Raven's Wing Poetry » Easter

NaPoWriMo Poem #25: Astrophagy

ravenswingpoetry — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:47:03 +0000

The fire, crackling,
reaches fingers upward and curls
around the pan atop which the
open-mouthed, glassy-eyed fish softly char and
die again to the heat before
their final rest inside of our

bellies. The purr and crinkle of the flames
only makes the silence between us
grow wider into chasm until
the void swallows itself in this
coastal Galilean darkness. Only our faces give any song,
glowing in the haloed orange of the fire
just before He asks the first

question: Simon bar Jonas,
do you love me
more than these? The cock

sounds his crow again in my
ear, and my throat tries to sew itself
shut with needle and thread of
a single lump in front of my vocal strings. “Lord,

you know that
I love you.” The darkness
stains itself with yet more tincture, the sun sinking further
into my chest. And then

his reply: Feed my lambs. Again,
the chasm grows,

this time by
the sun digging his grave
behind my ribcage.

And again, the
question: Simon bar Jonas, do
you love me?

Now I try
to swallow the moon, but
she bangs white

fists on the
back of my trachea door.
“Yes, Lord, you

know that I
love you.” And then His
reply: Feed my

sheep. The fish
is stuck inside my throat,
caught by stars

that I inhaled
to wash the moon down.
And now again,

the question: Simon
bar Jonas, do you love
me? I have now

swallowed this
entire night, the panorama that had
hung over our heads.

I strain not
to belch moonlight up, but
it escapes me

as I reply:
“Lord, you know everything. You
Know that I

love you.” And
again his reply: Feed my
sheep. And the flock wraps itself
around my waist, girding me like a belt, and
the stars, moon, and sun slowly find their way
out. The darkness grabs her jewels
and hangs each of them over our heads, once again to sparkle,
and the moon dust settles on my brow to rest
along with the “follow me”
that has just risen from his lips. The cock wanders away,
beak sealed shut, eyes occluded by the sparkle of the stars,
the shine of the rising moon, and
the fire’s dance as the coals beneath it
sing themselves to sleep.

Written 4/30/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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From this weekend! I was trying to catch up and finish my 30/30 for NaPoWriMo 2011. Alas, I was two poems short of making it, but I’m sharing the products with you anyway. This is again an Easter/Resurrection poem. I played around, using some lunes as structure for some of the stanzas in the middle of the poem. Comments and feedback welcome.

-Nicole

Filed under: NaPoWriMo 2011, Poems Tagged: Cephas, chained lune, Easter, jesus, NaPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo 2011, peter, Poems, poet, poetry, poets, resurrection, Simon bar Jonas, Simon Peter

NaPoWriMo Poem #17: Shed Skin

ravenswingpoetry — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:57:30 +0000

This is how I used to walk
the earth: uncloaked by skin, yet cloaked to you
by your own dimmed eyes. I have donned that skin,
and yet shed it to be again unfettered and free:
but this time, as a shadow.

That battered suit of clothes
lies taciturn and dormant inside a
sealed tomb. It aged fifty years in a single day.
Five years for each slap. Five years
for each metal-knuckled leather strap dancing upon
and digging into my back.
I wondered if skin and bone could be dug through
past spine to see to the inner parts, if my
blood wet body could be stripped away, layer by layer,
before they nailed it up on a cross to dry.
No skin left to puncture, no meat left to burn:
what good is a lamb of bone burning ossified
upon a brazen altar?

But the skin has now been shed: a suit of clothes
dropped to the ankles, stepped out of, and left behind
after being first jarred loose by whip and nail and then
molted off in tremors of pain while
the ice climbed up through my core from stern to bow.
The lamb is spent, lying quiet and dead on the altar
while the smoke of its burning rises up
to my Father’s nose. And I walk,
carrying a key.

The world seems to streak and smear around me
as I move, undulating from the surface of my spirit
out in a ring of coronas: Mother, wrapped in black and pondering silent
inside an empty house; Miriam, walking sleeplessly
with sunken eyes scrubbed red by tears; Simon Kefa,
running his heart through with a cock crow’s sword;
and Yehuda, now hanging out to dry
of life and blood in a barren field. Out from there,
the rest of the hushed and bewildered city,
and then the world. I walk, carrying this key,
watching the world blur around me as I descend
a flight of stairs. A cold welcome carpet creeps up,
rising to meet my feet: but it soon recedes. I grip the key in my hands
more tightly and make my way towards the door
and the lock. The souls behind them have been waiting
for too long.

Written 4/21/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Filed under: NaPoWriMo 2011, Poems Tagged: christ, crucifixion, Easter, Easter Poetry, Good Friday, jesus, NaPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo 2011, Passion, poem, Poems, poetry, poets

NaPoWriMo Poem #16: Roses and Thorns

ravenswingpoetry — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:55:18 +0000

To make a crown of thorns,
you must first tear the roses away.
The King is crowned with their stiff, green bodies
withering to brittle, bone, and dust after they
have been seized and stolen from the ground.
Before returning to dust, they stiffened into rigor mortis,
frozen in a circle as they entwine with each other,
thorns jutting out and radiating from an empty center.

The thorns were meant to ward off
fingers, paws, and teeth away: but instead,
they bury unwittingly into the skin of this young man’s
temples and forehead. Draw blood against your will,
and make both of your murderers sing with glee,
braying scorn into the palms above your head,
up past the stone rooftop heads rising above this city
and gazing out into the surrounding desert with empty,
window eyes. The King drags a ragged robe behind Him
down the street, past the bodies of the blooms
torn, cast aside, and left to die. And die they will,
along with this King,
along with the crown of comrades biting themselves
into His brow.

Somewhere in an apartment above the street,
an urn falls and breaks.
The roses inside tumble to the floor and
lie helpless and unsettled among the shards of the body
that used to hold them. Their scent
still floats around them in an unseen aura
and levitates upward, touching the stone ceiling above
their heads. Below them on the street, the torn rose blooms
also waft their final songs up to a clean, vacant, and cloudless sky.
And the King walks past the dying rose blooms
to become a broken urn Himself. Groaning and struggling
underneath a wooden cross, He feels
the clay of his body already beginning to crack. Through each fissure,
the scent of roses slips surreptitiously out
and intertwines with the other fragrances calling up
from the window and the street.

Written 4/21/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
——————————————————
This poem was written for NaPoWriMo and for We Write Poems Prompt #51: Pairings. We were asked to pair two opposite things in our poems: given that this past weekend was Easter weekend, I chose the theme of life/death and roses/thorns. I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
——————————————————

Stumble It!

Filed under: NaPoWriMo 2011, Poems, WWP Prompt Poem Tagged: christ, crucifixion, death, Easter, jesus, life, NaPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo 2011, Passion, poem, Poems, poet, poetry, poets, prompt, prompt poem, Prompt Poems, rose, thorn, WWP, WWP Poem, WWP Poem Prompt, WWP Prompt

NaPoWriMo Poem #15: Walking

ravenswingpoetry — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:26:11 +0000

Nails pin thin, battered feet
to fractured wood. Affixed to earth,
neither He nor the wood can rise up
and walk. He is a nailed up, gasping, bleeding sentinel
watching the sun’s single eye burn:
but Death walks around Him, trailing a mantle of clouds
behind her that will occlude the sun and shut its eyes
to sleep.

A Circus Maximus, slow death procession,
parades around and circumnavigates Him. The
mockers, the jeerers, the scorners. The
red-caped centurions, armor and helmets
proudly glistening with the sun’s fire. The
mourners: two veiled women, battered with grief
and wailing elegies until they float above the sun;
and a young man, thin and pale like Passover bread
before it is broken and spent.
All are blind to Death’s march:
she leads them while she is translucent to the sun
her cloak and train of clouds still a far distance off.

The ache, the agony,
the breath being pulled out of his lungs
like ribbons by an unseen hand: they all draw
her cloak and train closer to fly over this spot. All
weave her raiment thread by thread: eli, eli,
lama sabachthani. Another thread: Son,behold
your mother. Woman, behold your son. And the final pass
of the weaver’s loom: it is finished.
The cloak, mantle, and train are complete. Death stands
on the hill, her proud, ghastly, and shadowy garments
unfurled to the sky. Behind her, the sun
turns away his face with sorrow. And somewhere, a temple curtain
rents itself like so many outer garments.

Sack cloth on the sun: ashes on the earth’s face
as fire consumes a life and leaves
the flakes of its passion at the foot of a wooden cross.
If you ask the man later about the fire, He might tell you
that He only felt ice crawling up His limbs and veins
as the world and the heavens receded. But not
right now: you won’t find Him. He has shed His mantle, and
is walking.

Filed under: NaPoWriMo 2011, Poems Tagged: christ, crucifixion, death, Easter, Easter Poetry, Good Friday, jesus, NaPoWriMo, NaPoWriMo 2011, Passion, poem, Poems, poet, poetry, poets, shed mantle, walking

Lent

ravenswingpoetry — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:10:10 +0000

Lent –
Our darkness.
We lent our darkness to the Lord
Long ago –

The darkness of mockery as taunting crowds cry,
Jeering and leering as they cry, “Prophesy!”
Then whip him, and strip him, and nail him on high.

This darkness in our collective mind film,
This darkness bubbling from our cistern,
This darkness, a black ink swallowing the overhead sky
As we lent him our mortality and he hung there to die.

He lent us not back revenge or sorrow –
But new life, new hope, and another tomorrow.

Gethsemane

ravenswingpoetry — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:09:57 +0000

I am posting this poem because Good Friday approaches. I tried to capture an image of Jesus, and what he might have been thinking and feeling in those final moments in Gethsemane before he was arrested. Presumptuous, perhaps, but I still tried.

-Nicole

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“Gethsemane”

I wrestle the cross out of my heart
So I can carry it on my back
For you. For all of you.
This painful extrication caused the blood
To flow from my forehead and pool
On the ground before me.
For a brief moment, I wish for
Angels, for uninhibited beauty –
But the cup sits ever before me,
Demanding that I put my lips
To it and drink deeply – the thorns,
The curses, the bitterness, and
Carry them in my belly with a
Cross tied to my back.
Peter, draw not your sword. Don’t try
To stop this all from happening.
For our greatest victory is yet to come,
A victory of ages that will surely be won
Once I wrestle this cross out of my heart
And carry it on my back.

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