This piece was written for one of the Read Write Poem prompts this week – this one for Read Write Word #5 (visit the link to the prompt to check it out). The Wordle prompts are collections of words; you may write using one, some, or all of them.

-Nicole

———————————————
the city is calling
he slips on a jacket
denim, worn and faded
like the years in his too-old eyes

he glances in the mirror
decides to leave the two-days beard growth on his face
to stand tall and erect
clean is not his scene tonight
the shadows are better companions tonight

the ocean of concrete and steel beneath his feet
calls his name softly
murmurs promises of anonymous adventure
he can dip beneath the surface
swim with the common congregation
go places where rich boys dare not go
unless they want adventure
or death

he pauses to reconsider
but lust punctuates ennui
and joins with wanton come-ons calling him
to jump into the void, grasp heels, sink his teeth in
devour bone and blood
together, they turn his head, kiss his lips
stick a tongue in his ear

and he’s off

and he’s gone

Written 12/10/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This piece, which uses chained hay(na)ku inside, was written for Read Write Poem Prompt # 52: Face Your Fears and Do It With Oomph!

This poem, in essence, is “to be continued”, as I was very recently diagnosed with type II diabetes. It runs in my family. A very prominent member of my family died of complications one month short of her fiftieth birthday because she did not follow doctor’s orders, did not take her insulin, did not watch her sugar intake. When she died in October 2000, she had already had one heart attack, one or two toes amputated, and had been completely blind for five years prior to her death.

When I was diagnosed in September of this year, the first thing I thought of was how she died, and this spectre has been hanging over my head since my diagnosis. How am I facing the fear of going out like she did? Taking control of my blood sugar levels…and writing this poem, which is more or less a transcript of my mind when I began to catalog and reckon with my greatest fear to date. It’s a little different than anything I’ve tried before, so gentle reader, please bear with me as I take you along for the ride.

-Nicole

———————————————–

daylight
has faded
only night remains
a banshee’s song
in my
ears

[this is the end]

and
a man
left alone inside
a vast wilderness
without my
love

[my only friend, the end]

there
will be
no more stories
no more poems
no more
songs

[of our elaborate plans]

you
lay me
low, sugar rivers
of bloodstream madness
emptying into
tissue

[of everything that stands]

steal
my life
steal my skin
and wear it,
coins over
eyes

[no safety or surprise]

crumble
an ancient
paper doll girl
sugar burned skin
missing toes
blind

[i'll never look into your eyes again]

then
early expiration
like mislabeled milk
wicked libations poured
down the
drain

[driver, where you takin' us?]

inside
my genes
this betrayal began
softly, slowly, sharpening
diabetic carnivorous
teeth

[the killer awoke before dawn]

the killer was inside me all along

Written 11/7/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson EXCEPT items in italics and brackets, which are excerpted from “The End” and © 1967 The Doors. All Rights Reserved on portions of this work authored by N. Nicholson.

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This was written for the Read Write Poem Prompt #47: Of Monsters and Dinosaurs Enjoy.

-Nicole

————————————————-

bone upon bone
ash upon ash
dust upon dust
femurs meet like cursed wood to form a cross
death at the epicenter
frozen inside the still, lifeless ground at my feet

I can’t help but lean in for a closer look
the books
I have read
of dead men and lizards
cannot compare to the sight before my eyes
I could curl up and sleep inside the motionless skull
I’m sure this Rex was a skyscraper in his time
devouring creatures into his windowless inside existence
his stomach a machine of nutrients and death

my heart stabbed, my arm goes numb
I am alone on this stripped, earthen, bone-pregnant ground
I fall into the arms of dust
to sleep forever
where my bones collide with his
to form more crosses, bear more shame
of a life unknown and forgotten
no one waits for me on the upper layers
of continents shifting slowly across the rainbow
of millions of years, dragging ten thousand shades
of brown dirt upward to form
chocolate and caramel strata

maybe someday
they’ll dig me up too

Written 10/9/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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-Nicole

———————————

Women in the silence
engender violence
through the sonic, verbal vacuum
which resounds in the room
while injured wait.
Time hesitates –
seconds squeeze through
invisible intravenous tubes
injecting a slow day into
bruised emotional veins
which scream of the pain
of waiting here.
These women, they stare
into empty chairs
where their loved ones sat
before that
triage nurse called their names –
or they play peek-a-boo
with glances strained,
going insane
over why their loved ones’ names
ain’t been called yet.
I regret
to inform you all
that y’all
will waste
this day posthaste
by your tightrope wire stares
into nowhere
and your silent,
yet ever violent
mental itching
and unsaid bitching.

Written 9/23/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This was written for Read Write Poem prompt #45: Word Fishing. This challenged me a little, and I have to admit, I had fun.

For this exercise, we had to read five poems by the same author, or one poem each from five different authors. We chose a word that jumped out at us, then wrote it on a slip of paper or a card, and then shuffled the cards, drawing one randomly. That word was to be a part of the first sentence or line we wrote. I cheated (a little) and wrote more around the meaning of the first word rather than literally put it in my first line (although I did eventually use it in the first stanza).

My fives words, in the order that I drew them (with the author and title of the poems the words came from), were as follows:

-Nicole

———————————————-

There is a place above our minds,
a thin, translucent realm where our
eyeballs roll up into every night to
watch dreams emerge from a foggy
womb. We all go there to
watch the spectacle of unreality and
surreality emerge and dance before
us, fresh, wet, and sloppy. This is
TRUE transcendence, yet it is so
fragile – a butterfly’s wing, a
gossamer thread in a windstorm.
It disappears in an instant,
the moment we break above water
and smell the surface of reality – steam,
sun, and salt. Sometimes, mixed in with
acrid smog and pungent, nose-bruising shit.

We dreamers, we humans, are a
legion of gossamer threads, poised,
nervous, vibrating in the jaws of a
Moirae’s shears. Me, I hang
above death as sugar rides my blood
waves into oblivion. If they erode
my shores, then my eyes will become
blind, my kidneys will become necrotic
levees that no longer function, and my
toes will dangle dangerously above
the scalpel, a sword of Damocles. I
am a Fahrenheit wonder torn asunder
by bruised expectations and hollow eyes.
The Jabberwocky strikes – teeth sink in,
and I know not what to call what bit me.

Yet when I dream, I reach above
kingdoms, weave them together, and
create my own shiny palace of temporary
exile. Azure coasts, golden glint dancing
on mirrored lakes, and blue above the blue
seduce me into staying forever – but that
is when the thread will be cut and I will
fall into death, for death and dream dance
cheek to cheek on either side of the same
thin line of consciousness. I know
that I cannot stay.

So the next time that I am in those
butterfly wing dreams before daylight
violently rips through them, before its
knife crosses the boundaries of thin,
somnolent flesh, I know that if I look
hard enough, I will see…you.

And you.

And you.

And the rest of the souls crowding
our nervous, uncertain plane of being.

And for once, I will stop feeling alone.

Written 9/21/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

I’m a little late for Monday Mural, but the image was so inspiring…that I wrote this poem for it. Enjoy.

-Nicole

—————————————————-

I would caress
her soft, painted back now
but I would ruin the art
before my hungry eyes

she posed for me
against stucco bearing
midnight blue and rojo
village scenes

her back
aching for a voice
so I gave her six strings
to sing about

anything

so she sang about love
she sang about wearing
white flowers in her hair
at the tip-top of midnight

and posing bare backed
for a brand new stranger

who finds that the swanlike curves
of a woman’s neck
can wear a painted fretboard
like nobody’s business

and mi corazon
is about to explode

but I don’t mind dying
in the cool shadows of this
midnight

as long as she
is the last thing my tired
eyes see

and the last thing
my brushes and pigments
sing about in loud, livid color

Written 9/9/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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My suggested prompt for One Single Impression, “Defenses Down”, is their prompt for the week of September 7 (prompt #28). This is the poem I wrote for the prompt. Enjoy.

-Nicole

—————————————————

I drank to soften nerves that were
cutting me like unseen knives

at that party, amidst strangers
scared of the face in the mirror

the goody two-shoes, the freak
encased in stone

the stranger

I drank to plow down walls
constructed by a suspicious
upbringing and moral lessons
pounded into a mind

that grabbed onto concepts, oughts,
and shoulds with iron teeth
and pounded them into my flesh

until metal facades were
indistinguishable from my own skin

I tried to drown my walls
in a sea of beer, peach Schnapps,
something faintly tasting like blackberries,
and whatever else I could get
my hands on that night

and my walls, oh my walls

they melted until my eyes
couldn’t see straight
and I watched the party ensue
through alcoholic glasses

then she came

she charged into my garden
and stole my fruit

the gate would have stopped her

but it had been washed away
in the stinky fermented tide
of the last beer I downed
before my head began to swim

this is not how walls
should tumble down
a gate washed out to sea
can never be searched and found
in time to stop invading armies
from stealing your treasure

and I guarded mine
for years after that party
behind iron gates harder
than diamonds

and I still hesitate sometimes
to give it away
to the one who deserves it the most

Written 9/1/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #42: Catch Some Words. I actually had composed this early this morning, before I even knew about the prompt…..

I had come across the poem “Abortion Stories” when reading a book of Jim Morrison’s poetry…and then found out that the words later became The Doors’ song, “Peace Frog”. These are the words that caught me:

“Indians scattered on a dawn’s highway bleeding,
ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind.”

From there, I was inspired to write “Nightmare”. Enjoy.

-Nicole

———————————-
(for J. Morrison)

You were five.

This was when they still called you “Jimmy”.

You saw them scattered on the highway,
standing outside broken and smashed trucks –
some weeping, some bleeding. You begged
your parents to help them. Do something.

They called the police and an ambulance.
But you kept pleading, perhaps for the souls
scattered and shattered before your eyes,
perhaps for yourself, or perhaps for both.
Do something.

Frustrated, worn out, and perhaps exasperated,
your father then told you that what you had
seen was just a dream. A nightmare, even.

So you took that nightmare and buried it in your
skin. Buried it in your soul. You took that nightmare
and spun it into tales. Showed us the faces of your
nightmare. Some of us understood. Some of us
did not. Either way, your life became a rich, elaborate
nightmare that exhausted your mind and body. And
you projected that nightmare into the skies and
into your words.

And one night, you collapsed under the weight of
that nightmare with only a bathtub filled
with a few inches of lukewarm water
to catch you when you fell.

When you fell, the earth fell with you.

And we still can feel her shaking.

Written 8/28/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Written 7/27/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This fib chain was written, actually, for both of the Rocking Chair Prompts this week: “What’s really on your mind?” and “What days in your life will you always remember and why?” Enjoy.

-Nicole
—————————————————-
for
some
it was
Kennedy
gunned down in a car
in broad Dallas motorcade daylight

for
some
it was
Doctor King
a giant cut down
death on a motel balcony

for
some
it was
John Lennon
brilliance in words
silenced forever by bullets

for
me
it was
Kurt Cobain
as MTV News
announced his terminal silence

and
that
moment
forever
remains frozen fresh
in my seventeen year-old mind

Written 7/18/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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