Tag Archives: pain

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NaPoWriMo Poem #5: Seventeen

The bus seems like a perfect exit
to a girl, seventeen, with a dammed-up chest.

Years ago, the concrete poured,
the walls maneuvered into place while the contractors
cast over her face with stone: straighten up. You’ve got
nothing to cry about. Meanwhile,
her glass shatter heart had lain in magnificent crystalline pieces
just behind the giant, cold, gray barrier. Soundproof. No one outside
had heard the shivering while the workmen
took their spare tools to the lucent structure; no one outside
even knew the thing had been made out of glass
to begin with.
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WWP Poem #10: Needle and Thread

Silver dash. A flickering, unforked tongue
seeking its end somewhere under my skin,
gliding easily between the borders of cells. A little refugee
pulls thread behind her, like driving pickup trucks
full of the brown and bruised sliding unseen
into country somewhere south of El Paso. The thread
is black, cheap, and worsted under twilight,
a broken-edged creation wrought in blindness.
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Big Tent Poem / WWP Poem #7: Sixteen

This poem was written for both this past Monday’s Big Tent Poetry Prompt and last week’s We Write Poems Prompt. Two ThreeFour visual versions of the poem, plus the original text of the poem, appear below. Click on each graphic to view it large (you might be able to even go larger, depending on your browser).

Sixteen, A Visual Poem by Nicole Nicholson (version 1)

Visual Poem, Version 1 (Click to View)

Sixteen, A Visual Poem by Nicole Nicholson (version 2)

Visual Poem, Version 2 (Click to View)


Sixteen, a Visual Poem by Nicole Nicholson (version 3)

Visual Poem, Version 3

Sixteen, A Visual Poem by Nicole Nicholson (Version 4)

Visual Poem, Version 4

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When the stars bleed through pinholes
like a heroin serenade walking up the tracks
of an earthquake arm where veins are fault lines
and bruises are epicenters where footfalls land;
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Dream, Ohio, 2009 A.D.

This is one of two poems written for Read Write Poem #91: The Self As Memory, Or Vice Versa. This prompt was courtesy of guest celebrity poet Joseph O. Legaspi and invited us to, using two of his photographs and memories we want to either remember or forget, freewrite and compose two poems. This poem was the “what I want to forget” category. Our family moved frequently when I was growing up, for reasons that I have yet to completely understand; I wrote this poem using some descriptive phrases from picture #1 and incorporated an animal — the spider.

If you’ve not read poem #1, I encourage you to do so.

-Nicole
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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
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Untitled 8-20-09

I wrote this for Read Write Poem Prompt #88: Fresh From the Wordle bank (which was an interesting birthday gift of sorts from RWP and the Universe, I think). I got a bit of inspiration this morning and worked some of the words into this piece. I think Kinnell has left his stamp on me and this poem is about — guess what — nightmares again. So for your enjoyment, fresh off the pen, is this yet-to-be-titled piece. Enjoy.

-Nicole

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The breeze blows through the
window, billows the curtains, flies those
gentle blue flags on worn steel rods, and then blows
down the coastline of your back. Somewhere,
a river comes undone
and hurls itself to Earth in tiny, shattered pieces
beyond our bedroom window. Dreams
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Mutiny in Six Parts

This was written for Read Write Poem #82: Ode to Your Homunculus.

I borrowed heavily from concepts in Jungian psychology, Freudian psychology, and Kabbalah to write this — and thus it is a multi-part, somewhat lengthy work. I’ve been troubled by a lack of creative energy lately, so this work was a blessing to me. I hope it touches you in some way.

Oh, and by the way, enjoy.

-Nicole

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i. psyche

a hollow school room
looking like eighteen and ninety four
everything is wooden
and silent: open-mouthed chairs
wordless desks scrubbed
of paper and language
outside
the snow is falling
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Jack

This was written for NaPoWriMo #7: Nicknames over at Read Write Poem. I decided to do a darker take of the prompt, more along the lines of an alter ego idea. I should warn readers that this poem deals with a sensitive subject (sexual abuse) — I namely do this to avoid accidentally triggering any survivors who read my blog.

-Nicole

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Resurrection

Whose Eyes Are These?
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

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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
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Ladybug

This bop was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #67: Share the Bop. A bop is a (roughly) 26 line poem with three stanzas and a refrain that repeats three times in the poem. The bop is usually structured like this (however, you can modify or expand on the form):

  1. Stanza 1: six lines, introduces a problem or situation
  2. Refrain
  3. Stanza 2: eight lines, expands more on the problem or situation, or continues from stanza 1
  4. Refrain
  5. Stanza 3: six lines, with the solution or conclusion
  6. Refrain

I had fun with this and plan to write many more bops. For the RWP prompt for this week, we were to either a) borrow two lines posted by participants as a refrain or b) write our own bop and use one of the donated couplets as an epigraph. My refrain (I want to fix you/I want to set your wings) is courtesy of Angie from The Space Between Words blog.

Now, enjoy the poem.

-Nicole
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Caught between you two,
I was a ladybug –
spread my wings, and I flew;
spread my wings for the two of you;
spread my wings, and I knew
your love. Now, I hear your voices:
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The Sun Has Spilled Upon His Face

This was written for Read Write Poem Prompt #66: Re-Imagine Your Life. I took a little license with this, so the poem isn’t about me. I took a little inspiration from R.E.M.’s “Country Feedback” (in fact, I think this poem could be an answer to this song). Enjoy.

-Nicole
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the sun has spilled upon his face
light makes enemies of darkened thoughts
evil musings
cruel and wanton
wanting to seize him and kill him
turn him into death itself
walking, walking in endless night
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Five Haiku for Grief

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

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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.

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