Tag Archives: self

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Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #3: Naked

This poem is the third of six written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). For this poem, I borrowed from the story of Akka Mahadevi, a 12th century sanyasini (female saint) and poet from Karnataka in India. Her entire life was spent in a search for the Divine, to the point where she refused the proposal of a local king (but then was forced to marry him). One day she left home, renouncing even her clothes, and traveled until she found an ashram. She remained there, writing a few hundred poems, or vacanas which tell of her journey, her struggles, and her devotion to the Divine (in this case, Shiva). If you want to read more about her, check out this article on her and this post from Read Write Poem profiling her and her work in their obscure poets series.

To see the other mini-challenge poems that I am writing this month, click here.

So read on, and enjoy.

-Nicole

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You’ll probably think
that it’s the old story of the woman and the snake, claim that I
took in strange fruit like a foreign cock, think that I
shed my robes of loyalty for something
on the edge of the forest with drumbeats that might
make you smile like death in a clean red curve
across your neck. But the truth is,
you never knew the breath beneath the brass, the chimera
unfolding in a time-lapse burn under
layers of gold trophy paint. You shined my skin, checked
your reflection in my mirror, and moved on,
our lives burned on to the back of your eyelids like
you and I were the Ten Commandments written in
rock. Thou shalt be beautiful, and I shalt
never be home. I, your trinket goddess,
an Aphrodite in blond and curve. I was always
on your shelf, at your table, and in your
bed. And now I
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Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #2: Chrysalis

This is the second of six poems written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). I think I’ll likely follow the theme of “shedding skin”, since it seems to be where my mind is going, with these poems. This is no different — I chose a chrysalis for this piece.

To see the other mini-challenge poems that I am writing this month, click here.

Enjoy.

-Nicole

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I see the descent of daylight
smoking up ahead. Inviolate azure, streaked near its bottom
with red, violet, and tangerine evening. Behind me,
my car, ruptured open, deliquescing smoke and
bleeding suicide flame Hallelujahs into the air as it
reduces itself down to lowest terms: ash, glass,
and rubber. Next to it, a concrete cylinder, an elephant’s leg,
stands streaked with my blue paint signature while
it and its brother bear a freeway overpass upon their
shoulders. I
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Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge Poem #1: Sycamore

Note: If you don’t want to read the introduction, you can skip down to the poem.

This is the first of hopefully six poems written for January 2010′s Read Write Poem Mini-Challenge (to write six poems about starting over in six days). It was also written for Read Write Poem Prompt #109: Beg, Borrow, Steal, which was a Wordle prompt. I managed to use a good percentage of words from the prompt.

I normally edit as I write (or try to) — but for this one, I found myself writing without an editor, from the more unconscious part of my mind (and perhaps, by extension, my heart), and then going back and editing later. If this seems less linear, that’s why. I also ended up taking my “ash golem” from my poem “Ashes” and bringing her into this poem. I hope you enjoy.

To see other poems for this mini-challenge, click here.

-Nicole

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Drawing blanks and blood,
fertile-thighed, skin scarred, I am a
whalebone artist, carving my dreams in bone apocalypses
and shoving them behind my jaw. Wake up
when I’m twelve, and try rescue those school-day reveries
running in tape-loop, dream-sequence repeats before they
waterfall down my throat and slice vocal chords
into confetti as they fall for their own enjoyment. Thirty-three years old,
whipped into a existentialist froth, I now dare to seek
my old suit of skin that’s been hanging from the
low-bending branches of some lonely sycamore that
the steel mill in town forgot to poison. I see that it’s still wearing
pink, which I forgot how to be
a long time ago.
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Release the Light

This poem was written for two prompts: Tuesday Title at Poefusion (“Red Music of Burning Glass”) and Read Write Poem Prompt # 51: Peel the Onion. This was a collaborative piece written from material contributed by several members of Read Write Poem (for more details, follow the link above to RWP). Enjoy.

-Nicole
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artifices

I.
brittle glass on top of skin
you wince when you hear the red music
of its burning from fiery words
outer pain melts its way inward, encases you in stasis
gives you unseen green skin, horns, and strange trumpet ears
your ogre lives inside
beneath warm smiles and pleasant gestures
a surly growl, a sullen look

II.
taught rough rope moves through this world
taught fiber optic nerves respond in reflex
block fists, spray formic acid
piss on their sacred cows to even the score
but no Warholesque masterpieces flow from you
just tainted water and stench

III.
pieces of you stick to whoever gets close
they require surgical removal
so you sit in a wombat’s corner
radar eyes scan shoe shuffles, forgotten creases and ruffled hair
crawl up into a tree with silent mental pictures
of your purloined goods
smirk at your clandestine getaway
from the dance of red blood and flushed skin that is life

reality

IV.
you get human, you get lazy
drop Polaroid prints of yourself for others
to pick up, look at, insert into their own mental photo albums:

your open office door betraying pictures of
your multicolored family on your monitor
in full screensaver view

your refusal to eat meat, your barely perceptible shudder
when you see skin stretched across ottomans

your sobs heard through a door as you
tend inner bruises, insults, and scabs and then
hurriedly glue yourself together, mop up the tears left over from
an impromptu tsunami

backlash

V.
now you notice that you’ve dropped far too many pictures
what do you do?
scurry, gather them up
suspicions rise as thought ribbons to tie you down
who saw what? who will say what to whom?
barely survive the strangling from the boa constrictor
ribbons wrapped around your neck
move with with austerity, look over your shoulder
a comatose spirit watching self in half-tones
wishing for the dawn

question

VI.
what are you hiding?

a little girl who likes chocolate ice cream most of all
and who rides her favorite yellow bike around the block?

a young boy sneaking into an empty construction site
to play within its cage of studs and trusses,
the whole world close enough to touch?

a man grabbing chips in his cold tight claws,
collecting too many to hold or swallow or chew or lug in a massive bag
until he must let them fall away?

a woman who still remembers empty mailboxes
and emptier promises?

truth

VII.
peer through the unseen gossamer curtains
that divides inner soul from outer layers
when the curtain is drawn back
your truth stumbles forth, blind and sloppy
sometimes the breeze blows the curtain open
you’re fooling no one

release

VIII.
so release the light, let it burst forth
penetrate your layers, peel them back
become both onion and peeler
cry as you are peeled away
there’s a quivering soul at the core
holding out a single rose
hoping someone will take it from your fingers

the end

IX.
now a question:
this reflection in the mirror
these thoughts, these images, this truth -
was it you or was it me?

Written 11/3/08, 11/4/08, and 11/5/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson and the folks at Read Write Poem. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Stumble It!

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If You Ever Read Or Hear This Poem

This was written for the Simply Snickers prompt this week – to use the words “sacred”, “secrets”, “self”, and “scorned”. Enjoy.

-Nicole
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I write poems about my heros, my heroines,
perhaps in vain, because I don’t know if
they will ever read or hear them;
but I do it anyway, because aside from
God, without them, I would be a deaf-mute
unable to laugh, cry, sing, or scream out
the contents of my soul,
so I cannot help but sing my out my love
and gratitude -
and now, it is your turn.
I don’t know if the Universe will
ever bring these words to your eyes or ears;
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