Raven's Wing Poetry » eyes

Resurrection

ravenswingpoetry — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:41:47 +0000

Whose Eyes Are These? by Nicole Nicholson

This was written for two purposes: 1) for Read Write Prompt #70: In Your Face (poetry, that is), and 2) a personal project.

The personal project is to write one poem per day for Lent (excepting Sundays). To help myself out, I have been pulling lines from other people’s poetry to jump-start my own inspiration. The lines I used to jump-start this one come from Jim Morrison’s “Paris Journal”. You can check out more poems I’ve written like this by clicking here. And be sure that I’ll be posting more of these kinds of poems throughout the Lenten season.

Now, enjoy the poem.

-Nicole

———————————————

Tell them you came & saw
& look’d into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
- Jim Morrison

Darkness and storms in my eyes – but
I can see your windows clearly. So clearly, they

speak to me,

telling me of dreams pulverized – slapped
across the face, shoved face first into
dust, kicked until their bones cracked
and angels bled and cried for mercy on their
tortured behalf. And fantasies – drowned
until they died in twilight, exhaling gasps and then
nothing but a slow dying whimper. I know that

resurrection

is a tricky business – but you do it well. You’ve already
killed the guards. Shot down the first line
of the regiment and sent the others fleeing,
dropping bloodsteps dripping from arms
of your bullet wounds. Tracking blood away
from the scene in their scenic bootprints, which
look awful good up against the stark concrete
in your eyes. Now,

I see you,

with that sonic concrete in your eyes that
begs for garlands, rainbows, incense dying
to give birth to new life, and noise to fill
the empty echoes left behind inside your mind
by murdered hopes. Or better yet,

let’s rip up and banish
your concrete gulag

to some Hell
that not even Dante can reach by a nightmare’s
journey to paint for us in thirteenth-century
fire-and-brimstone colors. Let’s

tear it down,

for I’ve looked through your windows
and seen
that the shadow of the guard has
receded. Now let’s

roll away the stone

and get to work on your
resurrection.

Written 3/16/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Posted in Lent 2009 Challenge Poems, Poems, Prompt Poems Tagged: concrete, Dante, death, eyes, Inferno, Jim Morrison, opp, other people's poetry, pain, Poems, poet, poetry, poetry in your face, poets, prompt, prompt poem, Prompt Poems, read write poem, read write poem prompt, resurrection, tomb

Subway Starer

ravenswingpoetry — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:03:38 +0000

Original photo at: http://www.poetspath.com/exhibits/exhibitsimages/paul_blackburn.jpg

(an answer to Paul Blackburn’s poem “Once-Over”, partially quoted at: http://lutheransurrealism.blogspot.com/2008/05/blackburn-ii.html .)

You’ve got
                X-
                   ray
                       eyes
And it’s
               no
                  sur-
                       prise
That you focus them on:
                                    The tanned blond in the green dress,
                                    Me,
                                    And every other woman in the damn subway car -
And proceed to burn our clothes off
With your skin-searing stares so
Radioactive;
We are REACTIVE
To your obvious ostentatious ogling.

Lust
Lays us bare
And we stand there,
A
scattered
collective,
Brushed by a sweep of your panoramic paint
One
Woman
At
A
Time.
I don’t mind
An occasional appreciative glance –
But boy, you’d better
Get your too-long-staring
Eyes
OFF
Of me.

Written 5/21/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

More Advice

ravenswingpoetry — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:43:36 +0000

Be wise;
Your eyes
Reflect everything.

Eye Language

ravenswingpoetry — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:41:47 +0000

I can speak with my eyes,
Tell whole stories with glances
Or looks
That can hook
When eye-windows don’t face the
Pages of a book.
Could I write the books
Of love, life, passion, and hate?
Maybe my eyes hold my fate.

Stumble It!

The Watcher

ravenswingpoetry — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:53:13 +0000

I watch life through hourglass eyes
As times drips down, eluding the wise;
Life moves past me, a dance of compromise
And I watch who loves, who lives, and who dies.

I watch life through spyglass eyes
So that no one sees my own bitter compromise
And I remain from afar, thinking I am wise
That no one sees my anguish and my cries.

I watch life through looking-glass eyes;
My own reflection looks back at me and belies
The folly of my loneliness where I thought I was wise
To remain hidden from the glances of others’ eyes.

Then I watch life through contact-lens eyes -
Fully in this dimension, and nobody pries,
Looking for the girl they all knew as “four-eyes”
Who used to perch in her ivory tower and longingly spy

For the moment when she could leap in and maximize
Hey joy at being something other than a pair of eyes.
I’m already here, via invitation from the wise -
No more simply watching through envious eyes.