letter from a sea of ephemeral pieces.
I am merely part
of a larger industry
that traps
the delicate curves
of spines
and sharp points
of serifs
nestled between ascenders
and shoulders
into nets
made from blue lines on bleached paper.  
I desperately cling
to the descenders
that hang past the edge of the cliff
because by God I will not die
even if it means shooting something as beautiful as that
which I rely on to keep me afloat.

However,
there are times,
when that is too much effort -
too much exertion required of my small, inadequate equipment,
I am left
to abandon the ink-laden sea,
to discard my fields of words and phrases
in search
of a way
to pull the plug
at the bottom of the bathtub in my brain
and watch as the opaque,
grimy,
filth-ridden water circles
around
and
around,
exposing things
I never knew were there.  
In those milliseconds
where the contaminants drain away
and there is complete transparency,
I find what I am looking for
before I am even certain
what I needed in the first place.

i'm so tired
of wanting to become something --
grand designs
doing pirouettes in my little head --

i just
need
more time
to think things through

plastic tines
stab at forks
in the road

silly you!
trying to stop the decision-making process
like a child
with a rhyme

speaking of the devil,
for a limited time only,
**** the walking dread
that paces at the foot of your being
like a thing in need --
how? thought you'd never ask ---
i'll get to that, in due time

-- i will say this though: it's not with an ax
or bow
or some moralized TV show
nope

nothing like that

the need to be
to be --
that

is the imperative --
timeless
tasks tasked with go-forth --

we feed on it --
always pressing forward
always-already doing things,
going places, lurching concern,
consuming steps steps steps

listen

progress is
a stone alone inside my pocket
-- watch it
bloom tumultuous
into a decision to be undone ----

I am
The backward startle
Flesh made text

Know this:
All will be retraced till
All that remains is
a waiting cursor --
Blinking blinking
Blank page staring
Into your you --
The mess undressed, ****** --
Don't unfuck it --
Allow it --
Let it ******* for a time

Then go hardly softly into the night
With steps alighting
Bold events of past doings lit
Given another chance

The was made present
A specter sent
To turn the insides of your bones
Into channels --
Canals of then-time (makes sense)

Get to know the script
Then flip it
Budge its molecular structure
See its words squirm
Make its serifs recoil
And strike at your command

Crazy? Yes
Impossible? Perhaps
But your verse must be heard
The play goes on and on and on
Until you decide
To interrupt it

who you are
how you feel
what you
want

and how
to get there

but these

slit serifs
shielded wounds
and white knuckles
are some things
in the way

give them
fresh air exodus

the walk is through
never around

remember:

the quickest way
between two points
is always & forever

a straight line

I am out of time’s clutches; -
Spiraling my irises downstream, until they penetrate
The solid wall of translucent wrapping paper
That encapsulates silver beads into a
Necklace that never breaks.
He fastens it behind my neck, reminding
Me of those parallel universes, those mirrors I
Used to play within. But that is over,
We are separate.
…
I am out of tune, a piano that has been left dusty.
Musical notes rot inside of me. Inside the damp, dank
Habitat that I fashioned out of my organs.
Laughter was being harvested, under the most desirable
Conditions. Artificial lighting shone and droplets of
Dirt held it in. No one ever got close to escaping.
Not from this body.
And so they leave me to gather dust, dismantling
Every inaction with a word that is made of serifs
And daggers. I cannot go back.

Time is spent
unfolded,
melting into itself.
Roots, like an oak,
extend from me,
a tired stretch.
They coil themselves
around you,
catching your skin.
A sluggish act
of self-preservation.

Prose is spent;
each letter fluxes and fuses --
shaping nonsense.
Words hang in the air,
dangle and drop;
my serifs and cross strokes
litter the floor.
They soften,
and you're ankle-deep in verse.

Comfort is spent.
Restless nights ensue,
doubled over in mourning
for nothing;
to rather curl into you,
like a shell
a beautiful,
disastrous fit.

The future is spent
spread before me,
a rich expanse of black.
I feel the desperate longing
for constellations
nothing to name after you
but a slow, dull ache.

I am spent.
Vacuous at last
I've bled dry.
Like dust,
you have absorbed me.
Press on, press on.
And like everything else,
the tar on my lungs
looks suspiciously like you.

animating your fears and
character assasinations
in my direction

(as an attempt
by your ego to protect
that black-iced velvet heart
that's dying to know
the me I really am
or already does
and wants a reunion)

I'll be here

just
being me
this brain, this pulse
this history all on display

and FYI, I've
never shown mine
like this to anyone -
every millimeter of skin
every satin-wrapped dream
every jagged edge of broken
every malady that made me

me

your ego says
oh hell no, because
it knows my laser eyes
and furnace heart are gonna
burn that mother to the ground
with just one look

(a.k.a. 10,000 jade-lit
kaleidoscopic stones)

and in its place,
architect realities with maybe
a mother-in-law cottage
for that grippy gripe old bat
(at best) out back

behind crystal palace
atop bone graveyard
while we dine on serifs
washed smooth by
thrashing shores

on cosmic waterfront lot
with sugarsand paused
crystalline, still and
completely
ours

Hips calligraphic lithe alive
Serifs flare up immortal coil

Her mouth speaks to me
Between my legs
A language draped in ebony curtain
Unknown and inscrutable

Rising up
Mounting me

Her fingers splayed on my chest
enter me
Five pens
Now digging
Pecks taut
Flecks of red burst
Tattooed unspeakables writ

Her stare penetrates mine
Authoring my little demise

My thoughts flow, words
My dreams come and go, script delay
My hands touch, hoping they stay
Letters curve so slightly, sensual
Serifs barely touch, hesitate
Testing the boundaries of space, flirting
Lyrics weave my tousled hair, joining sound waves  
Make their way in, touching me
Coursing alongside my thin veins, pressure
Fall swiftly down my arteries, suggestively flood my soul

the words she uttered,
marked by a fine soot, scribed themselves
on the inside of my sore ribs;
with wrist and finger adroit,
it burned off the serifs
i had used to write myself down
as something utterly known.

i stood there, before her - before myself -
dross coating my feet, altered
by this strange medicine.
naked and sparse and
unknown, chiseled
before her strokes, i am.

it will
hold and
i will heal.

i touch myself
wiping serifs from the elements
pressing this object's edge up against
my writs
where old lines layer

i'm having thoughts of editing again
until the blue cursor blinks over white nothing's glow

i can sense it's call
like autumnal grip
about to fall
into short sweet no more

i chase the poem
until my words become true

recalling all of your lines
tangling mine

serifs
torque

I swim amongst the many.

Churned amidst the chaos.

Blended in the crowd of Serifs,
Calibris and New Romans.
Strong-armed by the bold.
Submerged beneath the underlined.

But I will stand out...

If only you’d
keep me italicised.

Metaphorically, of course,
I sometimes trample
on a decent poem just by reading it!

My voice, my inflection,
my intonation,
my lack of rise and fall
my now softer ‘half crown’,
more southern counties accent
than the ‘built in’ Yorkshire of my birth
or the adopted Brummie of my youth…

These things conspire to
make the strung words:
a nonsense of the pile of ascenders,
descenders, serifs
and punctuation marks.
They’re irredeemable in that pile by the door.

It’ll take more than a Pritt Stick
to re-assemble them into the
voice I once had or want to have
Not needed on the voyage…