Twelve Lights

There is the first light by which
the world began. Some say it was made
by a lonely deity peering into the void
and empty black – no stars, no moon, no sun,
no world, no us – and to dispel this loneliness,
he began to speak everything into existence,
beginning with light. We have guessed at his – or her –
name since we picked up chisel to mark stone or
tattooed our hearts in ink upon papyrus
or common paper. Some have even guessed
that the light made itself, pulling together
enough gas and matter to contract and then explode,
flinging dreams of stars, planets, and
little crowds of creatures in every direction.
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Midwinter: Sound and Fury

I.

Cold breath claws its way upward, talon over talon, out of a lung cocoon to merge with the dirty cotton candy morning. We listen to each piece of its lavender, thistle gray, and filthy white whisper the news of its exit. Beneath this flock of ragged, dingy daybreak harpies we hear the sun charging upward, chasing them away with its blazing, lustful tangerine growl.
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Alabaster Box

Click on the picture below to read the poem (which will appear in PDF format):

Written 11/13/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #131: Unexpectedly, Love. Be ready for some LONG process notes ahead.

This prompt caused me to think about love — a selfless act of love, specifically — and I had a little help thinking about the subject from this post on the analyfe blog. The alabaster box she referenced in her post made me think of the three women who are chronicled in the Gospels as anointing Jesus with perfume from an alabaster box — two unnamed women and one identified as Mary of Bethany, a sister of Lazarus. If you consider the sacrifice of the act in both the breaking of the box and the act of anointing, you understand why this inspired me for this week’s poem. It also caused me to ask myself a very hard question: can I love that freely with that much abandonment of self? It is a hard question indeed that I still need to answer.

I also ended up weaving in strains of romantic love — King Solomon slain in his heart by a pretty face or a jeweled ankle. I think maybe some of this is carryover from my recent readings of Lord Byron, a fellow Romantic (both in the sense of the literary movement to which he belonged and his personality). And of course, what is the connection between King Solomon and the alabaster box? Spikenard, which was in the box and was used by the female speaker in Song of Songs in the Bible (although some translations render the word as simply “perfume”).

This poem began first as a prose poem. I turned the raw poem into a cleave, and then I realized it could merge together at a certain point. Once I had finished merging the poem, it became a shape poem — oddly enough, in the form of a grail. To me, this hearkens back to imagery of the Holy Grail — in the sense of a literal cup which caught the blood of Jesus, the cup filled with wine at the Last Supper, and the womb, with the grail being a reference itself to female fertility, or Mary Magdalene (interestingly enough, in some traditions, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany are regarded as one and the same).

For now, I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
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NaPoWriMo Poem #20: To Thomas

Another mouth
etched into a man’s
side will speak
for him when
his first mouth cannot, closed and
locked by his spirit’s

exit. He
returned to tell his
tale of how
He slipped through
Death’s fingers: listen through your
fingertips, touching

to feel the
words of the tale, the
cadence of
his living
breath, His opened wound smiling
at your disbelief.

Written 4/27/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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Another poem using the shadorma form for the stanzas, also focusing on Easter. Enjoy.

-Nicole

NaPoWriMo Poem #19: Holes

Nails bite and
sting, leaving holes where
flesh should be;
life leaks out
in pints of blood. Holes in his
wrists speak of exit

wounds and a
life lost to love. But
this vessel
is filled and
a once dead man walks. Through these
holes, nothing leaks out.

Written 4/27/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This is the first of a few shadormas that I am writing, as I’ve been intrigued by the form and have been wanting to try it out. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to contain myself to one complete shadorma, so I am using the form to construct my stanzas in these short poems. Enjoy.

-Nicole