Tag Archives: WWP Prompt

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Poem for 2012

Can we crash through the ceiling
and rise like newly begotten dreams
to become sky,
transmute into fire to merge with stars?
Do we welcome this new year
like a mad conjurer pushing a pachyderm
up the stairs to a fifth floor walk up
on the Lower East Side?
Do we live in the elephant’s shadow,
waiting for it to fall or do we
cheer the madman on, hoping to resolve the past
while fires burn from the fallen brimstone below?
Do we live, shuddering, half-living phantoms
in a lightless, aphotic crevice of an ancient lunatic’s jaw,
crouched behind a broken, blood soaked tooth?
Or do we lift arms like wings and rise?
Do we greet this as a dawn, rewritten,
the old mistakes as erasures curling inward
and fetal, floating as smoke and dying in the newborn wind?

We raise signs. We shout refrains. We occupy
streets. We declare our sacred humanity
in the faces of endless jaws,
all of them boasting rows of broken teeth,
all of them leaking out decrepit and crackled souls
balanced barely on the edge of decay, bloated with money
and with eyes filled with Revelation death schemes. We weave dreams
in the face of the dreamless. We crash through ceilings
in the face of the weighted down earth bound
with leaden and sick bellies turgid with blood. We transmute
into fire to defy the burnt out ends of older days,
bleary-eyed and spent, exhausted from the chase of what
can never be found, coin-heavy and power-charged. We merge
with stars in the face of those that declare that Heaven is a figment,
or an insane man’s wish, or a wasteland not fit for
habitation.

Hear me, Oh people. You must know one thing:
ceilings only serve to hold in. They deserve to be
crashed through, torn through their bellies like paper declarations,
eviscerated to clear the dirt of sleep from freshly opened
Eyes. You must know that the stars can be
held in the palms of simple hands and that
dreams can be weaved again, re-imaged from
the rubble of broken years. You must know that
fire will not burn you if you become it and that
angels are ordinary people. Check for the
wings emerging through your back, for the power
to lift beyond ceilings and clouds that you never knew
existed. And as you move through this year, ever checking
your compass, eying uncertain prophecies
and promises of oblivion, remember that wings
serve to make their owner fly — and if you rise to
the sun, they will never melt away.

Written 1/29/12
© 2012 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #91: Kissing the Ceiling (the image for the prompt is here). This inspired me to move beyond a mere kissing of said ceiling…and with all the doomsday 2012 stuff in the zeitgeist lately, I wanted to write at least one thing that would counter all the fear and negativity. I hope I did my task justice.

-Nicole
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How to Dream

The #6 bus makes its paces through the town:
up Baxter Street, past Millege, up Sanford, past
the Library, past the transit center, and then looping around
to Hancock Street. Everything is slick from the
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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.

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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

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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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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Homeward

Emergence by Nicole Nicholson

Emergence by Nicole Nicholson

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand!
– Sir Walter Scott

I. kinship

If we are all sparks
then we emerged from a striking of flint:
an eye opening, a dawn rising
inside a celestial pupil that was open like palms,
open like a nail-scarred wrist. A dream,
woven while awake: a wish,
exhaled like newborn stardust out of the lungs of
a collection of tangled desires curved like embryos
and gestating inside this open aperture. We
sat up and greeted the first morning’s light breaking
through the slits of half-closed eyelids;
we watched as millions of fire, rock, and water balls
careened out from the center of nothingness and took their places;
we congregated, freshly born from sleep
before walking through the gossamer curtain
separating life from life. The new, green Earth
was awaiting our footsteps.

ii. exit/exile

There are stories
of how we were separated from God: how it happened
depends on who you ask. Some blame
a devious serpent, an alluring fruit, and a naïve woman:
the promise of an expanded mind and soul
to rise above the dawn and know as much
as God. A separation born of consequence:
we birth, we pain, and we die within
this microcosm like a desert with the noon-day sun breaths
of demons on our necks. And they say we bleed
the badges of our sin from our wombs monthly
by orders of our crescent moon-shaped DNA.

Some say the gossamer curtain itself was the reason
and called it Maya: once we slip past the seams
and part it in our birth, we have left. A exile of necessity,
children leaving home to live and learn lessons,
exiting in halves instead of wholes: the problem is
we go blind from the threads of the curtain once
we slip out from beneath its folds.

iii. dreaming

The dream hangs heavy in more curtains
over our eyes: from this dream we dream more dreams
and their opposing nightmares. We sleep, conjuring a strange chimera world of
winged black horses, scimitars, gravestones, and deconstructed dead;
invisible lines dividing creeds, nations, and skin colors;
fractured children dancing with broken femurs to the tunes of
songs written by our baser selves with leather belts and acrid words;
threats in the language of missiles with points poised and waiting
for the push of a button like suspended breath.

And yet, we also draw threads
made out of silk, spectrums, and chocolate;
embraces for long unseen friends that perched, wings folded,
inside our hearts until they emerge in flight;
joined hands;
the serendipity of a mother hen with ducklings dragging ripples across
the surface of a lake;
and veiled bridal chambers, each a world within a world
where heartbeat is language and love is spelled out in
fingertips, flesh, and open doors. We weave these
continuously into the dream, a band of spastic creators
who cannot collectively decide the final outcome: but
our aim is clumsy*. The chimera rises in wobbly, uncertain flight
while our dreams keep the monster aloft.

iv. twilight

I wander through this fabulous insanity that
not even Lord Dream could have conjured. I collect
bruises on both skin and soul; my ears are filled with shrieks and knives;
my face hides the imprints of fists and slaps. If you
look closely, there are damnations imprinted in my back
in leather belt invisible ink. I enter convents and whorehouses alike,
finding vacant corners to meditate and keep pulling
shrapnel out of my body. I sew up tears;
I build and raze down walls by turns. And all the while, I am
writing lamentations into my arm, praying
that someone can discern within the bloody letters
a map out of Hell.

But the blue hour is piercing through
my half-closed eyes: it is made out of prayers:
sang aloud, quietly mused, shouted through curtains of tears;
bouncing off cathedral walls in languages that almost died;
hanging from the leaves of trees as counterpoints to the beats of drums;
floating in curved bismillahs like rise-and-fall melodies from the top
of minarets;
breathed as a Prabhu Yesu from the lips of a bowed head. I watch,
holding my own unseen severed umbilical cord in my lap
and feeling its free end like a vacant mouth
still trying to gobble passing stardust.  I frighten myself
and fold my hands as you talk to God*.

v. awakening

I will toast to the end of Ignorance:
may it die a fabulous and speedy death.
Bullet through the temple that shatters bone,
or a clean entry wound like a silent, bloodless circle
through the forehead: I don’t care how it goes.
I am mad, and am conjuring up the sight of miracles
while quaffing the magic like peyote wine
behind my third eye.

We’ve been hounded to death by our own
Frankenstein monster, the collective daymare that cannot decide
whether it wishes us well or seeks to slit our throat.
With each desperate whisper, we try to take apart the sky
to see beyond the azure; we rip every passing temple curtain in twain
to see the wizard behind  pushing buttons and
booming declarations into the microphone.  Now, strip away
the burnt skin off our broken body;
cleanse the stampede of dirt off our wounded and harassed soul.
We can redraw this dream again.
Each enchanting daylight pours through
the membranes of our closed eyelids and calls us to try again.

vi. om

Drink blue lotus wine,
walk cobblestone pathways and discover
hidden maps; follow them as the flowers’ soul
unfolds in liquid petals and hitches rides on blood cells
throughout your veins. Somewhere behind your third eye,
the euphoric ecclesia congregates and reunites.

Until now, you’ve been parting the curtain in stolen moments
with a hesitant, quivering finger
to watch a happening: these human-shaped sparks
assembling into a spilling of light that melds with
the glow that birthed them in the first place. You’ve been
placing one hesitant toe on the homeward path and then
retracting it again at the first sign of guilt: how could I ever
go back home? I am a collection of broken shards
of clay: I am a broken doll with chipped porcelain skin
and a bloody dress. But you cannot fight
the call: so keep walking. I will be walking beside you,
looking eagerly towards the glowing light
behind the curtain.

Written 6/14/11
© 2011 on material by Nicole Nicholson except items with asterisks, which are courtesy of “The Way You Dream” (Asha Bhosle and M. Stipe) from “1 Giant Leap”. All Rights Reserved.
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This poem was written for We Write Poems Prompt #58: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, courtesy of Richard Walker. The prompt called us to select a prompt from one site (I picked One Single Impression) and words from another prompt site (I picked the Sunday Whirl). I also took some inspiration from “The Way You Dream“, a song performed by Asha Bhosle and Michael Stipe on the album “1 Giant Leap“. I hope you enjoyed the poem.

-Nicole

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