Linoleum Poems | Examples

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I stayed in this house,
Where wilted leaves blanket the lawn.
Dust particles dance around the purified air
like the fantasy fairies I imagined when I was young.
The sun rays came from the small kitchen window,
illuminating the metal trash can
filled with rotten foods and faith.
I look up,
breathing the polluted air in and out my flaring nostrils.
I know I cannot stay here.
Its not good for a growing body like mine, I say,
as I lay on the cluttered linoleum floor,
while maggots crawl up my body
and down my spine.

Legerdemain

The magician wore 
my mother’s perfume
and conjured family 
from thin air—
a brother renamed uncle,
a wife recast as mother,
a daughter vanishing 
behind a tale of bees.

Each sleight of hand was tender—
a hush, a smile, a bowl of soup
cooling on the Formica
while the truth was sawed in half
and tucked beneath the linoleum.

No one told me why
my “uncle” broke my father’s ribs,
or that dad’s flu came in a bottle.
No one told me my brother 
had been in prison.
No one told me 
I was adopted—
until Aunt Mary dropped the card
like an afterthought,
the queen of spades
sliding from her sleeve.

They said Virginia 
died of a bee sting—
a prettier tale than 
what swelled inside her,
the blood pressure and seizures,
the silence that followed 
her body home.

And no one told me
that my mother wasn’t my mother
until dad blurted it out
on his deathbed.

I didn’t know the word for it
when I was little:
legerdemain—
sleight of hand,
sleight of memory,
the practiced art
of not quite lying
while saying nothing true.

Law Enforcement Violates Our Constitutional Rights Regularly Now

they swagger in badges
hallways of fluorescent lies
drag me by the collar
into their personal theater of power

guns gleam like broken promises
questions barked through gritted teeth
hands cuffed before words finish
justice danced on cold linoleum floors

they say order is sacred
while stomping the petals of freedom
paper walls of our rights
tear under boot heels

every knock at midnight
echoes the guillotine’s whisper
we’re born equal on paper
but in their hands, paper bleeds dry

and still—
we hope for mercy
in the belly of this machine

Scratched

There are gaps in the particleboard;
quince wads fill the breaches.
Nicotine newspapers underlay the linoleum.
It's a rented place, he tiptoes
around its yellow layers.
He has a friend he visits on Sunday afternoons.
The walls of her bedsit are paper thin.
She thinks her neighbors scratch on them,
thinks they are writing to her.
She will stand in front of him naked,
eyes closed while she masturbates.
She wants him to watch her.
She's deathly frightened people will overhear.
Afterward, they sit side by side
on the small bed reading the tabloids.
Then they walk to a local pub,
sit quietly in a corner, not talking
holding hands until closing time.
One day her bedsit is empty,
she has gone, leaving no note.
On the other side of the city
he lands a job with a room in a hotel.
His new room is narrow, clean and white.

Bad Thoughts With Chocolate Hearts

Morality is just a word when you have the cleaver.
Blood seeps into the linoleum like crimson ink.
I'll love you to death, and beyond the autopsy.
Your going to be a masterpiece, the face of darkness.

on our fair earth

It would seem impossible for a house plant to have joy
loosely rooted in a glazed bowl of nutrient depleted soil
every third day fed plastic cups of fluorinated water
enduring yellow, rainless nicotine puffs
forever stunted like a secondhand son.

A withering witness, to squabbles and suffering
violent deeds and sudden ugliness
praying for sunshine=force fed shadows
wishing for a fairy on a breeze
but whiffing only shiny linoleum 
bargain coffee and bacon grease.

Besides a bulb lit zoo puma, eternally pacing-pacing...
a house plant is the saddest thing I've ever seen.

an open channel

an open channel to everywhere, here
a flickering screen
a faded dream
a memory of color 
a monochrome world
antennas reach
skeletal hands clutching for the sky
grasping at echoes 
all lost in transmission
a spectral ballet on the cracked linoleum
a faded warmth of memory
as embers die in ashes
open channels hum…

Henri Matisse's Studio

Henri Matisse's Studio

Scattered about like fish in a pond
are paintings and objects in a secluded room
in a sea of red shouting out loud;
Connoisseurs please enter, others not welcomed

The pink studio expresses acceptance
of chic bourgeois realism, re-enforcing boredom
with sunlight streaming through the window
and a welcome mat laying on the linoleum.

The colour-contrast room interiors
accentuate artworks during creative years
of avant-garde innovations
that have captured an audience’s attention.

One version is neat and tidy and the other chaotic,
peering into one and looking out from the other,
revealing Matisse’s mind in motion
from realism and post-impressionism to Fauvism.

Lesbian in the locker room

I'm willing to worship
Any girl that calls me a name other than disgusting 
The world is progressive 
But it has not moved forward 
I turn to face the linoleum, saying,
                                          "Oh the ceiling is looking mighty fine today"
And then they squeal 
                                          "Ew, she's looking at me!"
Report me to the principal if you dare
I dare you to be outed 
And still have to show up to class every day 

I leave the locker room 
Gym shorts and ugly gray t-shirt
Covering up the undeserved shame I feel 
I'm just focused on trying to make the volleyball team 
I'm not worried about how high you're hiking up your shorts 
It doesn't make you look cool 
Oh, and Josh, I talked to him 
He doesn't like you 

I hope your Christian parents 
Can see how you dress when they aren't there to check in the morning 
Putting on mascara that's full of vulgarity 
And misleading phrases 
Your pretty polished faces made middle school living torture 
I should have stayed in the closet
Instead of coming out for you

Mom’s Advice For Me Mothers Day 2024

Mom’s Advice For Me
Miracle Man Tom Wright
Mothers Day 2024

Our mom was one of ten children. Her parents were farmers at a time when it required horses, mules and large families. She said that every child had daily chores that they were responsible for. Planting and harvesting was mostly done by hand.

Some of the best advice that she passed on to me was.
That Grand pa told them that “he had never heard of anyone dying from hard work.”   Remembering this served me well in the successes I achieved in life that allowed me to retire at 56.
I never settled for being just as good as everyone else because
that would have made me just average. She told me that “cream always rises to the top”

Another thing, when growing up, we had linoleum floors
and she spent much time sweeping. Me and brother Joe, dared not step in front of her broom or we got a broom swat on the fanny and heard this “Trash goes in front of the broom and
we’re not trash, just poor.”  
 
Mothers day is always hard for me Mom.
I still miss you so much.
Tom

Embers

I clutch my breast, 
	shattered 

shards of the once
	whole,

rubble our kitchen
	floor,

mosaic of smashed
wedding gifts,

failed hopes,
	dashed dreams,

ugly mugs stained
	hues of love,

hearts drawn thin
	as dinner plates,

dining sets burst
	spider webs,

sacrificed to the selfish
	gods
	upon a linoleum altar.

A lone survivor
	stares

down upon our battle
	ground,

four eyes and
	two smiles,

on high, through glass
	sky,

two lives,
	one wish,

shaken, rattled
	not rent,

blue horizons
	behind,

I see you, you see
me,

cobbled streets
	underneath,
cutting through this
	misery,

a photo,
	a memory,

faded not forgotten,
	dashed not dead,

you and me,
	fingers entwined,	

dreams alive,
	hopes afire,

walking through Madrid.

Descartes' Rule of Signs

I. Noise in an empty hallway:
My old leather shoes protest as I hurry down the linoleum tiles
Like I'm wearing a little piece of history older than I am.

II. Headlights on a dark road:
Speeding down narrow country roads
windows rolled down and Autumn wind rushing through the car
Ripping my hair from its tie
My arm stretching out the window, numb in the night air.

III. Ephemeral beauty:
For a moment, life is endless and incredibly brief
Stretching before me like a dusty trail at sunset
Disappearing into the trees.

IV. Origin of life:
There is this vague, unnamable incomprehension in my chest
Like euphemisms, that is the easy way out
This is the hard way: I am alive, alive, alive
When one cell became thirty trillion, I gained consciousness.

V. I am not the sum of my parts:
I don't have the faith to believe 
That all my thirty trillion cells are a fluke of nature

VI. Evidence: 
I am the proof of divinity's existence
A signpost shouting "I am alive" thirty trillion times with all the power of my lungs 
Designed for miracles

VII. Rene Descartes:
It is not 
I think; therefore, I am
It is
I think; therefore, He is.

An Heirloom

Your mother’s glass. The only one in the cabinet that
does  not  match  the others.  It’s  beautiful.    Purple

crystal scattered on linoleum like a layer of fine
mauve  dust.  The  first  tear  falls  from  a  thousand 

fractaled faces, glistening in the sun. Birds turn 
dirges  in  the  late  autumn  air, as  you push  slivers

into the dustpan—the vision of her soft hand around 
the  glass  fades  with  each  reluctant  sweep.  Tears 

pool in your eyes and you wonder why she gave
 you such maladroit arms, sunspotted and  shaky.  Or 

a brain wired to prefer the taste of Diet Coke in a
glass over ice, just as your mother did.  Shards clink 

in the trash, your tears race them to the bottom. The
lid  closes  in  a  soft  thud—the  birds  stop  singing

Rooms

Ocher and quince wads
pack gaps in particleboard walls.
Yellow newspapers underlay linoleum.
The apartment is smeared by nicotine
When it rains, a paper-Mache atlas of a blotched sky
can be read on the ceiling.

The window-sill slants, he dares not lean out.
He listens to street fights; imagines gore
seeping into inky basement wells.

Saturday nights bleed into Sunday.  Sometime
amid the gray hours he decides to leave,
to wander vomit blitzed alleys
to search a doorstep and steal a Sunday paper,
then he returns to the grimy room
to read of better places
where better crimes get clean away.

He has a girlfriend, one he sees only once a week,
they sit on the narrow bed reading the news.
She tells him that her apartment has thin walls,
that at night strangers scratch upon them
as if writing to her.

Finally He lands a job in a hotel as a night porter.
His allotted room is pure white and sterile,
more a cell than a living space.
If he puts the light on, all that white hurts his eyes,
in time he gets used to it.  His mind slowly
sheds layers of brick-dust and smudged print.

Somma

Spiritual, intelligent, analytical, reserved, knowledgeable, mysterious, 
intuitive

She awakens  to a new horizon 
untouched by humans with Angel breath in her hair 
the golden crib of her laughter rocks the stars above   
a touch of barely there, a wisp of life, she is holding still;    
Godly hymns of beauty spring into her heart 
an orchestra of Angels bearing gifts of new life;
A mother's tears flow next to a Fathers battered soul 
she walked away from earth like a feather in the roam;  
Spiritual vessel of gold, intuitive by sight 
she touches the harp of heaven then turns towards the light  
As she gazes down at Telico,  
the sun dazzles the old linoleum floor and she breathes again 
Somma is ready to explore, so she opens yet another door.

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