Tag Archives: death
Protected: NaPoWriMo Poem #11: Transition to Exit
Protected: NaPoWriMo Poem #10: Bones
Poem: Smoke Signals (For RWP #120)
Gathering, by AlicePopkorn
(for Phoebe Prince)
Headlines screamed your name to me. When I read the
story, I thought that you had lost your wings. You can’t fly
hanging by your neck, enclosed inside
a closet womb. I want to give you
my wings, rip all the fire from off my back and
ignite yours. Wipe the dawn with your shadow, paint the morning
with your fire. But all that I can pull from my own wings
is black feathers. I can only ignite them and
hope that the wind catches the smoke and
carries it away. Spell your name with smoke,
grieve your senseless exit with flames.
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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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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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Video Performance of “Angels” On YouTube!
I just posted a performance of “Angels” that was taped at Writing Wrongs Poetry on January 26, 2010. I performed a slightly ad-libbed version of the poem during the open mic that night, which preceded the 2nd Annual All-Ohio Battle Slam. You can watch the clips below:
Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #6: Endgame
This poem is the sixth one written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). It was also written for Read Write Poem Prompt #111: Broken Chair. I ended up going back to the theme of alcoholism with this, the last poem in the series with the theme of “starting over” — perhaps because I knew someone who struggled with it and didn’t survive. I guess I keep hoping for redemption. I hope you enjoy the read.
-Nicole
P.S. To see the other mini-challenge poems that I am writing this month, click here.
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Electric, my burn and buzz brain
has brought me down to a broken chair,
the latest in a series of holy visions
bequeathed by delirium. This is how
you die of thirst in the desert with nothing but a
busted-up, empty-bellied ’71 Cadillac Fleetwood with a
crowd of empty beer cans lying scattered on the back seat. The beast
died three days ago, coughing out gas fumes and
retching out a death cry of metal scraping on metal from inside its
ancient steel throat. The sky echoes its paintjob in
faded, teal sick covered with rust. And there’s dust in
the breath of this desert, playing a dirt smoke harmony with
the sweet and sour stink slowly pouring from the mouths of
the beer cans. It’s a perfect, white trash sendoff
for a sweatshirt and steel-toed fool – which I am,
now kneeling in worship to a
figment with three legs.
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Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #4: Angels
Apparently, my muse decided to go in a different direction for this poem, the fourth one written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). We went to Haiti for this one. And I’ll say no more.
-Nicole
P.S. To see the other mini-challenge poems that I am writing this month, click here.
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Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings where we had
shoulders smooth as ravens’ claws.
- Jim Morrison
When the earth shook, the dead shuddered off their skins while
their hallowed breath escaped them in
invisible ribbons of night and day. Dust-covered angels
now wander incognito through the backbone and veins
of Port-au-Prince, trying to reconstruct their minds
from the rubble –
crumbled concrete souls in sundered pieces
like a broken open chest where the heart bursts out and
the ribcage lies behind, scattered
in ribbons of bone. Now,
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Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #2: Chrysalis
This is the second of six poems written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). I think I’ll likely follow the theme of “shedding skin”, since it seems to be where my mind is going, with these poems. This is no different — I chose a chrysalis for this piece.
To see the other mini-challenge poems that I am writing this month, click here.
Enjoy.
-Nicole
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I see the descent of daylight
smoking up ahead. Inviolate azure, streaked near its bottom
with red, violet, and tangerine evening. Behind me,
my car, ruptured open, deliquescing smoke and
bleeding suicide flame Hallelujahs into the air as it
reduces itself down to lowest terms: ash, glass,
and rubber. Next to it, a concrete cylinder, an elephant’s leg,
stands streaked with my blue paint signature while
it and its brother bear a freeway overpass upon their
shoulders. I
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Ashes
Sylvia Plath, courtesy of Wikipedia
NEW! You can listen to this poem on Podbean.
This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #106: Repeat After Me.. Sylvia Plath was my inspiration for this poem, in which I chose to use one of Rethabile’s suggestions for this prompt, repeating an idea. Mine is almost a refrain I think, or variations on a theme. I hope you enjoy the read.
-Nicole
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It’s easy,
a burning half-morning light,
so faint that candles cannot even
make love with it lest they disturb the
shadow of amber that it drops onto the wall. And the
pen – there’s a certain rhythm to the
scribble and the scratch, the
hip-hop beat in ancient form
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Mutiny in Six Parts
This was written for Read Write Poem #82: Ode to Your Homunculus.
I borrowed heavily from concepts in Jungian psychology, Freudian psychology, and Kabbalah to write this — and thus it is a multi-part, somewhat lengthy work. I’ve been troubled by a lack of creative energy lately, so this work was a blessing to me. I hope it touches you in some way.
Oh, and by the way, enjoy.
-Nicole
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i. psyche
a hollow school room
looking like eighteen and ninety four
everything is wooden
and silent: open-mouthed chairs
wordless desks scrubbed
of paper and language
outside
the snow is falling
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