Those shepherds, they have
cast the dream dust from their lashes to
see you tonight. In a dimly lit corner
the heralded gifts have been laid, glowing but not quite enough
to rival your entrance and your unseen crown. There is
that golden shawl of song still pouring from angel throats and harps
just beyond the hills. Though my lips do not move, I am
joining them with the swell of a new mother’s ripened heart. Maybe,
as you lie pressed to my chest, you can hear the notes
escaping through my ribcage. It is the first lullaby
you will ever hear.

Written 12/7/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

———————————————————-
This week’s poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #31: Love. I chose to focus on one character of the Christmas story, Mary, getting personal with her feelings and reactions at the birth of Jesus. I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole
———————————————————

Stumble It!

——————————-

-Nicole

Written 6/18/10
© Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

——————————————————-

Stumble It!

Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise by Marc Chagall

Created June 3, 2010 by Nicole Nicholson. Original text used: “Pointed Roofs” by Dorothy Miller Richardson.
—————————————————————-
This poem was created (I don’t say written, and you’ll find out why in a minute) for We Write Poems Prompt #5: Erasures, which comes to us courtesy of Angie Werren.

-Nicole

P.S. Totally unrelated, but my “Houdini” poem was featured in Thinkering, an online comic strip. Go here to check it out: http://reudor.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/escape-artist/
—————————————————————-

Stumble It!

This poem was written for Read Write Word Prompt #101: P-P-P-Poetry. This is a Wordle prompt in which all of the words begin with the letter P. I used some of the words and added a few of my own in this poem, which is inspired by William Blake (the quote in the poem is from his work “Proverbs of Hell”), Langston Hughes (“I, Too, Sing America”), and one of my own poems that I wrote earlier this year. Enjoy!

-Nicole
—————————————————
I, too, say Amen.

I am having an early Sunday morning vision
of prophecy:
our bodies slapping together,
sweat running in rivers and casting shattered tributaries
off of our skins. We are somewhere
sequestered, and yet more sacred than the backseat
of my car. We sing Hallelujahs, composed in the key of carnal –
a polyglot of grunt, hiss, and shuddering breath
against a harmony of moan,
countermelodies of our whispered directions, and a
climax of screams in fortissimo. We sound
antiphons to each other, utterances in counterpoint
as we co-create again and again. This
is worship – and I, too, say
Amen.

I used to think
that it was almost sacrilege, darkening Sunday’s sacred dawn
with desire. Church mornings. I used to sit
in audience of those sermons extolling prudence and purity and
warning against the pernicious trap of lechery. Those sermons,
delivered to my ears with a shuddering violence
of black baritone boom reborn from
an ancestral African shaman’s throat. I used to sit, walled in
by a shouted chorale of response pulled up from
the prowess of the preacher’s petitions: “Can I get an
Amen?” I used to sit and conjure you up in privacy, in my
theater of you hidden behind my eyes, while
I responded up to him only in my native tongue of
silent stare. If they had only known what ran rampant in
my hills,
my hollows,
what burns sacral below my stomach. That inferno
still tumbles down into the deep and secret hollow somewhere
below my navel – and when it lands, it convulses and blooms outward
into feathers of fecund flame. The explosion upon impact
is always brilliant orange, a spectral phoenix in my flesh
roaring and screaming on a clandestine pyre. He is reborn in your
presence, evoked in your absence. And I, too, say
Amen.

In my holy vision, we are
hidden in hermetical,
teenaged neophytes,
intending to school each other in the esoteric – this mystery religion
without a doctrine or name except for the breaths in our lungs
and the rivers of golden I AM that have replaced
our own blood. I am captivated, held suspended in wonder by
your gilt letters, by your
illuminated manuscript, vibrating, laid open before me to
read. I touch your shoulder, trace the outline of your collarbone, and
try to read your sacred scripture,
following your bone lines with my fingers
over sternum,
past rib lines, over the crescendo and decrescendo
of your hips. My fingers find glory at the
meeting of your thighs. I read intently the
chapter and verse of your sighs. And I, too, say
Amen.

And now, from the cloak of the past, I hear a proverb:
“The nakedness of woman is the work of God.” And
a procession of souls comes forth –

the poets,
the prophets,
the painters and the sculptors;
the woodsmen, the miners, and the jackhammer jockeys;
the steel mill denizens and the footfall field citizens –
running backs, halfbacks, fullbacks, and quarterbacks –
the lesbians, and the thespians echoing their practiced lines
in the halls of our high school theater;
the choir geeks, and the art freaks;
the stoners, the loners, and the Deadhead owners of
honey, black, and blonde dreads grown against
the wild and fiery or quiet and smoldered disdain
of their parents; and I,

your disciple,
your devotee,
your sacred shaman uttering incantations filled with
nothing but your name,
your dervish whirling and warping my own reality until
it becomes our shared and holy space,
your Saint Catherine of Sienna,
your Radha to your Krishna –

I, too, say Amen.

Written 11/17/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

I wrote this for Read Write Poem Prompt # 78: Kiss Me, Amelia Earhart. I decided to approach this a little differently, as there are so many historical figures I would like to write about — so this is kind of a longer narrative of how one woman graces the lives of several. Also, I decided not to limit myself to the idea of love in the romantic sense — but it is here, as you can see in the poem. I hope you like it.

-Nicole

———————————–
i.

green jaws
seize a brown body
clamp down
the crocodile is hungry
this young woman will do

white triangles
stained, dripping with red
color the Nile carmine
in this spot

ii.

the black night
blinks her white eye
sideways
in slow motion

and stares upon
the young woman with
perfect unbroken body
and tattered, black braids
walking the shores where
she had become lunch

even the Nile wonders

why is she here?

iii.

she spins metal
her three hundred and sixty degree
revolutionary blade
creates a silver sun that burns
blood lines into skin

her teacher, holy
tan, lanky, and bald
smooth all over from
giving his hair up to
the glory and service of
Ra

his voice
almost a whisper
blooms in this
lamp-lit night

Banafrit
your name
will be an ever-changing thing
mutating with time and age
you will never be the same
and as long as you play The Game
you must remember
that

in the end
there can only be one

iv.

shadows

behind a sarcophagus
endless origami
black tissue folding, moving, flying

clothed in white nothingness
with eyes of
ebony polished stones
jewels set in clean ivory ovals
their curves caressed by kohl
borders, black and perfect
she stares
into a smooth, wordless, carved face
of peach stone

I loved you
sun child
Merneptah

brown fingers trace
his stone face
she turns
then returns
to the shadows
a whisper of footsteps

then quiet

v.

the living ghost
of dead myrrh
blooming below her nose
in her hands
cannot slow down her tears
this is the last thing that
she can ever give him

flanked by female pillars
weeping
she can barely build back
the strength into her own bones
enough to walk

she stops and stares at the tomb
a scrubbed white maw
now wide open
the choked up stone laying
aside, silent and unsurprised

a white veil hides her
Egyptian eyes and
obsidian waterfall hair

but he sees through
her womanly curtain
and softly calls her name

Miriam

vi.

a turbaned dark man
eyes softened
their usual fire shed
and tumbling down into water
which makes rivers on his
brown cheeks
and then disappears into a
forest of black hair
growing upon his chin

Allah calls you,
Muhammed

she says

and the shadows call me
I am older than this time
and you cannot know me
will Paradise hold me?

but you can never
love me

she turns
veils softly murmuring her name
Isha, Isha
as she disappears deep
into the garden

vii.

she wipes the sweat
from his brow
a clean white sari
winds its way around
her lithe body

Bapu

she says

you cannot die now
we need you
for you have shown us
that truth is God
and tyrants will always fall
before the will of the divine
you are the closest thing to Ram
that we have, gently
breathing and walking upon
this here Earth
this is why
we call you Mahatma

he looks up at her
finds the strength to shine
a weak smile into her eyes
and laughs
and says

I am not that great, Amita
you give me too much credit, dear girl
truth is bigger than all of us
and you must always
remember
that

satyagraha
will always change hate
into love

viii.

twin mocha moons
their faces locked together
by a pair of parted red lips and
pink tongues

black hair rivers
curled and unspoken
flow onto white Parisian sheets
and pile into pre-dawn pools
upon pillows

eternity

then a break

do not leave me,
Renée

one whispers
but the other
breathes a lament laid down in a
bittersweet morning croon

je t’adore
Josephine
but I cannot love you
enough for you to know
my flesh
my secret carried in skin cells
I must leave you now
but never forget

that you are
une grande diva magnifique
and that you are
loved

ix.

you cannot tell anyone
that I am here

she tells the young man
of fiery black eyes
and curly red-brown hair
standing before her

for a man with
giants of monsters of metal
roams these parts
he thinks that this is
his land
but Kokopelli says otherwise
we danced to the tune of his
sacred celebration flute
once upon a time
once upon these grounds

he cocks his head to one side
thoughts growing loud and large
shifts his weight
looks at her
and asks:

then why are you here, Una,
old woman with the
young face?

she smiles

I have loved many
and have seen much
and still I want to see more
you see

and my kind
can only find it
upon holy ground

Written 6/8/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This poem is about me and my fiance and was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #77: Opposites Attract. Enjoy.

-Nicole

——————————–

Two trains, both traveling at
infinity miles per hour, the speed of
light, the speed of love – one eastbound,
one westbound. Now calculate:

how long will it take for them
to meet? Try

thirty-one years, through sorrows and
tears. Each is half of a whole formed before
the I AM called forth Earth’s name out of
the abyss, and each follows an unseen
railroad track. Yang

climbs upon the shoulders of pointed rock
giants to taste Heaven and once atop their
mountaintops, he breathes in invisible manna
and solitude, savoring clouds upon his
tongue – then he descends

into valleys burning brimstone, leaving
him with fire-and-sulfur nostrils infected
by their infernos, and fire walls rise up to greet
his skin with flaming fingers delivering
scorching slaps. Meanwhile, Yin

walks through dense mists, legions of
liquid gray punctured by burned and brittle
trees – straight sticks of black spines out
of the back of Earth – with only echoes of
her own voice and the half-tone shadows
of her breathing to keep her company. But

then, they meet

and become puzzle pieces locked
together, curve upon curve
caressing each other in all the right
places. She extends, he arcs. He rests, she
cradles. And for the first time upon
the invisibly written page of Eternity,
Yin and Yang

become one

again.

Written 5/30/09, 6/1/09, and 6/2/09
&copy 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This was written for Read Write Prompt # 76: Changes.

-Nicole

———————————————

first, your color was green:
trees, flags, and your heart shared the color of
the rebirth of life and atoms and
photosynthesis was your queen, resting royally
in your ribcage, exploding roses and violets –
the fodder of schoolgirl crushes and bad poetry

love comes in colors
that you can’t deny

then somewhere along the way
you became black
because hearts cracked bleed black
once their scarlet wells run dry
they never mend on their own
so you set the clock to wind slow
threaded needles and stitched together
your two halves to let them grow,
meld, and become one again

love comes in colors
that you can’t deny

now, you’re wrapped again
in the arms of love
so revel in the rain
of this new moment of bliss
and realize that you needed
nothing more than this:
an eternal perfect moment, crystalline and blue
generated from this new equation of hearts -

one plus one equals much more than two

this is an exponential explosion
and you left the evidence all over the universe
everything looks electric and brand new:

stars have discarded their old clothes
for large, blue white coronas
that shine in your beloved’s eyes
the sky has wiped her skin clean of clouds
to show you her naked translucent blackness
and even rainbows are supercharged
with a bright backbeat of incandescent joy
broadcasting through their stained glass smiles

and you marvel at this metamorphosis
but behind the backbeat of colors brand new
an unending truth once again shines through:

love comes in colors
that you can’t deny

Written 5/24/09 and 5/28/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson except for the refrain, which is borrowed from The Smashing Pumpkins song, “Crush”, which appears on their album Gish (© 1991 The Smashing Pumpkins and Virgin Records). All Rights Reserved on original material by N. Nicholson.

Stumble It!

Written for someone I know who just had a loved one pass away, I present this for NaPoWriMo#2: Stretch the Metaphor over at Read Write Poem. Enjoy.

-Nicole

—————————————————

Perhaps I’ve come to embrace them, these

antiphons

that I chant in response to the psalms
around me. I never knew
how much I could be shaped
by the sea that I swim in, never knew
how much water could slide past my lips
until my lips became water
and I melted with the sea. I may be a
floating mass of indigo suspended inside
their ocean of turquoise –
but I am still

sea.

Now, I hear his counter-melody ending in
decrescendo, fading
into the soft light of silence –

and you face the cantor, wondering
how you will sound singing solo. We, your choir,
cannot sing his part. We don’t have the
range. We don’t have the rhythm. We don’t
even carry the same sheet music –

ours is marked up beyond recognition in
soprano, alto, and tenor pencil.

So we sing what we can, sounding out
our soul notes behind you
in sympathy cards, pats on the back,
hugs, open ears, and gentle gazes cast your
way. We sing, hoping that you
will hear us. We sing, hoping that
you will find the strength in your voice
to still carry your own tune. And I,

who once ducked and sang my
lone tenor part quietly beneath the
sea of soprano and alto tones,

will now sound out my harmony. I used to think
that my cadence was jarring, that my
off-key voice sounded in your ears
about as pleasant as the bray of an
ass, that my tones

distracted you.
Made your eyes and voice wander
away from your own melody. But
I cannot help but sing now — I wear
these choir robes. And if it will help you
sound out your solo loud and clear, I
will sound out my tenor lines

to blend in soft harmony
with their voices melting,
expanding into a cloud of care behind you
as you try your best to figure out
how to sing

solo.

Written 4/2/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!