I can’t explain how I do it
and when I try, I can only point you
to the canvas: there is speech which keeps
refusing to exit through lips and tongue
and insists on taking its form
as colored chansons upon a blank face –
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Tag Archives: Poems
Window Psalm
Leaf leaves the mother tree in its falling flight, descends to die in the earth at her feet. Leaf becomes soil, and soil becomes womb; leave the childbearing to winter’s chill and tales of a babe born and laid in a manger; selah. Tree becomes testament, and book is bound, its reflection white and glassy in the store window. Read the window, tell the tree to tell her tale in textbook and tome, story and poem, or Scripture born on a pale, thin skin; selah. Tomes of tombstones, one errant in the reflection while blurred winter wind and sky imprint onto the glass. Soil becomes tomb as another year goes to sleep, bedded down beneath snow, sidewalk, and an aging sun while rainbow lights color each cornflower Yule twilight; selah. Brownstones rise from the earth with aplomb while Christmas bells chime and call choruses forth. The choirs, the organs, and the digitally made song cannot reach the man, distant, imprinted in the window – distant and singular in this season of joy; selah. O glass, what more will you impart in this season of both ashen day and resplendent night? Birth and death pass each other with wary, cautious eyes, unsure of the true ruler of these days – is it the cold claiming our breath or the warmth of our hearts? Selah.
Written 12/13/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for this week’s We Write Poems Prompt. My poem ended up being a psalm based on how the images in the picture called out to me and the interplay between them — and the words associated with them.
“Selah” is a word used rather frequently in the psalms of the Torah/the Old Testament of Bible. According to Wikipedia, it is “a difficult concept to translate”; it might be a liturgical instruction or indicate an instrumental break. Anglican clergyman and Biblical scholar E.W. Bullinger believed that it was a conjunction between two verses of a psalm, possibly to illustrate a contrast or a cause-and-effect relationship. The suggested meaning that caught my eye the most — and is how the term is intended to be used in this poem — is “pause, and think of that”, which is how the term is translated in the Amplified Bible.
-Nicole
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Free-Falling
I. I’m not sure all these people understand
You see bodies like broken dolls free-falling
onto the clean and deserted pavement.
Blood slides out of tiny crevice and huge chasm wounds
and joins the shells of flesh as they collapse and land
onto the asphalt. You swear that you can see
breath exiting as the bodies hit the ground – but the breath
always climbs upward, leaving its old ribcages behind.
Now, there is nothing left but smoke and desolate silence as
crumpled bodies and crumpled trucks lay empty
underneath the orchid, scarlet, and maize colored dawn.
Suddenly there is only blackness –
you fall from dreams into waking –
and land with a sudden jolt –
and there is only you, your trembling limbs,
your quivering nerves running scared up and down
the length of your body,
and the half-lit cloak of night that kept you company
while you slept. You sit up, shirtless and sweat-drenched,
the survivor of yet another head-on collision
between you and nightmare.
Without End, Amen
The gathering at the oak tree gazes up to watch
light breaking through the leaves in lucent blonde fingers;
hallelujah
through the gathering of leaves — the oak’s green sleeves:
a blind wooden eye turns, and the gifts slip through her fingers;
hallelujah
as colors race through the membrane sky –
the rainbow siblings salute us through azure as one;
hallelujah
past the rain, shed to call colors up from
the earthen membrane beneath us, where we stand as one
hallelujah,
and we send back the song as electric impulses,
voices carried through limbs and hearts alone;
hallelujah
is our voices escaping only in breaths and upraised limbs as
we each stand before You alone;
hallelujah
Written 11/29/11
© 2011 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This week’s poem was inspired by two things: 1) “Hallelujah” by R.E.M., which appears on their latest release, “Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, and Part Garbage” and 2) the We Write Poems Prompt this week which suggested that we look at words in pairs and the relationships between words. The picture is courtesy of Rampaging Poet from Deviant Art.
Process Notes: I basically took the words in the order that they appeared and considered each two to be a pair (gathering/oak, color/membrane, and voice/limb). Once I did this, the images and the story began to emerge. Also, I’ve been listening to “Hallelujah” lately…it’s an absolutely gorgeous and inspiring track and it just makes me even sadder that they broke up…but at the same time it seems like the perfect song for an ending. The spiritual nature of the lyrics inspired me…I wanted to write a companion/answer that would do it justice.
-Nicole
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Threads (for Autistics Speaking Day, 2011)
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,–
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile…
— Paul Laurence Dunbar
One might believe that there is an incongruity
within a doctor who can rescue a young toddler
playing in a sea of vomit inside of a South Indian hut
eviscerated by a village’s cholera outbreak, but yet
finds himself becoming windswept detritus tossed
from coast to coast by a stomach which demands
a constant schedule. One might place
his wide-armed compassion of raising that boy himself
and his Richter scale tremors at finding his office disturbed
as light-and-dark contrast Polaroids, and wonder
if the two men were even the same:
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Hawk Eyes
The sign reads 20 MPH. The hawk: 0 MPH.
He, a mute sentinel of white and tawny feathers, perches
atop its narrow, blade-thin edge to watch
cars pass in the rain: swivel, stare, and then
swivel again in perfect two hundred seventy degree
rotations.
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You and Me, We Know About Time
R.E.M., 1984
For Peter, Bill, Mike, and Michael
You were made out of
cinereal, coriander, and lemon;
sable, cinnamon, and indigo;
bergamot, ginger, and rose. You
spoke like a thesaurus and sounded like
troubadours, da Vinci, broken glass, microchips, and
guitar string nerves, ragged at the edge
and carrying too much current. You
mumbled and sang clarion from rooftops by turns.
All of this has been living in my ears
and in my brain, that attic that
holds everything and lets go of nothing.
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Kittens
The cat: sky-gray and fence post slender.
Me: twenty-three and in my first real apartment,
in my first real city, outside of short term college hovels
with short term leases and cheap-ass furniture (not) included.
I found the cat while helping a (former) friend
clean out his house, junk-laden and miscarrying memories
like fruit, love, and children that were never meant to be.
A (misconceived) polyamory experiment gone wrong – and now
the house was being emptied of old photos, clothes, and
a barn cat hiding inside every shadow watching humans
flit to and fro with boxes in their arms. In between boxes,
I carried her away, too.
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The Chase
Lord Dream from the Sandman Chronicles
Following you from dreamscape to dreamscape, I
cannot help but notice the taunt of
a quickly turned head,
an averted glance,
or a frozen neck refusing to turn on axis
to bring your eyes in contact with mine. I have chased you
from the steps of every illusion woven and constructed
from the vagaries of an attic stuffed with photographs
by a lizard brain that demands a coherent storyline.
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Aluna
Stop, and bend your ear low
to the ground. Now listen: the breath is labored,
almost choked in some spots. There are people
who can read these signs like ragged, torn air
leaving the lungs of a tired Mother, and they say
that we are killing Her.
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Saturn Return
for Amy Winehouse
The forever young are held in a pair of parentheses
made out of 27 years;
the ageless are collected within the arms of Saturn,
exhaling breath at his baleful return.
Each of you has a life cycle,
you all follow the same path from birth to death.
You first enter as a little bright light, a tiny pinpoint of sparkle;
you part the curtain, hiding as white dwarfs behind this
ringed gas giant, fearful of his mythical jaws.
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Vision
I am taking notes
at a fantastic rock-n-roll concert
going on in my head
I always take notes
when the visions come
projectors singing in my head
throw up the screen
and let the film play itself onto it
in endless maddening loops –
freeze frame, focus in on an image
and magnify until the colors rain
into my hands
until voltage notes rain
into my hands
blue and black
royal and midnight
and now, the ceremony has begun
the hills embrace the throng like arms
they gather amidst the green
while the moon assents to the sounds below her
with her own pale light
the night and the people
gather together in thickness
beat like a pulse
hands reach up, trying to
grab the passing purple magic
bodies become pinwheels
warp space and time around them
as they dance an old dervish pattern
while the music spins them on invisible axes
all together now give up the ghost
release wine into air around them and
get drunk on the ecstasy dripping down
in the drenched air
rapt and nearly carried beyond
in my own delirium
I grab the words
I grab the colors
and attempt to translate
this music is a pure expression of joy
another night has ended
with a vision in my hands
Written 7/7 and 7/12/11
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Greetings! I haven’t written any poems in a while but I was intrigued by the latest We Write Poems Prompt. Viv suggested this week that we try to write a poem in someone else’s voice…in someone else’s shoes. It could be a person, an animal, an inanimate object…anything you like, as long as you leave your own voice at the door.
I’ve done persona poems a number of times, but in many cases I’ve always felt as if each one was still my own words. This time I tried my damnedest to leave my own voice at the door. It was tricky, especially considering my chosen subject — I revisited Jim Morrison this week, using two of his quotes and jumping off of them to write a poem (“I was taking notes at a fantastic rock-n-roll concert in my head” and “music is the pure expression of joy”). Comments are more than welcome — please tell me how you think I did. And I hope you enjoyed the poem.
-Nicole
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