• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

BrazenEscape

a poetry blog, mostly.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Quotables
  • Categories
    • Poetry
    • Prose
    • Story
    • Humor
    • Blog
You are here: Home / Poetry / flickering fluorescence

flickering fluorescence

April 17, 2016 2 Comments

The black man in the straw hat held his beloved burgundy pride tucked and folded in his breast pocket.

“Good morning.” he said, passing by.

“Good morning.” I said, nodding in reply.

“There’s a man who believes in something.” I told the boy.

Leather heels clicked a dimming rhythm as he took his belief with him.

A wrinkled white-haired woman scowls at me in the checkout line, and I smile, as the dollar meal trash shimmers in swirling cyclones outside.

There is no truth. What we’ve found is truth’s wraith-shadow, its memory, before having changed its mind. We hear the howling silence of its absence. Truth is not the stoic red-suit palace guard, nor the blinding pyrite of dawn’s deja vu.

Truth is mischievous nymph, a red-dress whore spinning a purse through the thick air of streetlight-evenings, fast to spread her pleasure wide, never staying long enough to be held. By four am she’s off fucking someone else, filling her aching hole, and by daylight, she’s gone.

The wrinkled woman genuflects before her meal under phallic flickering fluorescence, while cackling, gap-tooth tramps blow trenchcoat-businessmen in the damp shadows of smudge-color motel rooms nearby.

Above the impoverished, decadent fray, she feels forgiven, aye, dignified. And that’s enough– for most, as scratched plastic reflections stare back at each, between the white flickering.

2 Comments

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Enter your email address to receive weekly notifications of new posts.
Join 26 other subscribers.

Previous Post: « Two AM Half-Moon
Next Post: down in Sunburn, Carolina »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lisa R. Palmer says

    April 17, 2016 at 7:24 am

    Intense! Love the use of color and sensory imagery. Makes one wonder if truth is perceivable that way…

    ๐Ÿ™‚

    Reply
    • Eric says

      April 17, 2016 at 9:12 am

      Good morning, Lisa ๐Ÿ™‚ Glad you liked this. I wonder where we’d be if we couldn’t personify everything.. truth as a tramp, faith as a blind beggar, etc.. We’d write quite differently, I suppose, or at least I would.

      Reply

Join the Discussion! Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Thanks for your feedback!

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • the promise
  • tho our sparrows may whisper
  • muttering shadows
  • red swelter
  • suburban gardens

Copyright © 2023 ยท BrazenEscape.com | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Manage Profile