Neon and the Video Tapes

Neon is the night
- mystical - illuminating
my rental store.
I smoke a cigarette
and drop it in a beer
sizzling it ends
yellow bubbled nightmare.

A tape broke in half – forever two stories
unchained video sequences.
I watch and watch
the night away
dawn comes to fade the neon
but I can't live without it.

Raining outside – contaminated grey traces
I need to go to a grocery's. Outside
wet neon lights are sparks, are dreams,
I walk.
I smell the leaden gold of gas stations.
I buy cigarettes.

Later, in the grocery store I'm lost
imprisoned life form
between all those others.

Back to heat a pizza, the rotating
sound of the microwave, my wheel of fortune
disturbs video's I'm watching – am I watching – am I
merely weaving my own stories.

I drink yellow fever milk – should buy more -
and cut the moon-sized pizza in half watching,
thinking I'm happy.

It's evening now – again – raining.
They installed another neon light – it hails me.
I think I followed it.

Dorine Ratulangie is a literature and SF/fantasy enthousiast and writes in Dutch, Spanish and English. She has won the María Dolores Candela provincial award of Alicante in Spain for students in 1992 and has published poems in Dutch cultural magazines and on websites: CJP Magazine, Writers Block (www.writersblock.net). Currently she lives in the Netherlands and works in IT.

Email: Dorine Ratulangie

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