I have had my fingers burn with crimson delight,
electricity climbing nerves like a zig-zag bandit
to the top, tips glowing like thunderstorm light
proudly proclaiming desire. From there, the glow becomes
contagious, ever spreading throughout my
expanse of skin until I bloom, effulgent and dangerous –
I rage and flow inside every Cimmerian night.
Continue reading
Category Archives: Asperger Poetry
A Study in Color
If you see the paint on my shoes,
the imprint of color like lost angels
that slipped from brush tips, fell to Earth,
and landed, becoming color Rorschachs
upon another canvas, then know
that they are the words I lost from between lips and teeth,
accidental syllables of emerald, brick red, and azure
that flew too close to the sun.
Some land on the floor, imprinting onto my soles
once I walk across their wordless surfaces.
Short Film, “Letter to My Father”, on YouTube
Meet the Nicholsons.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
You can see all of them in the short film for my poem, “Letter to My Father”, which I uploaded today to YouTube. This film was featured at The Art of Autism Exhibit. The poem will appear in the 2012 edition of “The Art of Autism”.
Threads (for Autistics Speaking Day, 2011)
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile…
— Paul Laurence Dunbar
One might believe that there is an incongruity
within a doctor who can rescue a young toddler
playing in a sea of vomit inside of a South Indian hut
eviscerated by a village’s cholera outbreak, but yet
finds himself becoming windswept detritus tossed
from coast to coast by a stomach which demands
a constant schedule. One might place
his wide-armed compassion of raising that boy himself
and his Richter scale tremors at finding his office disturbed
as light-and-dark contrast Polaroids, and wonder
if the two men were even the same:
Continue reading
New Video Version of “You Don’t See It” on Youtube
The newest version of the video for my poem, “You Don’t See It”, is now available on Youtube. This is the version that first aired at the April 2, 2011 Awe in Autism Live Event. Included in the video is some of my own artwork specially created for the poem. Watch below. I hope you like it. 
NaPoWriMo Poem #13: Pretending to Be Normal (Eye Contact)
If you try to look into my eyes
you might succeed, if only for a moment
until I feel your gaze incise
and my skin wires buzz with too much current.
Continue reading
NaPoWriMo #2: Lamppost Hierophant
for Sam Drezner
There are four of them.
Each day, the sun rises and warms our faces in the East.
Each day, we breathe out the smoke of our spirits until it is spent.
And each day, you are divining these lampposts.
Continue reading
Big Tent/WWP Poem #42: The Way Back Home
Perhaps
if I could unravel the threads that ever live behind my skin, I could
find it. There are so many exposed, raw and frayed ends,
and as I have said before,
I pull on them so that you don’t. Watch me
pull away this sweater of a skin, blow the dust off
my bones, and climb the stairs to an attic
that ever collects: there is nothing sacred and safe
from being stolen from walls, from projector screens,
or from the air. Everything is carried home, purloined
beneath the archway of my arm,
slumbering against ribs cradled with adipose and skin,
nestled in the crook of my elbow.
Continue reading
WWP Poem #30: Paint by Numbers
i. zero
Nobody knows that this thing
isn’t a bandit: it doesn’t seize you suddenly
and leave you awash in open wire and stereo speakers
jammed into your ears. There is only the
curious brown baby, eyes like cameras,
with a wound-up roll of film for a brain.
Continue reading
WWP Poem #27: Fifteen
You, perceptive enough to pick up
all the half-rhymes hanging out in your stomach;
you, with a galvanized ear leading to tubules
that course straight up into your brain;
you, possessing databanks built out of flesh
humming in data process heaven just behind your bone walls;
Continue reading
WWP Poem #26: Back Door Blues
I.
I’ve been collecting music and pouring it into the coffers of my brain
since I was fifteen. It took a few years for me to understand
that the stereo inside my cranial walls needed more stuff to spin, so I
reached out in raven-claw fashion, stealing everything
I could get my ears on. Trailing behind me is the umbra
of a greedy teenage girl trapped in a good two-shoes, church girl headlock
while sneaking sonic pleasures through the back door of
her ears. Hey all you people that tryin’ to sleep,
I’m out to make it with my midnight dream.
Continue reading
New Poem on Video: You Don’t See It
As I mentioned in this post, I received an Naturally Autistic Awards from the ANCA Foundation in the International Adult Literary category at their awards ceremony yesterday in Vancouver, BC. I was presented the award for an unpublished collection of poems, “Novena”.
I was unable to attend the ceremony, but recorded one of the poems in the collection, “You Don’t See It”, to be played at the awards. I am sharing it with you, embedded below into this post.
-Nicole
—————————————–
Follow @ravenswingpoet
