Category Archives: Lent 2009 Challenge Poems

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From

This piece is highly unusually for me, as I do not normally write poems with end line rhyme and in this style…but I decided to have some fun. It was written for Read Write Poem’s NaPoWriMo #12: Where Do You Come From?. Have fun reading…

-Nicole

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I come from
              my mother’s Kentucky mouth
             and my father’s New Jersey lips,

             the echoes of trans-Atlantic chains
             and violated plantation hips;

from
             souls written in fiddle, dulcimer, and pipes
             upon Killarney’s stony pages,

             and barbed wire and machine gun symphonies
             exacting war’s nightmare wages;

from
             holy Cherokee prayers and
             sacred Delaware incantations,

             and African Methodist Episcopal
             Sunday morning celebrations;

from
             dinners spelled out in cornbread, catfish,
             soup beans, and collard greens,

             and teenage nights curled up on my bed
             nursing inner pain unseen;

from
             worn-out Doc Martins and sullen eyes
             lined with Neil Gaiman black

             and ancestral blood that threatens me with
             an early heart attack;

from
             Sonoran desert rainbows –
             my skin forever embued

             with azure, crimson, gold, indigo,
             and strains of turquoise blue;

             and now, I come from Ohio wearing
             silver in my eyes

             pulled from endless years living under
             masked pale winter skies.

I come from
             lakefront summers carrying
             Milwaukee lilacs in their arms

             and pots of coffee played to the weary backbeat
             of 5:00 A.M. alarms;

from
             sound boards, wearing music
             and microphones as my mask;

and from
             every odd job, unemployment check,
             and ignoble mindless task.

I come from
             Frost, Dunbar, Angelou, Giovanni,
             Williams, Sia, Hughes,

             Morrison, Poe, Ali, and Ginsberg – they all
             taught me how to sing the blues;

             and now, I come from rhyme, metaphor, and line
             spoken into the air

             or tattooed into paper skins and flung
             from my hands to share

             with you this graphic, deranged riddle
             so that you will understand

             just where it is I that come from
             and precisely who I am.

Written 4/14 and 4/15/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Stumble It!

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Jack

This was written for NaPoWriMo #7: Nicknames over at Read Write Poem. I decided to do a darker take of the prompt, more along the lines of an alter ego idea. I should warn readers that this poem deals with a sensitive subject (sexual abuse) — I namely do this to avoid accidentally triggering any survivors who read my blog.

-Nicole

Continue reading →

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Once Upon A Time

This was written for NaPoWriMo #5: A Little Introspection or 50-Word Pickup over at Read Write Poem. The ten words I used out of my 25 word pickup (I couldn’t get 50 words, so I worked with what I got) are in italics. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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I was not built to study ichthyology – but
once upon a time, I swam

with fishes
Continue reading →

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Wicked

This was written for Read Write Poem’s NaPoWriMo#3: Three in a Row. I took the “trinity” theme a little loosely and wrote this. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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The trinity of you, me, and God
cannot stand on the head of a pin. We
cannot split hairs, dividing truth from
truth – because this one thing is truth,
the fact that
Continue reading →

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To Earth

I admit, I cheated a little with this one, since I wrote in in late March — but I’d still like to share it, since I feel it fits with Read Write Poem Prompt # 72, “Spring Has Sprung”. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

- T.S. Elliot, “Wasteland”

I call you up with cruelty. I break your back
with rain. My fingers dig into your flesh
and pull life upward from the thin cloak
of death that you put on last winter. You can’t

fool me.
You just look brown, tired, and
barren.
Continue reading →

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Clumsy

Our prompt this week at over at Read Write Poem was “Spring Has Sprung” — but I decided to do a little something different this week.

I used a line from Annamari’s poem, “Farewell” http://amidweststory.blogspot.com/2009/03/farewell-2-for-readwritepoem-71.html as an epigraph. This poem was inspired partially by her line and partially by one of Barbara Fant’s poems, “Black Feathers”. (If you don’t know about Barbara Fant, she is a awesome Columbus, Ohio poet who can be heard regularly at Writing Wrongs Poetry — she recently slammed at Women of the World Poetry Slam 2009).

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the poem.

-Nicole

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Falling requires grace and I’m already clumsy.
-Annamari

I once heard a poet describe how
black feathers fall from the sky, children dripping
pieces of themselves as they attempt to fly,
climbing clumsily, but yet knowing, somehow,
that they

must

still try to fly: but I Continue reading →

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When Godzilla Flattens Your Car on Monday Morning

This week’s Read Write Poem Prompt was “It’s All About the First Line.” We participants all donated a first line for other poets to use as a first line to write their poem with. I chose the line, “when Godzilla flattens your car on Monday morning,” donated by John of Transylvanian Dutch. I haven’t been writing much humorous poetry lately, but I hope you get a laugh out of this. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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When Godzilla flattens your car on Monday morning,
don’t call me. I am an exterminator of
strange creatures, both large and small –
but I do not handle

giant lizards.

I can’t even say who you’d call. That
half-stepping Chihuahua with his wack-ass
box-on-a-stick-tied-to-a-string booby-trap
would not be my first choice, and Superman’s
on vacation. Dream claims he ain’t responsible,
and Death – she only handles cases of the
human variety. I hear the X-Men are tied up
fighting their own battles. And don’t even

think

of asking Jim Morrison. He sang about
lizards, but he won’t come back from
the dead to exterminate them for you.

So when Godzilla flattens your car on Monday morning,
I don’t know what to tell you –
but don’t be calling me. I got my hands full, lady.
I’ve got

overgrown radioactive beavers
building toxic waste drum dams
and damming up the river.
(Damn rodents.)
I’ve got

mosquitoes the size of small dogs
chasing toddlers two neighborhoods over.
And I got

a house infested with green slime
and strange spectral disturbances
over on 14th Street. I tell ‘em to call
the Ghostbusters – but who gets the call?
Me. Who has to go over to the house
dressed in full HAZMAT gear and
dragging a Catholic priest along for
protection? Me. Who got some
sliming-looking motherfucker
jumping out of the walls and
threatening to turn his
nut sack into a wallet? Me.
So when Godzilla flattens your car on Monday morning,

lady,
don’t call me.
I can’t do a thing for you.
All I can tell you to do
is just sit back, relax,
and watch the destruction.

Written 3/24/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson except for the line “when Godzilla flattens your car on Monday morning,” donated by John of Transylvanian Dutch. All Rights Reserved on all original material by N. Nicholson.

Stumble It!
Stumble It!

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Resurrection

Whose Eyes Are These?
Whose Eyes Are These? by Nicole Nicholson

This was written for two purposes: 1) for Read Write Prompt #70: In Your Face (poetry, that is), and 2) a personal project.

The personal project is to write one poem per day for Lent (excepting Sundays). To help myself out, I have been pulling lines from other people’s poetry to jump-start my own inspiration. The lines I used to jump-start this one come from Jim Morrison’s “Paris Journal”. You can check out more poems I’ve written like this by clicking here. And be sure that I’ll be posting more of these kinds of poems throughout the Lenten season.

Now, enjoy the poem.

-Nicole

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Tell them you came & saw
& look’d into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
            - Jim Morrison

Darkness and storms in my eyes – but
I can see your windows clearly. So clearly, they

speak to me,

telling me of dreams pulverized – slapped
across the face, shoved face first into
dust, kicked until their bones cracked
and angels bled and cried for mercy on their
tortured behalf. And fantasies – drowned
until they died in twilight, exhaling gasps and then
nothing but a slow dying whimper. I know that
Continue reading →

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The Nobleman

This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #69: What’s Eating You? I decided to go the drink route and explored wine for this week’s poem. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

-Nicole

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to think that this wine
is liquid ghost –
grapes dying for our pleasure,
he thinks

as he takes another sip
Continue reading →

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The Poet

This poem was written using words from Read Write Word prompt #11. Enjoy.

-Nicole
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You set a book to my ribs.
Night after night I unclasp it
at the mirror’s edge

alphabets flicker and soar.
Write in the light
of all the languages
you know the earth contains,
you murmur in my ear.
This is pure transport.
                     – Meena Alexander

He reads lines. He reads lines pressed into
his heart from a book pressed into his chest,
the pages filled with magic molded with his
bare hands from tumbling, lucid, luscious words
a long time ago. His book, his lines – but he’d
lost his words when they tumbled out to sea.
He had chased them down, but they had looked back,
Continue reading →