And now, I laugh at your suggestion that I should
wear clothes. What do you think? I cannot tolerate
how you cackle, screech, and moan about
my jewels being on open display, about not putting myself
under a proper black cloak or under a glass case or under
a stiff, red cocktail dress that only teases the air with
a rounded tan shoulder, a warm peach collarbone. You’re full
of shit. How do you hold back the sun, and how do you chain the moon?
Encased behind prison bars like cold black fingers,
shut behind grey walls like death rebuilt as a sick concrete backdrop,
they will still break free. And so do I.

Don’t worry about me. I’d rather be this than the
blonde wrapped candy that I was before I walked out
my front door. I’ve found God like candles, like
supernovas, like blood smeared across lips and fingers
from ripping apart and devouring time. And if you think I’m crazy
like Akka Mahadevi, like Rimbaud, like the mad old woman next door
hearing dead Indian voices, then I say: so I am. I make no
apologies for it, and I refuse your sanity like
chloroform strangling the mind with an army
of straightjackets. Fuck you. I will not strip the God
from my bones.

So let me be. I’ve found my heaven, and I intend
to return to it at every opportunity. I am inside bliss;
my soul leaps up inside that turquoise fire. I am naked; I am
wet; but I am clean. Which is more than I can say
for you.

Written 2/24/10

——————————————————————
This is my final piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. Whew! I’m done!

Saludos,
Nicole

Stumble It!

But you don’t know. And how can I tell you?
I consult the dictionary of human behavior every day.
I had to load it into my brain and make it learn
that you open doors with hello and
that you close them with goodbye. I had to learn
the mechanics of when to smile, when to laugh.
If I like you, I tear encyclopedia pages and pictures from off my walls
to give to you as gifts. And if I were to love you, I might
serenade you with music channeled from the
stereo installed into my brain that I first noticed
when I was ten.
But small talk still feels like grease on my
fingertips. And some days, I hear
my own voice rendered in Greek and wonder
when I will speak my own tongue again.

So I will speak my own dialect of
encyclopedia notes, photographs, trivia bank entries,
badly sung covers of the originals, words shaped
like arrows. There may be no smiles, no
dance of our eyes, no oil between us to make things
easier. That’s not how I work, and I am
not ashamed of this. And maybe some day, you will
see me dance.

Written 2/23/10

——————————————————————
This is my fourth piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet. (And BTW, you can read all of my February Mini-Challenge Poems here.)

Saludos,
Nicole
——————————————————–
Follow @ravenswingpoet

Stumble It!

-Nicole
———————————————————————————————–

I have swallowed a fabulous dose of poison. On my
hospital bed, an overpowering smell of incense wafts over me:
guardians of the holy oil, confessors, martyrs. I have a
pillow over my mouth, they can’t hear me, they’re
phantoms. I’m no longer in the world; life’s clock
has stopped. Yes indeed, I’ve shut my eyes
against your light;

and when it’s gone,
then I’ll be gone.

Out on the roads on winter nights, homeless, half-naked, hungry,
I hear a voice that grips my frozen heart: “Shouts, drums, dance, dance,
dance!” Do I know myself? I am ripe for death, and my
weakness leads me down a dangerous highway
to the ends of the world and to the Cimmerian lands where
darkness and the whirlwinds live. Not even a single sophistry
of madness – the madness people lock away – have I
forgotten. I can no longer bring myself to seek
the sweet relief of a good beating; I’ve been damned
by the rainbow;

and when it’s gone,
then I’ll be gone.

And what was lost? I have tried to invent new flowers,
new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I am the
author of all festivals, all triumphs, all tragedies. Copyright remains
with me. But always alone; no family; and
what language do I speak? Hunger, thirst, shouts,
dance, dance, dance, dance! It began with the
laughter of children; it will end there –

and when it’s gone,
then I’ll be gone.

Composed 2/22/10

All lines taken from Donald Revell’s translation of “A Season in Hell” by Arthur Rimbaud.

——————————————————————————————–
Note: Most of Rimbaud’s original text and Revell’s translations are formatted in prose. Thus, instead of strictly borrowing lines, I chose to use entire sentences. In some cases, Rimbaud would join two sentences with a semi-colon; thus I bent the rules a bit for this assignment and took the liberty of using each of these sentences separately or combining them with other sentences. I composed this piece using the a loose version of the bop form, as detailed in Read Write Poem Prompt #67 and this Get the Lead Out post over at RWP. This form was invented by Aafa Michael Weaver and is composed of three stanzas with a refrain. You can read more about it here.

Stumble It!

-Nicole
———————————————————————————————–

I have a horror of all trades. In my vision I saw
a million charming creatures moving in time to
beautiful church-music, Power and Peace, noble ambitions, and
lord knows what. These, it was promised, would
bury the tree of good and evil in absolute darkness, would
banish despotic proprieties, freeing us to love purely
in the pure land. It’s the vision of numbers; eternity, the
shoreless ocean in the sun.

We advance towards Spirit.
Like him, I’m eating myself alive.

It is these moments of awakening that gave me
visions of purity! I know them all. I’ve seen
an ocean of fires and smoke in heaven:
to the left, to the right, all the riches of creation blazing
like a million thunderbolts. Out of
the sea, which I loved as though it would wash me clean, I saw
the cross of consolation rising. Do I know
nature yet? The hand on a pen is a
hand on a plow.

We advance towards Spirit.
Like him, I’m eating myself alive.

Hard night! It began with boorishness; it
ends with angels of fire and ice. Spiritual combat is as brutal as
human wars. I who called myself an angel above the law and a
seer, I return to the soil with a duty to seek and rugged reality to
embrace. But if, from now on, my spirit was
always wide awake, we might still get to truth. Let
prayers gallop and lightning rumble! Via the spirit we
go to God!

We advance towards Spirit.
Like him, I’m eating myself alive.

Composed 2/22/10

All lines taken from Donald Revell’s translation of “A Season in Hell” by Arthur Rimbaud.

——————————————————————————————–
Note: Most of Rimbaud’s original text and Revell’s translations are formatted in prose. Thus, instead of strictly borrowing lines, I chose to use entire sentences. In some cases, Rimbaud would join two sentences with a semi-colon; thus I bent the rules a bit for this assignment and took the liberty of using each of these sentences separately or combining them with other sentences. I composed this piece using a loose version of the bop form, as detailed in Read Write Poem Prompt #67 and this Get the Lead Out post over at RWP. This form was invented by Aafa Michael Weaver and is composed of three stanzas with a refrain. You can read more about it here.

Stumble It!

This is my first piece for the February 2010 Mini-Challenge over at Read Write Poem. This month’s challenge directed us to gather a poet’s work around us, pull out or underline lines we really liked, and then construct at least two centos, or patchwork poems (one each on days one and two, of course) from those lines. On day 3, we have the option of either writing another cento or parting ways with the lines and writing our own poems based on or inspired by our chosen poet.

-Nicole
———————————————————————————————–

The epic of a madness. Ecstasy, nightmare, sleep, in a
nest of flames. I summoned pestilence so I could choke on
sand, on blood. I buried the dead in my bowels. I’ve got a
taste for almost nothing anymore but dirt and stones. Feed on
broken bricks, on bits of scree and the old stones in churchyards; I have
faith in poison.

I belong to the race that sings under torture;
my hand is not mine and will never be.

It started out as an experiment. I said: “God. As of today, I rebel against
death! I belong to happiness, body and soul. I’m going to unveil
all the mysteries: mysteries religious and natural, death, birth, the past,
the future, the cosmos, nothingness. I’ll be the maestro of
phantasmagoria.” I standardized the language of frenzy; I wrote
silences and darknesses, I transcribed the inexpressible. I dragged myself
through stinking alleyways and, with eyes shut tight, I gave myself
to the sun, the god of fire. The fire leaps up with my soul inside.

I belong to the race that sings under torture;
my hand is not mine and will never be.

I fell asleep for days at a time and, upon waking, I dragged the saddest dreams
along. Countless hallucinations. I became a fabulous opera; I loved
the deserts, burnt orchards, faded storefronts, tepid drinks. In the past, I
would have been endless. I’m a leper sitting among thorns and
broken crockery at the foot of a sun-corroded wall. The dried blood
smolders on my face; I await God greedily.

I belong to the race that sings under torture;
my hand is not mine and will never be.

Composed 2/21/10

All lines taken from Donald Revell’s translation of “A Season in Hell” by Arthur Rimbaud.

——————————————————————————————–
Note: Most of Rimbaud’s original text and Revell’s translations are formatted in prose. Thus, instead of strictly borrowing lines, I chose to use entire sentences. In some cases, Rimbaud would join two sentences with a semi-colon; thus I bent the rules a bit for this assignment and took the liberty of using each of these sentences separately or combining them with other sentences. I composed this piece using the bop form, as detailed in Read Write Poem Prompt #67 and this Get the Lead Out post over at RWP. This form was invented by Aafa Michael Weaver and is composed of three stanzas with a refrain. You can read more about it here.

Stumble It!

P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.

—————————————————–
I.

Icicles, cracking
when the wind grows cold: battered bone, the rounded ends of
tibia, fibula, and femur. The dented faces of moons
collide with each other behind shifting knee caps
as I walk. I didn’t know knees
could protest so loudly. The asteroids that hit me
beneath skin were Lyme bacteria – I never saw
them coming. Maybe when I am sunk into the sleep of Earth, they’ll
dig up me up in fossil and wonder if
my femur bone was ever used for batting practice.

II.

Release your hard-on, let it fall back
to your curled ground without a shudder. It’s that
simple. You needn’t shout your discovery of me, broadcast it
from spires and steeples as if
folks like me never existed. I know that we
were once illegal. But we who are
painted with many colors at once – we are
born every day. We are no big surprise. And maybe
if you untangle my blood, you’ll figure out
who I am.

III.

I am dark by DNA:
north by northwest by south by east
by west by northeast. I am literal when I repeat Whitman:
I contain multitudes. Sometimes
when I stare at the brown flatlands and hills
that clothe my bones, I see the
exquisite black curls of Sequoyah’s dreams,
freehand dancing with an alphabet pen. The curls of my hair,
whipped and stripped into straight by chemical magic,
would be jealous if they saw them. Or I see Cill Airne
trying to break through, green and gray-castled,
in the buried blush that rises up to my surfaces. Or I see
steeled silver or azure cabochon eyes, punctuated by black hole pupils and
arising, blonde-topped, from the depths of Bavarian dirt. Or I see
Ghana’s gold, warm in its speech, bubbling champagne and tawny
up to my palms, or the hidden black from Kenyan shields
that my DNA forgot to switch on – whispers of regalia left behind
in a country that I never knew.

IV.

When I was eighteen, I had to issue
a writ of habeas corpus to free my brain from
the shackles of a small hometown that stole me and
claimed me only because of my chance deposit
into its arms. And I still must reissue it
from time to time:

when the steam engines between my eyes
lock up and pistons threaten to shoot forth
and explode cranial bone,

when the old lady in my head
screams dictates made out of shackles and chains,

and when I remember that I need not hide
my rainbow nature to avoid
loud bruises and cracked bones. My mind can be a dark tool
when its daggers are aimed at my own chest.

V.

Wire-to-wire messages. Hidden Morse Code
beneath my muscle. Come alive, live wire. Crackle, buzz, and pop open
your T1 lines until they scream. Awake. The light and the shadows
call you to drink it all in, transmit data
up and down your body. Rattle your caged spine,
tingle the wires, watch the impulses
branch out from your center in blue. Feel everything.

VI.

Red muscle hills remain unerupted, unexulted
underneath blankets of yellow adipose snow. I am not
carved or chiseled in arcs of fine lines. I look nothing like
the blank marble bodies once buried beneath dirt,
pale arms and legs shivering underneath
the longing of an archeologist’s fingers that bend low to the dirt
and listen for its secrets with trowels and sifters. Nobody will ever
display frozen frames of me in the
silent halls of a museum. Instead, I make a good cushion for
sudden falls and sleeping heads.

VII.

There will be no flesh-and-bone investments
in my future, no progeny to behold
from the dimmed eyes of age. Thanks to the
burnt tubal bridges in my belly, my womb remains
forever silent, echoing only with the rattles of
my own breath and voice from above the
apex of the orange chakra glowing sitting beneath
my navel. Instead,

I yield forth words
into the shattered and shocked chaos
of being.

Written 10/14/09
© 2009. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.

——————————————————-

My blood, it tells on me. Feed the meter, and I can keep parking here
on Earth so long as I
do not keep dumping sugar into my river. I wonder if
by 2020, they will figure out a way to tell
what poisons me, to sketch out the
reprobate carbohydrate faces of my miscreants
on wanted posters in full living digital color
in the Cyclops eye of my glucometer display. Then I might see
some specifics. Maybe a
cosmoramic display of the jelly donuts,
the orders of crème brulée, the chocolate mud pies, or the
giant plates of linguini that passed into my body
without being stopped at the doors
of my lips.

But right now, it can only hint at my dirty secret:
how I occasionally tie up the bouncer
with a dash of capriciousness. You can see the mischief:
it saunters and slinks its slutty self into my wicked smile
with the smoothness of liquid vertebrae and
settles into the minor key curves that inhabit my eyes,
which are now backlit by wanton desire
spoken in tones of unchecked fire
and elusive serpent crawl. Look again, and you’d also see
devil horns sprouting from my crown, poking up past my hair –
black and slick,
striped with copper, fuchsia, and wild. The horns
compete with my highlights with their own screaming red libido,
thrusting their tips to the sky like a pair of
unchecked, curved erections. And once my Kundalini
has been kidnapped, disguised as a pointed red tail, and
slithered backwards out of my spine, I then let the insolent and irresistible
march through my doors, put their feet up on the couches,
piss all over the bathroom floors, and insult the DJ. When they
are done, they always exit slowly and quietly in small crowds
out of my body, leaving their only evidence in my blood
like an impish teenager spiking the punch on prom night. And that
is what the meter reads – samples from
the river running inside me that carries

the translation of my breath,
the proteins and traces of spirit that
reassembled themselves to build me,
and the small sugary time bombs
that tick in my arteries.

Written 10/14/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Stumble It!

P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.

————————————–

I am not blessed with curves that might
invite skiers to slalom off my waist and then
fly through the air as
skis disconnect from ground and then
sail off the curves of my hips. Do not let
the dark skin fool you – I have no junk in my trunk
to speak of. No, I am
a German body, stout and round, with
a dark face that wears
kinks disguised as black corn silk painted with Irish red for hair and
Cherokee sitting high on cheekbone thrones
beneath ex-slave eyes with
North Carolina written in them. And my shoulders span
from New Jersey to California: I hear
quiet ocean fizz and pounding surf
in both ears nightly.

The saleslady at the bridal salon says
that I am built like a column. Maybe in a past life,
my stone chunk shoulders held up the Parthenon
while I peered into the naos, staring at Athena’s face
through a square doorway cut out of the belly of stone. Or perhaps
I stood naked with my straight, ridged back to the stage in
some valley ampitheatre, watching actors pass by me
as they approach to recreate their myths. I wonder about
the wine-soaked, raucous crowds and all of the bad acting
that I never saw. Or maybe

I stood sentinel as part
of a pale, bleached crowd, with my back to
smooth stone and arches. Felt fresh blood
flung onto my back, heard its cold sting
echo upon my skin, wondered at the shedders
imitating Zen painters with their abandon and mocking
the satorical with their cruelty. Heard
bones break apart, heard
Christians sing their last hymns before
falling beneath the shadows of teeth – but I would have never seen
the massacres. Facing the roads,
I would have peered out at:
slaves, traders, senators,
decorated trophies written in breasts and curled, jeweled hair,
crimson robed centurions with combs of feathers atop their helmet crowns,
the occasional poet,
and the passels of golden-haired whores. I would have seen them
with silent eyes in stone
as they passed by my feet. Now,

I don’t know if I ever wore curled hair carved
in white curves and scrolls or
ever held up anything ancient or sacred. But
I do know this: while everyone stares at the hourglasses
and follows perfect concave lines that speak
36-24-36 or
watches the divided pendulum bottom of a girl tick away
the seconds as she walks the walk of swish, I will be
too busy holding up the sky
with my shoulders.

Written 10/12/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.
———————————-

I can fold myself up so small. Bend my kneels, curl my back
until it cracks. Assume a flattened mantis position,
elbows swallowing themselves, wrists closing in on skin
like a pair of taciturn books. I could crush – no, compact myself
until my chicken bones break in the darkness. Knees become useless,
rotating broken legs in every direction. Arms flop, speaking limp doll dialects
until they die of gangrene. Eyes close, pull down the shades
to the light. A line in the silent black, one dimensional,
no longer speaking. The oldest trick in the book, Houdini’s envy – except
I don’t come back to tell you
that I’ve broken the void.

Written 10/11/09
©2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!