Raven's Wing Poetry » Prompt Poems

Pavements

ravenswingpoetry — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:14:39 +0000

Every morning, our feet take stretches of road
like pages, like pavements that have not yet
born our words, our miles, our smiles,
our tears. We reach up, we reach out,
we bring wheels to asphalt hoping that the next day
is not split in two by a fissure crack –
or two, or twenty –
of heartbreak. Yes, we humans chase pavements. And we
do it again, and again, and again. I do it every morning,
trying not to look behind me.

This morning, I read newspaper articles about you, and I
rewind. I am sixteen. It is the dark of morning
on a school day. I hesitate
to let feet fall out of a well-worn bed and
connect with hardwood floor. Underneath my heels
my words and tears lie sleeping under
a rug of ragged jonquil, tucked away to dream
between white college-ruled pages hidden between
the covers of a scarlet folder. If you were
to pry the journal from its resting place
or from my paranoid brown teenage fingers,
you would know the reason my feet
wish to sprout wings and fly instead of
connecting with hardwood floor,
or pavement, or tile: they pick on me,
too.

Sixteen. Or fifteen. Or fourteen. It doesn’t matter. I am
always sandwiched between two glass walls,
both of them rigid, algid, and unforgiving. From
both sides, they throw stones: the kids at school
making target practice out of a frizzy-haired mixed girl
who prefers Greek mythology and
building temples of mental worship out of books
instead of malls, clothes, and boys –
and my family lobbing boulders at me demanding to know
why I cannot be normal. I will not know until I am thirty-four
that the thing marking me for target practice is named
Asperger Syndrome and that its double-helix magic
is why I will never be normal. But in the meantime, I write poems,
trying to construct new pavement for my feet to follow
over the river choked with steel-mill chemical blood
and past too many apartments and houses that have seen
my nightmares.

What do your scars look like, Lynda?
Mine look like the edges of the lockers into which
I was shoved. My bruises are
shaped like triangles with ninety degree angles
from the shoulders of water fountains. I have
a detention slip hidden behind my spleen from where
a boy tormented me so bad that I cursed at him
in front of a teacher. And despite the fact that
I have learned to love the autism in my cells,
I still sometimes slide eyeballs to one side like abacus beads
with nimble-fingered precision and aim satellite ears
in the direction of a look or a whisper. I am thirty-five
and I still sometimes wonder if there are spider web rumors
weaved out of my synapses, blood veins, and eccentricities that
glisten in sunlight behind my back.

You took the road out of Escondido, chasing pavements
all the way to Syracuse. My feet found a bridge, crossed
that poisoned river, and followed a scholarship road
made out of yellow brick and which ended in Bowling Green.
But there are blistered off-ramps like nerves
poking out of my spine, each of them leading to
an early exit. Seventeen. Twenty-three. Tombstones
waiting for my name. Forks in highway with
still-born poems and unanswered propositions
lying by the side of the road, not even marked by
crosses or flowers. Do you have off-ramps too?
And if so, do you ever look back,
marveling at how you never took them?

Written 5/21/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #106, Fork in the Road. It was also written inspired partially by Adele’s song “Chasing Pavements” and the story of Lynda Frederick, a woman bullied during high school who wrote a poem to her classmates on the Facebook page for her high school class’s 25th reunion. The excerpt I read of her poem online as quoted from the Huffington Post was heartbreaking:

that little girl who came to school with the clothes she wore the day before
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who had to walk to school while others rode the bus
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who had bruises and was dirty
instead of asking why.. you picked on her
the little girl who was always crying
instead of asking why.. you picked on her

Thinking about her and my own experiences with bullying made me wonder about roads never taken. Sometimes, the off-ramps should be avoided. I almost crashed and burned on the shoulders of a couple of the off-ramps in mine, and I sincerely believe that had it not been for God and my now-fiance’s prayers, I would not be here.

I salute Lynda’s courage in writing her poem, addressing those who bullied her. I have never had the idea nor the courage to address my tormentors from high school, and I don’t know if I will ever address the people who made my life a living hell during that time of my life; instead, I pull some of that shrapnel out of my heart, grind it into ink, and use it for my poems. I hope that more of us come forward, tell our stories, and bring attention to the damage that bullying causes. Perhaps we can find a way to end this problem and the heartbreak it causes. We don’t need anymore young people like Phoebe Prince or Justin Aaberg believing that there is no end or hope in their sufferings.

-Nicole
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Holes

ravenswingpoetry — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:37:58 +0000

(Lakshmi and Persephone, to Sita)

(Lakshmi)
I don’t want to ask you about
how wide or how large the hole grew to –
I’d rather not remind you it’s even there
at all. When the white rabbit disappeared
down into the abyss, to the other side,
pocket watch in hand, a dandy’s waistcoat
girt about him like an old fool from sepia days,
we did not bid him goodbye, or Godspeed, or even
tears. Perhaps a veiled middle finger out of his sight,
or a “fuck you” shouted down the hole in frustration
for the pile of undone things he left behind — but that
was all we sent after him into the ether;

(Persephone)
and I wrestle with an arm larger than Atlas’
while Vishnu tries to keep the world turning
slowly in its days, trying not to knock the tin soldiers
off its surface, still trying to be steadfast, or jar
the shooting stars out of the cornflower midnight mantle
above our heads. Your honesty can make the embers
of a heart in someone else’s chest die, or
leap up in conflagration accusation, pointing
flame fingers at you and asking why there are
no tears, no eulogies, no honor for the dead – but how
do you mourn a crotchety old rabbit hypnotized
by his own pocket watch and refusing to drink in
the benevolent sun overhead? You don’t. If
a stone falls out of your shoe, tumbles into the river,
and is carried downstream out of sight, do you feel
any sorrow for the pebble? You don’t. But you
nod, accept the condolences, and shuffle away.

(Lakshmi)
Sita, has the urge to disappear into the ground
faded away? There is no more need to
cover your head with earth, to beg the eye and ear
of Rama to turn to you again and listen. But
the hole in the backyard attracts my questions,
the ones which I dare not ask lest I resurrect
things that should remain dead. Call it a
computer mind seeking data to parse, seeking lenses
to view the world around me through. You have just
broken through, like a mad woman hungry for air
bouncing up to drink the sky – it causes me to wonder
if there is even a hole in the yard at all.

(Persephone)
Earth was made to heal itself,
and holes must eventually swallow dirt
and become silent. I have a glass shatter heart
that knows what it is like to replay soundtracks
and celluloid memories until they wrap themselves
around your neck and close off the air
in your throat. I will not thread the projector,
I will not load the reel-to-reel and strangle you
with tape. The questions can wait, or never
speak themselves into the air. In the meantime,
I will teach you how to leap off the earth
in trampoline fury to grab and drink from a sky
that you have never tasted.

Written 3/28/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #100: Poet’s Choice. We were asked to write a brief description for a prompt idea, and then write the poem for that prompt. I must confess, my description will not be brief, but here it is….

I’d call this prompt “Entilo/Veedilo”. The title is taken from two words in Telugu, a Dravidian language commonly spoken in Andhra Pradesh in Southern India. It translates to “Inside/Outside”. For this prompt, I’d ask poets to write about inner conflict — specifically, when the norms of the group dictate we must do/say/believe/feel one thing (the “outside”) when we’d rather do/say/believe/feel something else (the “inside”).

I’d written the poem last night, before I even knew what the prompt was…and when I saw the prompt, it was easy to devise one that this poem would fit. As I mentioned in my last poem, a family member who I never got along with recently died, and I’ve had a bit of a conflict within myself about this. The reason why we never got along had to do more with this person than me — I tried to reach out to this person, get along, and be understanding, probably more than was healthy for me or my fiance. I don’t hate this person, but I am not sad that ze is gone either — only sad that this person did not take advantage of the life and opportunity given to hir. Normally, people would expect one to grieve and be sad at such a loss — but I must confess that I feel quite the opposite. I’ve had to do the best that I can when receiving remarks of condolence, namely reducing myself to saying “Thank you” when presented with such remarks. (I don’t think it would be in good taste to dance around and sing “Ding Dong, the Wicked Witch Is Dead”!)

Also, you’ll notice two voices in this poem. This is another one in the Goddess Chronicles, and here I introduce the mask of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, prosperity, light, wisdom, fortune, fertility, generosity and courage. I use her to represent the part of me that is curious, taking delight in asking questions and figuring out the world around her. I identify her with a concept I’ve mentioned in my other poems about Asperger’s with the “computer mind” — that is, storing large amounts of data, having a sharp memory, and attempting to parse and solve problems in a rather particular and logical way. You notice Persephone speaks here too — I’ve mentioned that Persephone is the more vulnerable part of me, but she’s also rather innocent and vivacious. I identify her with the “glass shatter heart” I speak of in my Asperger/autism poems — i.e. the very sensitive, emotional, and over-empathetic part of me.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with the long explanation, and I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
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Signs

ravenswingpoetry — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:32:02 +0000

Consider this: a white vase of red roses, sitting stately
upon a table, greeting the dawn, casting up its song
of fragrance. One day, a careless wind, an earthquake,
or an errant cat’s paw sends the vase tumbling:
prisoners of a reckless plummet to the ground,
the roses cannot stop their fall –
and the vase shatters into fragments and dust
that will meet and rejoin the earth it once rose from.

Or consider this: we reach out for a familiar hand one day
and the next, we barely feel the whisper of its fingertips
sliding past our own as it falls away, just out of
our grasp: and we marvel at the lack of fingerprints,
of the warmth of a palm, or of the barely captured memory
of knuckles and joints negotiating the turns, bends, and angles
required in the simple act of clasping a hand.

Roses leave no ghosts, and spirits leave no shadows.
The only signs of their existence live behind our eyes,
inside the attics enclosed by walls made of bone and
stuffed with keepsakes and moving film. And as we live,
we fill each other’s attics with stacks of old Polaroids,
boxes of bric-a-brac, trunks of old books, and
canisters of home movies on Super 8, curled up and sleeping,
waiting to uncoil and come to life.

Once we slip off these skin robes and exit, all of the
virtu, photographs, and film are stolen away with us,
housed behind a red door, carried as unseen binary code
imprinted upon our spirits. And who will read the code,
edit the films, or frame the photos?
Who will finish our unheard testimonies then?
Who will create and post our signs when the message is gone,
standing behind a glass wall, staring across a chasm
unheard, unseen, and unread by the living?

We are little creators — yes, even little craftsmen who
have wrought something new out of the stuff
in our attics. We can remove the dams and let our love
flood the space around us, giving our fellow itinerants
water to drink and relief from the unforgiving sun overhead. We can
pour our wine into the chalice and pass it around
in fellowship. But when will the chalice fall from our
trembling hands, or the snow-covered mountain break apart
and die, unable to feed the river’s streams again? We do not
know. After all, no one posts a sign in your backyard
to tell you when it is your time to go.

Written 3/20/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was not specifically written for the We Write Poems Signs Prompt, but I am sharing it as my offering for it this week.

I actually wrote it to read at a memorial service for a family member who recently died. I must be totally honest — this person and I never got along so I find myself with conflicting feelings about their death. Typically, elegies can honor the person they are written for or express grief and sadness at their passing — and this poem does neither. Instead, I chose to focus on how without warning, life can suddenly end — we don’t get an advanced sign from the Gods that our time is up. And since this person became ill and then died suddenly, I feel that this is the most appropriate thing that I can take away from this person’s death.

I believe that the best things we can do, knowing that our time can be up in an instance, is to give, love, and contribute something positive while we are still here. I hope you enjoyed the poem. Can you read the signs?

-Nicole
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Sky Drunk

ravenswingpoetry — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:38:15 +0000

(Persephone)

Every time I come up for air, I shovel
fistfuls of the sky into my mouth: the blue azure
berry wonderlands, tasting like superman sherbet tinctures
until they fade to nothing, climbing down my throat
to join the oceans behind my navel. When
I am done, there is a smear of sticky sweet
spread across my lips in post-hunger, turquoise afterglow –
and Hades knows where I have been:
and that is what happens on good days.

On bad days, I choke on the soot smut effluence
of steel mill towns, bear the rain’s weeping upon my back
until the weight of its water sorrow tear my robes
off my body, and suffocate in the wake
of Pele’s black smoke rage: then, I fall back to earth,
wing torn, while Icarus weeps at the sight of
my fall. Then, Hades still knows where I have been,
and I return, bracelet chained, consigned to be
a shadow. The sky follows me with her single eye,
sorry once again to see me go.

How do I wash the ashen dirt of those days
out of my teeth? I can drink more oceans,
choke down the wine of the Styx until my belly
becomes numb once again and I forget who
I was. And I wait for the sky to disrobe again and show her
unclouded nakedness, my pupils open-mouthed
and holding back my envy. Then, I rise again, dig my hands in,
and take handfuls of sky love like a vacant-bellied woman who
has never seen death but has only seen springtime,
hungry and erupting in loud, vibrant, virgin births out of
the ground.

The worst days are when the Martians invade – those days,
I choke down green flesh, green fear, and
skies littered with vapid, pale bone horsemen
and meteors of screaming red angry that rip
the chords out of my throat. There is a man
on a lonely Greek island who dreamed of eating a book:
some days, I eat the images in that book
painted across our skies by nonsense-makers wearing
tin foil hats.

But not today. I land on a cumulus and
launch myself from its soft stomach in trampoline madness. I
grab more handfuls of azure, cram them into my
open mouth, and let the blessed blue drip
down my chin. I am greedy and Sapphic, drunk and lusty-eyed
like my pupils cannot hold enough wine. Fuck Hades:
I will have this happiness one more time.

Written 2/23/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #95 — the Other Side of Nature. We were asked to describe an aspect of nature, and “the challenge is to use terms not the usual or obvious for that subject”.

This ended up being another one in the “Goddess” series — this time I chose the mask of Persephone, the Greek goddess of the underworld. I chose Persephone to represent the part of me that is vulnerable, is most woundable, has been sheltered, and in the past was a bit naive. Persephone represents what is hidden that the tougher parts of me (i.e. those represented for example by Pele or the Morrígan) try to protect or conceal because unfortunately, this has been the aspect of me most abused and taken advantage of. When one considers that Persephone was abducted by Hades, raped, and then tricked into spending a third (or half, depending on whose mythology you read) of her life in the underworld, I think choosing her for this aspect of me is rather appropriate.

Anyway. I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
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To A Plane Tree

ravenswingpoetry — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:58:57 +0000

(The Morrígan)

If I could lean on a limb of yours
broken away and cast from your body –

a good solid limb, stripped of its old bark
and bearing brown scaled skin underneath –

then my legs would never give way,
and neither would my heart. If one queen
brought her husband to health underneath your uplifted arms,
then why can I not seek healing at your feet? I need relief
from the slow centuries still settled into my shoulders.

I have a million ravens resting upon those shoulders,
stone-carved ravens that cannot tell a woman
apart from a tree. Maybe they think that I will
give them rest, just as you have given me after
every time I became black flight, feathered warnings,
ghastly predictions of fields and hills torn apart
like bread, like breasts, like ribcages, like
families. I have been entrusted with the fields, with the
furrows, with the plow, and even with the life
springing forth from seed or loin –
but all they remember me for is the raven’s flight,
the shadow I cast on the battlefield,
the warning that every sword craves a throat like
teeth that enjoy parting skin to get to the blood underneath.

Fight, or fuck? That is the question
of my existence. I’ve offered my love to
the same, tired passel of young warriors, almost
lulled to death myself from the repetition – and
the story is always the same: they refuse
my love. They see me and their blood freezes to a
slow infinity instead of running red and hot, like
the passions from Pele’s skin. They think that
I always wear raven feathers and
make love to swords – and they love their swords
more than a warm refuge inside the ancient tunnels.

So, dear plane tree, will you hold me
with your arms again? I tire of
warrior promises and warrior rejections. I was closet-born
this time around, and I crave the sun, the air,
the soft new grass under an unshod soul, and
your sure, steady limbs. Saturn, my father this time,
knew how to swallow, knew how to kill trees,
knew how to build closets and lock daughters inside
their wooden bellies – but he knew nothing of
heartbeats, color, or sun soaking into tree bark skin
and limbs lifted up to give thanks to the sky. And he knew
nothing of your arms, which have held me when
he was absent, counting time and swallowing my siblings. I am
tired of seducing warriors, wearing black feathers, and
stealing the sun – I will leave him in the sky to warm us both
and I will rest, perched upon one of your limbs,
and watch Love rise up from the fields
once she is sure that the swords are gone.

Written 2/21 and 2/22/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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This poem was written for We Write Prompts #94, Ode to a Tree. I think I went a bit on a tangent with this one — the speaker is addressing the tree but also speaking of herself at the same time.

This poem was written this time wearing the mask of the Morrígan, a Celtic goddess associated with fertility, battle, and death; she is also considered a triple goddess. Not too far off from the Norse Valkyries, the raven is associated with her — she was said to fly over the battlefield and either strike terror into the hearts of warriors or inspire gladness and confidence for victory. She attempted to give her love to the Irish warrior, Cu Chulainn, but he spurned her…and as they say, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Cu Chulainn died in battle…and his enemies only believed him dead when a raven landed on his shoulder.

I believe there is a “Goddess Chronicles” that is emerging here, beginning with the “Pele” poem from last week and also including the “Radha” poem I wrote shortly after. I’m choosing some goddesses from various pantheons to represent different aspects of myself and to say different things to different people. I chose the Morrígan to represent a darker aspect of myself. She feels isolated from the outside world, and frequently sought companionship from men who are emotionally unavailable. She is the part of me at home in the darkness, at home with darker imagery, but in the end would really prefer love, light, and the sun. Expect to hear more from her in the future.

Also, some explanation about the plane tree — it is the sycamore maple tree of Europe and is referred to also as the Scottish maple or the Celtic maple. Legend has it that Mary, Queen of Scots, nursed her sick husband back to health under a plane tree located at Darnley in Glasgow.

I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
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Pele Courts Vishnu, In Human Form

ravenswingpoetry — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:03:16 +0000

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.

These fingers have been everywhere, exploring sacred darkness:
the ancient tunnels, opening to my sapphic curiosity;
Dionysian obelisks, causing them to quiver and straighten;
Olympian peaks, in search of ambrosia;
back doors, opening gently with secret tactile passwords.
I have claimed the skin of loved ones, unlocking seized up muscles
like tense diaries with doors bolted shut. I have coaxed
closed lips to open, educing river flow from solar plexus, navel,
and second chakra until my beloved and I consign ourselves
to drowning.

And now, you are here. You have learned
that fingertip touch like feathers makes me scream,
mouth closed, and button my skin to hold me closed in
so that I do not explode so soon – but those same fingers
firmly upon my skin light fires that amplify and accelerate
towards slow burn. I cannot help but undo buttons, expose
rounded goblets and red founts, and dance for your eyes.

Lover of lotus, sapphire man, keeper of Order,
you have already walked with me to discover
this computer mind and glass-shatter heart
with cable nerves stripped open bequeathed by an
Asperger gift — but did you know that I wear a
body of fire and fingers of flame? In this dense and heady darkness,
do you wish to see Pele glow?
And do you dare to see Pele blow?
You must unlock her with fingertips and gentle conquest,
dance the careful balance between pacific and tempestuous,
release the love and fury by turns. And it will be no hard task
for you — you already can hold fire
in the palm of your hand.

Written 2/9/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #93: Finger Painting, which directed us to explore and consider the fingers and then write a poem.

I wanted to explore both Asperger’s and sexuality with this poem. I find that Pele — the Hawaiian goddess of fire, lighting, wind, and volcanoes — is a perfect mask through which to speak about both, since my sensory issues and the occasional meltdown are part of my Asperger experience.

Rudy Simone, author of Aspergirls, says that because of heightened sensitivity to physical stimuli, women with Asperger’s with either enjoy sex or dislike it. I think you can guess which category I fall into. According to legend, Pele is a rather sensual deity who has had many lovers.

And meltdowns, which can result from sensory overload or low frustration tolerance, can be quite painful, embarrassing, and explosive…and according to legend, Pele has a bad habit of throwing temper fits (and lava along with them).

Additionally, I was inspired by Tori Amos’ song, “Muhammad My Friend” which is off of her album, Boys for Pele (no surprise there, huh)? One lyric in the song especially inspired the poem: “And Moses I know/I know you’ve seen fire/But you’ve never seen fire/Until you’ve seen Pele blow”. (N.B. I would imagine that Pele would wear Shiseido Red (either the perfume or the lipstick color)).

-Nicole
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A Study in Color

ravenswingpoetry — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:12:53 +0000

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.

Were it not for my mad
paint and canvas soliloquies, odes to this world,
haiku of scenery, and elegies of the dead,
you might never notice me at all. I’d move
soundlessly through your world like a flesh wrapped ghost –
buttoned down, broken lips, dismissed
as the man with a vacant mind and no voice;
a rocking horse man, a bird man
flapping arms like Alcatraz cannot hold him. If I were any older,
I might have been a man of closets, of white walls, or of
padded rooms. Or the trickster Coyote as man, accused of
holding demons in my limbs, of
trapping my glances and gazes in my eyes out of avarice,
of letting speech ferment in my mouth out of spite,
and of walking in soulless shoes.

Can you pull your souls out of your shoes
for just a door crack of a moment, just to see
what kinds of colors I have picked up from your world?
Years ago, you had banished the black from your lunch counters;
corralled the red into wastes of dry death land;
built the railroads out of yellow bones and broken ties;
made pale fragile souls from the green land
scrape streets with bare bones fingers;
shoved the rainbow strange behind charcoal prison bars – and now,
you look at me and see nothing but puzzle pieces, ribbons, and
a cause.

Listen carefully: I am not green
like the dollars you raise to cure me,
or sable like the pocketbooks you pity me with,
or white like the institutional walls
you used to sentence us to live within
like some dry, dead ghosts that you cannot exorcise. But
I walk this earth in canvas shoes, paint splattered like a motley skin –
and the black, red, yellow, and rainbow
have imprinted their umbra of fallen colors
upon my soul. I might only possess the eloquence of paint,
flapping arms, or touch screen, text-to-speech oratory –
and sometimes, the branches of the speech nerves in my brain
become too brittle and shatter, breaking off and flying away
as wordless screams. But I am no less a man, and
I contain multitudes of words, breath, and colors.
I will not march to demand your notice,
and I will not hold signs to demand your respect. Know that
I am comfortable with silence and my unexplained brain wiring –
but I must ask you one question:
are you comfortable with me?

Written 2/5/12 and 2/6/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem is for We Write Poems Prompt #92, Big Shoes, suggested by Donald Habour. The prompt is about civil rights. I kept having the image of shoes floating through my mind, and then the non-verbal autistic painter who first appeared in “This Is Not Magic” rose to the surface to speak. I was also further inspired by this CBS News broadcast in late 2011 about the use of iPads to help non-verbal autistics communicate. And I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
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Filed under: Asperger Poetry, Poems, Prompt Poems, WWP Prompt Poem Tagged: ableism, art, artists, autism, Autism Poetry, big shoes, civil rights, civil rights for autistic people, equal rights, homophobia, i am a man, non-verbal, non-verbal autistic, painter, painting, Poems, poet, poetry, poets, racism, sexism, shoes, speech

Poem for 2012

ravenswingpoetry — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:17:14 +0000

Can we crash through the ceiling
and rise like newly begotten dreams
to become sky,
transmute into fire to merge with stars?
Do we welcome this new year
like a mad conjurer pushing a pachyderm
up the stairs to a fifth floor walk up
on the Lower East Side?
Do we live in the elephant’s shadow,
waiting for it to fall or do we
cheer the madman on, hoping to resolve the past
while fires burn from the fallen brimstone below?
Do we live, shuddering, half-living phantoms
in a lightless, aphotic crevice of an ancient lunatic’s jaw,
crouched behind a broken, blood soaked tooth?
Or do we lift arms like wings and rise?
Do we greet this as a dawn, rewritten,
the old mistakes as erasures curling inward
and fetal, floating as smoke and dying in the newborn wind?

We raise signs. We shout refrains. We occupy
streets. We declare our sacred humanity
in the faces of endless jaws,
all of them boasting rows of broken teeth,
all of them leaking out decrepit and crackled souls
balanced barely on the edge of decay, bloated with money
and with eyes filled with Revelation death schemes. We weave dreams
in the face of the dreamless. We crash through ceilings
in the face of the weighted down earth bound
with leaden and sick bellies turgid with blood. We transmute
into fire to defy the burnt out ends of older days,
bleary-eyed and spent, exhausted from the chase of what
can never be found, coin-heavy and power-charged. We merge
with stars in the face of those that declare that Heaven is a figment,
or an insane man’s wish, or a wasteland not fit for
habitation.

Hear me, Oh people. You must know one thing:
ceilings only serve to hold in. They deserve to be
crashed through, torn through their bellies like paper declarations,
eviscerated to clear the dirt of sleep from freshly opened
Eyes. You must know that the stars can be
held in the palms of simple hands and that
dreams can be weaved again, re-imaged from
the rubble of broken years. You must know that
fire will not burn you if you become it and that
angels are ordinary people. Check for the
wings emerging through your back, for the power
to lift beyond ceilings and clouds that you never knew
existed. And as you move through this year, ever checking
your compass, eying uncertain prophecies
and promises of oblivion, remember that wings
serve to make their owner fly — and if you rise to
the sun, they will never melt away.

Written 1/29/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #91: Kissing the Ceiling (the image for the prompt is here). This inspired me to move beyond a mere kissing of said ceiling…and with all the doomsday 2012 stuff in the zeitgeist lately, I wanted to write at least one thing that would counter all the fear and negativity. I hope I did my task justice.

-Nicole
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Filed under: Poems, Prompt Poems, WWP Prompt Poem Tagged: 2012, Age of Aquarius, doomsday, future, hope, Kissing the ceiling, poem for 2012, Poems, poet, poetry, poets, prompt, prompt poem, Prompt Poems, Revelation, we write poems, We Write Poems Prompt, WWP, WWP Poem, WWP Poem Prompt, WWP Prompt

Time

ravenswingpoetry — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:18:46 +0000

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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Filed under: Cleave, Poems, Prompt Poems, WWP Prompt Poem Tagged: Cleave, Poems, poet, poetry, prompt, prompt poem, Prompt Poems, split, war, War poetry, we write poems, We Write Poems Prompt, WWP Poem, WWP Prompt Poem

How to Dream

ravenswingpoetry — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:04:27 +0000

The #6 bus makes its paces through the town:
up Baxter Street, past Millege, up Sanford, past
the Library, past the transit center, and then looping around
to Hancock Street. Everything is slick from the

rain, which the bus’ tires play like an instrument
in legato hissing as they bisect puddles on
the pavement: on cobblestone streets, the hissing
is punctuated by the short thuds of its tires

hitting each crack in the stones in countermelody. And now,
here begins the first layer of a dream: a tree
has thrown itself up in sacrifice, its living reflection in the bus window
mutating with every moment as if to signal you;

but it is only vibrating at it bends to the will of the
rain-dotted December wind. In the second layer of the dream,
an old stone building crouches, a shy and errant child,
behind the tree flashing a single orange light;

but it is empty, for its children have gone home.
Beneath these two window layers lies another:
a view of downtown, blurred, hurried, and smeared with rain
and busy shoppers. Try to pick out one lonely man or

a heavy-minded woman wielding a squirming child, and
you will miss your stop, but the brownstones will stay
and welcome you. Tell now, what is
dreaming? You try to reach out to the images through

the Street View, but the window’s faces keep
changing. Is Weird Al peeking out through
the mutating tree branches? This ain’t his town. Did
Abbie imprint himself onto the glass to joint Stipe

and company in this town’s activism and care? You shrug and
keep looking through the window until this shifting screen
slides to reveal another view, and you get off the bus in front
of City Hall to begin your walk to the record store. Its

spartan and dirty vanilla face worn with age stands
window wide-eyed, poster-torn, its third eye neon sign glowing
igneous red-hot instead of a serene indigo or a placid white
heavy with wisdom. You reach out again, and try to push

your fingertips through the digital to feel a cold and solid
glass door welcome: but you remain on this side of the looking glass,
unable to penetrate the Windows. Somewhere, you imagine
Bill Gates smirking at your predicament: between you

and the Universe lies a window, upon which your mind
weaves another layered dream. But how do you visit
a town you have never seen? You read once about a man
in the Bible, Jabez, who prayed for blessing, and God enlarged him

beyond his hands and heart: but how do you enlarge your coast,
expand beyond this window? In the city on the river there is a
girl without a dream: but you are not content to be empty. You,
the dreamer in in ink, reach back into the well to try

again. You have always been constructing your world
out of old dusty pages, pictures, glue, and closed eyes
beneath a starry ceiling, but now, it is digital ink,
virtual pages, and electron-constructed photographs. Nothing
has changed: you are thirty-five years old, and still dreaming.

Written 12/19/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson except for materials in italics, which are copy; 1983 and 1984 R.E.M. Athens, LLC. All Rights Reserved on material by N. Nicholson
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #85 — Rinse, repeat, windows revisited and One Single Impression Prompt #199: Inkpot. For the WWP Prompt, we were asked to mentally erase our last impression of the window image, and write another poem fresh and anew. I tied this poem in with the OSI prompt (which I have not written for in a VERY long time) and threw in an old, long-standing wish to visit Athens, Georgia…which right now I can only construct through a tour of Google Maps, all of the research about R.E.M. I have done (this was one of my major special interests in college and still is), as well as my memories of the music.

I tried for a bit of a departure from last week’s poem, and I hope I succeeded.

-Nicole
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