This was written for Read Write Word # 17. I have to admit, this gave me a bit of a workout in the vocabulary department. This poem is a little less coherent and more of a “stream of consciousness” poem. What does it look like to you? Let me know – and enjoy.
-Nicole
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saturnine glances
from heavy-lidded eyes
an empty room
no windows
thoughts veer off
a paved desert road
collide with walls
no one hears the crash
metal twists in on itself
impossible figure eights
hang from wire threads
above random glass triangles
lying on asphalt next to
carmine rivers running straight and
ending in mutating pools
like giant red maws opening
with unhinged jaws and lips
without end
they grow larger
a shadow slinks away
somewhere in the distance
bombs explode
scattering atoms underground
without a sound
Mother Earth carries shaking
in her white sand belly
she cannot excise
a bitter musing
raped again
shouts rise up from holy mouths
backbones to which smoke
plays countermelodies
against black sky punctuated
by strange rages, glowing orange
and yellow, in the shape of crosses
white fleeting sheets recede
like tides, their shadows flooding away
into the blooming darkness
a boy stands and stares
frozen-eyed
dropping pebbles from his fingers
landing loudly
their echoes scream
in the empty room with no windows
after falling
for twenty years
Written 6/2/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
That is interesting. It evokes more of an emotional response of wonderment and foreboding in me…
Nicely done.
I get pictures of car bombs, war, death…covert plots cooked up in prison cells.
I think the ending with the boy and the pebbles is really effective visually–the image is actually burned into my memory.
Nice use of the words…they were tough!
Oh my. This is certainly very powerful. You allude tantalizingly to a great many things and ideas. And I love how in the middle of it all you mention the boy. As if in the midst of all the chaos in this world, we need to remember our humanity. Lovely, lovely piece.