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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“Homecoming” was written last year during NaPoWriMo 2011. It was an attempt to get into Morrison’s head and understand what was behind the events of the Miami incident of 1969. Whether Morrison exposed himself or not (I’m inclined to think not — and even then, there were First Amendment implications had he done so), one thing is clear: he was attempting to wake up and reach the audience on that spring night at the Dinner Key Auditorium. He had been inspired by (and had participated in) some performances of the Living Theatre — that night he tried their methodology to get through to his audience. Unfortunately, it ended in disaster and a court case in which public opinion and political aspirations were stacked against him.

Please check out the Morrison Project website. And while you’re at it, check out the fan artwork and prose pieces there. The site is a labor of love. Whatever you think or believe about Jim Morrison, the site is a must-see.

-Nicole

Autism and Empathy seeks “to undo the myths about autism and empathy that have stigmatized autistic people for so long”. The site features prose and poetry by autistics, family members, parents, and professionals. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to go and read.

-Nicole

about the endless rooms in my attic brain full of
my memories in Super 8 film rolls coiled up and sleeping
which have been magically appearing since I was a year old;

or the rooms of computer hard drives storing facts, numbers,
and encyclopedia notes numbering somewhere in the octillions;

or the glass-shatter heart that sometimes fractures if I breathe,
or suck in air from the shock or suspended surprise
of someone else’s pain, or when one of my own free-floating
pieces of celluloid with razor blade edges slices my fingers
when I yank it out of my film projector and try
to stuff it back into the canister it escaped from. The handprints

won’t tell you that our family’s collective lips are sealed
about our green strangeness, the unuttered word
that I alone out of the clan speak: autism. The handprints

won’t tell you that I shut my eyes and imagine
the lost, the mute, and the gaunt lit with pain
and pulling razor blades out of their throats
appearing as time-delimited half-tones behind this wall:
Tommy the pinball wizard;
my grandmother made of cedar beams, Indian blood, and elocution;
and a lizard poet, white knuckled, hanging on
to a rollercoaster of pain for dear life,
just to name a few. But the handprints will tell you
that I am human.

I wonder if you can see them: sometimes, I know
that on your side, you only see graffiti-infested concrete,
slapped and glued with headlines about
how our hearts are hollow, how we live as alien mutants
among you in a universe of uncertainty, and how
the word “never” seems to creep into your speech about
us. And you wonder why I erect a glass wall? Some days,
I am forced to pour concrete and hide behind
the wall of cold cinnereal while I listen to the noise
coming from the other side and my eyes
flood and create another ocean: but eventually,
I raze the walls that I construct, and all that separates
me from the world is a stately barrier of glass.

Place your hands on the glass and line them up
with mine: can you feel
the warmth from breath and skin, sweat and
rhythm, blood like tom-toms pounding and marching
all through my body? This is how we can be,
hand to hand, eye to eye, toe to toe, once I feel
I can approach the glass. We touch, and it can melt away
into a membrane, or it can eventually evaporate
and become a ghost that we used to look at each other
through: this is the understanding I need, and the vision
that you need. But as long as you insist on concrete
slapped with pity, pithy headlines, and ignorance,
you will never feel my handprints. You will never
feel my warmth. And you will be convinced that I am a
comic, hollow being that can never feel. And all
the while, I will be drowning in another one of my oceans
behind that wall.

Written 4/2/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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I wrote this to share today because it is World Autism Awareness Day (April 2, 2012). I hope you enjoy the poem and that it gives you another glimpse into my world.

-Nicole
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Stumble It!

Reblogged from Woman With Asperger's:

Originally posted on my Woman With Asperger's Blog...

Reblogged from Woman With Asperger's:

Originally posted at my Woman With Asperger's Blog...

“Escape”, along with art from several other artists on the autism spectrum with work in The Art of Autism, will be featured in both the April and May shows.

The first Art of Autism exhibit will be at the Bohemia Coffee House in Ojai, CA during April (click on the image below to view larger).

The May exhibit will be at Curious Cup in Carpinteria, CA. Click here for more information.

(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….

-Nicole
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Stumble It!

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.

-Nicole
—————————————————-
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Stumble It!

NEWSFLASH! The 2012 edition is coming March 21, 2012 and includes 77 artists and poets on the spectrum (including me — my poem, “Letter to My Father”, is in the book)!

• April 1 – April 30 at the Bohemia Coffee Shop in Ojai, California. There will be an art reception and book signing on April 15 — join Celebrate Autism and others at this event!
• May 1 – May 31 at the Curious Cup Bookstore in Carpinteria, California. There will be an open Studio Art Tour during the weekend of May 12 – May 13. Also, there will be an art reception, book signing, and other events — details to be announced.
• In collaboration with the Santa Barbara Art Walk for Kids, there will also be a show at the Faulkner Gallery May 1 – May 30. Details to be announced.