-Nicole

———————————-

Let’s crucify death tonight. Let’s pin
that motherfucker to the wall. This bonfire
now crackles before our faces, calls our feet
colored in brown, peach, pale yellow, burnt sienna, and sable
to spell out our names in letters of elation
as we encircle this exploding insane flower
of flame. We’ll pound our joy
into the solid back of Earth tonight. We’ll go pre-verbal,
speaking in some crazy, proto-human dialect
of shriek, moan, shout, bark, whoop, and cackle
in the hope that by sheer exuberance
we’ll keep this fire burning. Owls will perch
above in the dark canopies, staring at us
with confused eyes of polished moonstone,
and the wild, moon-moaning flute music of wolves
will guide our frantic explosion of
soul-scream song.

There is no Auschwitz here, no Salem,
no Montgomery, no Saigon, no Amritsar –
and Fallujah
cannot even cast her war-baited breath here. They
have not been born yet. Right now, this is us,
naked and glorified,
chasing away the desolation from
between the darkened trees, as if it had even dared
to collect in their ancient, brown-barked arms. These sentinels,
they will not be goblets of wanton longing –
but for us, chalices of life,
carrying our echo in their fingers –
those spindly, tan twigs bedecked with green leaf
and bejeweled with shiny, olive cabochons; and these fruits,
their skins are soaking with life and oil
and colored in black, wine, eggplant, and green.

And the fire – this mutating lion’s mane
of orange and gold with a rage all its own –
calls our noses
with the acrid, carbon-soaked, brown and savory smell
of wood expiring within its curls (how could you
not smell the burning?). Light bursts forth
from its center in every direction
like an orange, translucent trapezoid. This is the halo,

and we have become angels here,

messengers of life
with our strange song: our midnight saturnalia
sends up a collective barbaric yawp in the color of sonic fire,
that yawp emitting
from the light vibrating inside each of our ribcages – and this light
is only caged up inside bone
so it may power our suits of skins
and hard drive brains.

Written 9/8/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

-Nicole
————————————–

Life is crucifying me tonight.
That motherfucker has pinned me to the wall
of nightmare
and has strapped a highway belt
across my stomach. It knows why: I could count
the dots in my skin, and they look like

Milwaukee, Winnepeg, Minneapolis, Phoenix,
Flagstaff, and Middletown, Ohio – each
in its concrete, freeway exit, and mile marker glory. My back
is pockmarked and bruised from their eruptions
beneath my surface, Richter scale aftershocks
sent up my spine every time that my roots
were torn out of soil. I swear that
if I judge from the numbness in my sacroiliac alone,
then I must have a legion of neurons missing.

Friends used to slip through my fingers. Their faces
would become ghosts breeding and multiplying
in my little arms while I lay in the backseat
of a highway-bound wagon
that exacted sick satisfaction from my veins
every time its tires traveled
outside the limits of whatever city
that I was calling home. When I was twelve, I thought
that I might as well tattoo “new kid” into my forehead, write my
desolation and difference
in six inch-inch high black letters. Dig the needle in
extra-deep to make it bleed,
make the weeping outside match
the weeping inside. Meanwhile, I
pretended to like turning into tumbleweeds and dust
every third year, pretended that the cry for adventure
that called up from bones was my own. But I don’t, and
it isn’t.

And now, I have these artifacts:
pine trees from Fr. Tuthill
that began growing out of my feet in 1983
until my legs started mistaking themselves
for wooden trunks,
and Sonoran, spine-studded saguaro
that began shooting out of my back in 1985 –
when I was fourteen, I even began
ejecting spines out of my skin
to warn passersby: I am nomadic, and I am
toxic! Snow from the shrinking shoulders
of Lake Michigan’s shoreline
has dusted my collarbone since 1977, and
a Manitoba, square-block ice house
was built in my brain back in 1978. Not only that,
the Great Miami River
wound its blue-green, ribbon self
around my throat back in 1988 – and I am still
choking.

But in this dream right now, I see trees. They beckon me,
scattered in sunlight
that casts gold onto a bed of broken leaves
at their rooted feet. This spray of light,
edged with rainbows written in shades of yellow,
spills onto a forest clearing. Above me,
a canopy of leaves shattered by sky
dangles a fuzzy, silver web from its belly. In it,
a spider weaves,
casting thread from point to point
in an octagonal dream,
connecting my past to my future
in a serene telegram from the Great Spirit. And
it reads:

Because you were sand scattered
across the back of America, nothing will ever fetter you
unless you choose to rest your wrist
inside the open-and-close empty of a manacle’s mouth. You will find
freedom in your loneliness. Carry dreams
pulled from the feet of your cities in your head,
spin the future from your pen. Pull pain
from your mud, fold yourself into a lotus –

and when you open up again,
you will project the star canopy sky
out of your arms for others to see. And thank the Great Spirit
for your pain – it is who you are: but you must
never hold onto it so tightly
that your limbs freeze into brittle and broken.

I sit in the clearing below the web,
study the message again, marvel at the truth spelled out
in furry silver, and let the sunlight
fall upon my face
until it is time to leave this chimerical circle
once cleared by Algonquin hands. It is time now
to go home.

Written 9/8/09 and 9/9/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This chained haiku, though written a little late (due to a wicked case of writer’s block the last couple of weeks) was written for Read Write Word Prompt #7. Enjoy.

-Nicole

——————————————————–

signatures of death:
mirrors turn their reflective
faces to the walls

roses become allies
crimson, lie as sentinels
upon your still chest

blood under your skin
withdrawn into silence – I
speak in tongues of grief

while you wear mists of
the eternal, ancient lake,
I am wearing black

memories yield to
alchemy – reassemble,
and they become you

Written 1/13/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Written 7/14/08
&copy 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This chain of regular and reverse hay(na)ku was written for Poefusion’s Monday Mural Prompt (the mural is above). Enjoy.

-Nicole
——————————————————-
one
night I
had a dream
I walked the
streets of
Memphis

electric
buzz twang
and sandpaper song
slithered into my
open eager
ears

and
wrapped themselves
around my heart
they pulled me
to Beale
Street

and
that’s when
I saw him
written in neon
the lingua
franca

of
honky-tonk
blues and jazz
as he sat
on the
steps

he
wove a
guitar string tapestry
which cradled the
full Memphis
moon

and
brought it
down to me
then he vanished
into the
night

I
was left
still holding that
moon in my
bare cold
hands

I
stored it
inside of my
heart-shaped box
it still glows
casting Memphis
moonlight

on
neon wishes
and musical dreams
where I gladly
sing the
blues

Written 7/13/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This was a sedoka written for Read Write Poem Prompt #35: “fun in the sun” (NOT!). Here is my take. Enjoy.

-Nicole
————————————————————————
released from the jaws
of school, time was now my own
to sculpt summer freedom with

twenty years later
loneliness wraps around me
in emptied, silent school halls

Written 7/11/08
&copy 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

-Nicole
——————————————————-
the girl squirms around in the back seat of
her daddy’s eighty-six taurus to watch out of
the back windshield disappearing palm trees
and green leaves, verdant dots and dashes

(she’s too numb to cry again)

but her view is mostly obscured by the
ugly grey and orange u-haul trailer being
dragged behind them, chained, bumping,
and jumping on the side streets of
yet another town
left behind

her toys are in there
her life is in there
truncated

this is the eighth time they’ve moved

at first it was an adventure
seeing different and elegant places, faces,
and terrains

now it is just plain
now it is just pain

now it is just insane

Written 5/27/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

————————————————-
My name is Nicole. I am not the same
rusty-kneed little girl with braid ends sealed
by fire who asked you how to reclaim
her dead mother through words, how to reveal

her shining little girl memories of
the woman before junk rotted her
away from the inside out, how to shove
the pain out of her little heart and turn

it into a poetic scream – but I
have the same need: I want to remake,
reconstruct my father through words, and I
can do it now, thanks to you. I’m awake,

and I am here, and I will not wait for
someone else to rebuild him anymore.

I cannot ignore my early teachers:
Langston taught me how words are beautiful,
bountiful building blocks with features
of our own souls. Maya gave me vital

knowledge of rhythm and rhyme, and taught me
how to beat poetically in time
with one of myriad rhythms in the
ample, open, cosmos. Poe taught nighttime

and darkness to me, and how to embrace
them as I would embrace light. I cannot
ignore my songwriter teachers – their place
in my lessons are unique. Reznor taught

me the language of screams, and Stipe taught me
the language of lyrical mystery.

But Ms. Smith, you helped me remember what
I wanted to reconstruct most – my dad:
his smokestack and seaside Jersey laugh, the
way he could rip apart an engine, add

more spare parts, and rebuild it into a
work of art; the blacks, grays, and purples that
he penciled his whole wardrobe in; and the
good times with him, before the darkness that

overshadowed our family, before he went
away forever. I can reconstruct
him and never lose him again, cement
him in words that will never die, destruct,

or fade away. Thank you, Ms. Smith; I can
now rebuild the memory of a man.

Written 7/2/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This chained lune was written for Poefusion’s Monday Mural, based on the above image. Enjoy.

-Nicole
———————————————————-
The old tree was dying,
her wood drying
as ancient life left her.

The tree has been shelter
for the sculptor -
a cradle of memories.

He remembered afternoons of resting
in her arms,
watching skyward in her branches -

he could not let her go.
He gently carved
a hand from her wood.

He rests in her palm,
watching past branches
which frame the starlit sky;

she will not die now.
In her branches,
he’s a little boy again.

Written 6/29/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!