learn how
not to flinch
the hand raised
could be hello
you look for squalls
when there is only sunshine on the waters
and the wind is asleep Continue reading
Category Archives: Read Write Word Prompt Poem
NaPoWriMo Poem #19: Unravel
You think that I’m brave to tug at my own skin,
pull on the little ends of yarn that I see poking out:
little parades of frayed cotton trees in every color. I have
thousands of them, most of them congregating up and down
my spine. But the truth is,
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NaPoWriMo Poem #18: Dust
I used to believe in you.
Your name was Normal. You were a fantastic idol,
a phantasm made out of God, pedestal-high,
queen of all things that I could never touch. You
wore my face like perfection even better than I did. Body
shrunken to the size of late night cock dreams. You
had no script, nothing to consult – the words were just
sliding through your brain, reconstructing every synapse like
mere connections between hemisphere and region were not
enough. And I,
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Protected: Poem: Speaking In Tongues (Inspired by RWP Prompt #120)
Poem: Backwards (for RWP #119)
(for Jefferson Nicholson)
Backwards: how to walk it
is the question. It involves paper, microfilm, and
old stories. Names are Gospel,
passed from lips to ears. Footprints stay put when
written down.
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Poem: Crucify (for RWP Prompt #118)
Read Write Poem Wordle #118
In the handsome dark, we fumble for doubloons
lying dead on the pavement.
Little minted mirrors of gold, magenta, turquoise, emerald, and
polished purple riot like the wine soaking into the costumed madness
around us: this swirling, detonated rainbow
of beads, feathers, fire, and flesh. It is fringed, open-mouthed, and
dripping beautiful fermented stink from its lips.
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Poem: Confession (For RWP #117)
The book was laid open beside your head, which was
turned sideways so that you blew a wind of breath
across its face as you slept. Once again you slept where you fell,
a shadow of an angel collapsing in a corner, onto stone, with your
window shades shut to words and the
dimming amber of light that deliquesced itself onto the walls and floor
of your bedroom. This time was a record: you’d fallen into dreams
less than five feet from your own bed. We laughed, and
left you sleeping.
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Catabasis
Rock me to sleep across the Styx until the boatman holds my cradle;
a sun point in the distance calls us all.
We’ll wander white fields of smoke and dust
while congregations of snow blow like low-flying angels around our feet.
We want to touch that sun;
but we cannot lay holy man hands on it until we
shed our bodies like bad dirt.
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #5: The Devotee
Midnight. I trace the borders of this town with my two feet
under a blanket of stars. Darkness clings to me,
washed away by scattered pairs of headlights
shining like broken beads spilled onto the road
and rolling past me as I walk. August smells like
spent bonfires coughing up their burnt wood ghosts and
warm rain spilling its heavy and humid funk onto
dirt and concrete. I am naked; I am wet;
but I don’t care.
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #3: Delirium
This is my third piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet.
I chose to do another cento using Arthur Rimbaud’s lines.
And you can read all of my February Mini-Challenge Poems here.
-Nicole
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I have swallowed a fabulous dose of poison. On my
hospital bed, an overpowering smell of incense wafts over me:
guardians of the holy oil, confessors, martyrs. I have a
pillow over my mouth, they can’t hear me, they’re
phantoms. I’m no longer in the world; life’s clock
has stopped. Yes indeed, I’ve shut my eyes
against your light;
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February 2010 Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #2: The Prophet
This is my second piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet.
I chose Arthur Rimbaud.
And you can read all of my February Mini-Challenge Poems here.
-Nicole
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I have a horror of all trades. In my vision I saw
a million charming creatures moving in time to
beautiful church-music, Power and Peace, noble ambitions, and
lord knows what. These, it was promised, would
bury the tree of good and evil in absolute darkness, would
banish despotic proprieties, freeing us to love purely
in the pure land. It’s the vision of numbers; eternity, the
shoreless ocean in the sun.
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Phantasmagoria
This poem was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #114: All Over The Map. I decided to continue the narrative that began in “Endgame” and continued in “Emmaus”. The words led me to a dream sequence experienced by the character in both poems; it is constructed in three Six Sentences pieces with two short interludes in between. I hope you enjoy the read.
And BTW, please feel free to look at this poem over on the test blog too.
-Nicole
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I. A Dead God’s Chest.
Your mind unfolds, tumbling out jewel-wrapped candy like a cracked-open piñata minted inside a pirate’s fiction. This is the stuff of little boy and girl pretend, of cinemascope phantasms dreamt alive in the dark. It is made out of crowns, galleons, doubloons, and blessed by curses like the clown-painted Aztec god grin baring teeth at you from the face of an underbreath promise: take my treasure and you die, mortal. You laugh like the sunset dancing diamonds upon the water that holds your ship aloft, but a sword swishes wet and red in your ear, drawing its double-dog-dare-you onto a blueprint that looks just like your neck. It’s the eggshell crack that you never hear until your boots break through a wretched, open floor. And on the way down, you will see those boots embedded inside that grin, lodged between eyetooth and incisor as a testament against you, just before your back splits apart upon Hell’s floor.
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