Category Archives: Cleave

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Time

Click on the Image Below to Read the Poem. If you are unable to view the image, you may view the poem as a PDF here.

Written 1/16/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson, except for items in italics, which are © 1981 David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth. All rights reserved on material by N. Nicholson.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #89: Respond to This. We were to respond with a poem to the following sentence:

“As the Great War drew to a close, a young Englishwoman wrote wearily in her diary, By the end of 1916, every boy I had ever danced with was dead.”

I ended up having two reactions at once: the first was to offer to dance with the woman to help relieve her sorrow and loneliness, and the second was anger at the horrors and practice of war — an insane, senseless affair which has no purpose.

After a little thought, I figured out whose response was whose. What do I mean? Well, if you’ve read this blog before, you might remember that I introduced you to Nick back in this poem last September. (And of course, if Nick is an alternate version of me, he has to be, well, shorter and heavier…but you get the point.) After noticing that a significant number of poems were written in a male voice, I first concluded that this was simply my animus talking. But after some thought, I’ve concluded that I’m probably bigendered — i.e. I have a distinctly male persona and a distinctly female persona (I won’t overload you with extended details, but if you want to knock yourself out, check out the Wikipedia link earlier in this sentence, or this link).

Sooo….both Nick and Nicole got to respond this time. Hence why the two sides of this (loose) cleave are labeled as such. I don’t know if I will label future poems as such, but let’s just say this was an experiment. I hope you enjoyed the read.

And a thank you to David Byrne, et. al., for the borrowed inspiration. The lyrics come from “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads.

-Nicole
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Protected: NaPoWriMo Poem #12 — Fire Walking

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NaPoWriMo Poem #9: Untitled Cleave, 4/14/10

it’s the way you blame me
your breath like regret
smells like broken whiskey and overdue bills
poor white trash dropping from the smokestacks
that makes me suck in draw in
mine my belly like an empty church
Marlboro wind full of the God that left us
magazine cowboys that I still look for
I know that your arms angels rescued from Greek tragedies
are made of barbed wire Cassandra’s lips runneth over

so that my fingers

 can give you apologies in unspent paychecks
can dance with pencils burn everything that we’ve crucified
and charcoal but they cannot make the magic
you tried to make this our home that we so desperately need
I make mine out of the imprint of your daddy’s shadow
inside sketch paper and the shed skin of erasers
that is made out of mirrors where his last name should be
the creek knows you consult
that polluted goddess full of stink and junk the Oracle of Steelville
she told me to find
that there are steel screams the crooked remains of a life gone to seed
rippling in sine waves prayers
under your skin where blueprints for our exodus
muscle should be I look in the mirror
this is the poison I see Agamemnon
fabulous and modern as a woman
I’m sorry I still smell the smoke in your hair
if you don’t like my mirror – I build pyramids
just reflect how the sun will never see
what’s around me our escape

Written 4/14/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem, a cleave, was written for NaPoWriMo #14: You Want Me to Write a What? over at Read Write Poem. Yes, it’s my prompt. I figured it just wouldn’t be right if I didn’t write for it.

This is in the same vein of some small town poems I’ve already written, for example “Litany to a Melancholic” and “The Creek”. The speaker in “The Creek” is a teenaged girl growing up in a “white trash” area of the same town and is raised by a single mother. She has aspirations of being an artist, and is very talented at illustration. She appears again in this poem — she is speaking in the left hand poem, and her mother is speaking in the right hand poem.

I hope you enjoyed this poem (or shall we say, 3-in-1 poem).

-Nicole
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Forget/Remember

Third Eye Celestial by N. Nicholson
Third Eye Celestial by N. Nicholson

This was the second poem written for Read Write Poem Prompt #77: Opposites Attract. I chose the cleave form because it allowed me to juxtapose the two ideas against each other while still having them connected in some way. You can read a cleave poem two ways: down or across. I hope you enjoy.

-Nicole
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forget then remember
everything that you know who you are
about yourself there is no question
you were never yours to abuse
to begin with this is sacrilege
you have always been sky carrying coruscating diamonds
being imprinted with someone else’s stars in your indigo flesh
chained cosmos is no easy heartache
a flesh-locked deity you must break open
a wicked case of amnesia must resurrect from the silent void
stars without a reason must learn to shine, for
you are you you are holy
you belong to us beloved
you are divine and irreplaceable

Written 6/2/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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