I can’t help but use gas,

Sorry Ginsberg.

I’ve never been to the east coast

And you dead all over.

I feel guilty as hell. 

this is not night
just a threshold
offered to the light

This fib chain was written, actually, for both of the Rocking Chair Prompts this week: "What's really on your mind?" and "What days in your life will you always remember and why?" Enjoy.

-Nicole
----------------------------------------------------
for
some
it was
Kennedy
gunned down in a car
in broad Dallas motorcade daylight

for
some
it was
Doctor King
a giant cut down
death on a motel balcony

for
some
it was
John Lennon
brilliance in words
silenced forever by bullets

for
me
it was
Kurt Cobain
as MTV News
announced his terminal silence

and
that
moment
forever
remains frozen fresh
in my seventeen year-old mind

Written 7/18/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

Służewski Dom Kultury zaprasza serdecznie na „Noc z Herbertem” która odbędzie się 27. lipca o godz. 20:00 przy ul. J. S. Bacha 15. Bardzo duża część dzieła Poety poświęcona jest Grecji (wiersze, eseje, listy) – zachęcamy więc do obejrzenia spektaklu poetyckiego poświęconego kulturze helleńskiej. Grecja pojawi się w filmach, w koncercie muzycznym, tańcu. Zakończenie „Nocy z Herbertem” o 4 rano 28. lipca – dokładnie w dziesiątą rocznicę śmierci Autora „Labiryntu nad morzem”.  Dziękujemy za przybycie i wierzymy, że będziecie Państwo zadowoleni. Ewa Willmann – Dyrektor Służewskiego Domu Kultury

PHOTO: Herbert's draws of  Acropolis and part of text exposed in Warsaw  October 2006 (Photo of Betaki Lachtara)

Thinking that I am his knight
He started to stare at me
With no words he begged me
Feed me, u r my light

Hands crossed, tongue tied
I will come back, I said
Bringing him a bed
So he dreams of snow white

So late! Oh child
You left for a hard life
I cut you with a knife
God be with you, oh child

by Mireille Mourkarzal

Present above poem.

Put timeline on the board : birth.....infant......toddler....child.......tweenie....teen

Students should note things they knew, could do , remember at these ages.

POEM TEMPLATE:

When I was.............I could..........

I knew.................

I remember...............

When I was..........  ( etc )

( then the final verse )

But now I am ............

I can.............

I...........

I will remember..........

sucking in the cool air while slicking through the still warms

my eyes rising with the mist off the mountains to the peaks

and that cleft in the hills where sometime soon the sun will come

cinnamon colored mountain rising over an especially dark blue piece of a

shattered sky

implacable peaks, piles of indomitable will, defying time and nature and

even shrugging off mos of the snow

a naked river, open to the sky

a inland lake, rimmed by frosted mountains

aku cinta
tapi coba hapuskan derita
dengan duka
caraku hina

jam itu takkan mampu kubalik
aku terlalu ringkih

namun asaku ada
cintaku nyata
dan aku punya Tuhan yang pemurah

From the Malebolge,

reeking poets steeped

with the sullen and slothful

in their stygian swamp

simper

worthlessly.

The rancid dragon milk

will be late again Hihihihihi.

High on the heady

heroes of Antenora

Malpoet hugs

the ragged fur of Lucy Fur

to the centre

to the glory.

Transition of hell

consumption of heaven

dilution of cats eyes

transcendence of the eartha

kitten woman new

fashioned zillionaire.

Fu taka catacomb

monkeying with

capuchins.

Good gig

skulldiggery

Pin tang.

Bathed in light by the sun room window,

We peck lightly at fork speared treats,

And gaze on the green lawn.

Scruffy starling babe, struts

A hungry hassle to its fervent mum.

In silent swoop the kestrel sets his aim.

Fierce beauty stares and talons fork the game.

The government has claimed

success in its most recent boot amnesty.

Boot mountains have been formed

in police station yards

throughout the country.

Original plans to issue the surrendered boots

to construction workers have been abandoned

due to a shortage of workers since the fourth credit crunch

and concern that the boots may be smuggled

out of the building sites and sold to gang members.

An alternative proposal

to ship the boots to shoeless

people in the third world

was stopped after the

Stop The War coalition

objected to weapons being exported.

Policing of the prohibition

on males between the ages of

thirteen and three quarters and

forty two being seen in public

with a clenched fist has resulted

in a claim by The Police Federation

for a trebling of the number

of police officers.

The requirement that young men

may only wear slippers in

public places has resulted in

a sharp increase in

spanking attacks in night clubs.

An appeal against the two kicks and your out

sentencing policy will go to

the European Court next week.

It is expected that the government will lose

and plans are being made for the life sentence

kickers to be released to waddle restraint.

They will be required to wear an

electronic butt plug that delivers a sharp

electric shock if the foot is raised above knee level.

Shit breaks of not more than fifteen minutes

will be permitted for up to three times a day.

A government spoke said:

“We are on target to achieve

the 64^th consecutive year

of falling crime levels.

Less than half the population

are now in prison

or subject to control orders.”

The American writer and poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) taught at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) from 1936 to 1943, and was known for three things: being a poet, a tennis coach, and falling down drunk—perhaps most for the latter. Roethke was a brilliant and tortured man, who knew well the seduction of alcohol and the agony of addiction.

Journey into the Interior

by Theodore Huebner Roethke
_______________________________

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

_

Theodore Huebner Roethke on Wikipedia

Image courtesy famouspoetsandpoems.com

I smack you in the face

twisting in my sleep

stealing covers.

You attempt,

oh so politely,

to regain your lost position,

but you have lost the battle

your boarders have been breeched

and you are aggravated

and amused,

albeit begrudgingly.

so you pull out that secret weapon

and use it

until giggling my face emerges

rumpled from sleep

abashed

knowing I have stolen

every last blanket

you own.

Your fingers curl along my sides

their mission complete

as tickles become touches

and touches become clutches

and giggles become moans of a happiness

just as profound

and deeply felt.

that he saved me

with the shyness of  his smile

with the greatness of his heart

with the essence of his life

being quietly lived

he makes no excuses

he makes no apologies

he gives no inch

to anyone

not even himself

he takes into himself his defeats

and owns them

praying that his path

will lead him gently

once the hard parts have past

accepting that this may never be

while looking ever forward

towards tomorrows promise

of a rising sun.

I lightly dwell, where it is impolite to mention

in mixed company.

Making a man sigh is something sexy

makes a woman feel powerful

in away that she turns about

and makes less selfish

by increasing his pleasure

with saucy licks and tender nips

that travel a body slowly

without need for a passport.

Something about a dreaming man

impossible to resist

especially one who sleeps

so delicately nude

like an unwrapped present.

I let my eyes feast

and adore the lack of calories

for this food is rich

and addicting,

feeling him wake is wicked

for I will know the moment

he knows he is not dreaming.

Joy is in the anticipation

of eyes that spark

and set him aflame

as surely as my touch

makes silky steel.

The power of a giving heart

the peace of sensual overload

the greatness of a love

given freely

returned freely.

How I love to wake you

knowing as I do

that there is much more to enjoy

with the opening of your eyes.

there was not much of interest here

They missed it

for they were not looking

when she gazed up through her lashes

humming "Don't worry, be happy".

They missed it

those purple socks

and that glimmer of secrets

hidden cleverly in the folds of her smile

They missed it

those tapping toes,

and roaming fingers

playing air piano.

They missed it

that twinkle

that darts about the room

looking for something amusing

or at least the next something.

They missed it

and this pleases her

in some way that she cannot explain

any more than she can explain

why pink elephants are funny

why balloon eating trees make her laugh

why unmatched socks delight her

why those who get it, get it

why those who don't, never will.

No great favor is granted

to stand among the Fallen

choices long made standing

bring us to our calling

Beyond both faith and fear

stand the elemental pillars

bringing the Cursed to tears

taking the blood of killers

Outside the frameworks of time

as balance to angel and demon

some took up the crime

of defending mortal heathens

Between the rivers of blood

swim the Ancient souls

seeking to become undone

released of all that's known

Some are bound to the night

as others are to the day

even more may cross divides

though all continue to pay

No flesh is true immortal

only Souls can make such claim

as no angel may be trusted

so all demons are the same

Human monsters travel freely

though their power is illusion

they draw many to their keeping

through lies of self-delusion

To know yourself is the only goal

past blades and blood and hate

in friendship only truth is told

and heard through time and space

The Fallen find no welcome tone

on either side of the equation

looking only for a real way home

trapped in mortal lack of station.

like fertile soil

with that penetrating eye

that sees my scars

and gently cups them

like you would erase them

if you could

with a blink

your eyes become something

that speeds up a pulse

and sends a smile

winging

into the empty that once was

my cup runs over,

blessings,

In your love I have found my peace

me, this simple girl

who cannot understand

why she has been gifted

with such a loving hand

to hold her own.

The moon is always female and so
am I although often in this vale
of razorblades I have wished I could
put on and take off my sex like a dress
and why not? Do men always wear their sex
always? The priest, the doctor, the teacher
all tell us they come to their professions
neuter as clams and the truth is
when I work I am pure as an angel
tiger and clear is my eye and hot
my brain and silent all the whining
grunting piglets of the appetites.
For we were priests to the goddesses
to whom were fashioned the first altars
of clumsy stone on stone and leaping animal
in the wombdark caves, long before men
put on skirts and masks to scare babies.
For we were healers with herbs and poultices
with our milk and careful fingers
long before they began learning to cut up
the living by making jokes at corpses.
For we were making sounds from our throats
and lips to warn and encourage the helpless
young long before schools were built
to teach boys to obey and be bored and kill.

I wake in a strange slack empty bed
of a motel, shaking like dry leaves
the wind rips loose, and in my head
is bound a girl of twelve whose female
organs all but the numb womb are being
cut from her with a knife. Clitoridectomy,
whatever Latin name you call it, in a quarter
of the world girl children are so maimed
and I think of her and I cannot stop.
And I think of her and I cannot stop.

If you are a woman you feel the knife in the words.
If you are a man, then at age four or else
at twelve you are seized and held down
and your penis is cut off. You are left
your testicles but they are sewed to your
crotch. When your spouse buys you, you
are torn or cut open so that your precious
semen can be siphoned out, but of course
you feel nothing. But pain. But pain.

For the uses of men we have been butchered
and crippled and shut up and carved open
under the moon that swells and shines
and shrinks again into nothingness, pregnant
and then waning toward its little monthly
death. The moon is always female but the sun
is female only in lands where females
are let into the sun to run and climb.

A woman is screaming and I hear her.
A woman is bleeding and I see her
bleeding from the mouth, the womb, the breasts
in a fountain of dark blood of dismal
daily tedious sorrow quite palatable
to the taste of the mighty and taken for granted
that the bread of domesticity be baked
of our flesh, that the hearth be built
of our bones of animals kept for meat and milk,
that we open and lie under and weep.
I want to say over the names of my mothers
like the stones of a path I am climbing
rock by slippery rock into the mists.
Never even at knife point have I wanted
or been willing to be or become a man.
I want only to be myself and free.

I am waiting for the moon to rise. Here
I squat, the whole country with its steel
mills and its coal mines and its prisons
at my back and the continent tilting
up into mountains and torn by shining lakes
all behind me on this scythe of straw,
a sand bar cast on the ocean waves, and I
wait for the moon to rise red and heavy
in my eyes. Chilled, cranky, fearful
in the dark I wait and I am all the time
climbing slippery rocks in a mist while
far below the waves crash in the sea caves;
I am descending a stairway under the groaning
sea while the black waters buffet me
like rockweed to and fro.

I have swum the upper waters leaping
in dolphin's skin for joy equally into the nec-
cessary air and the tumult of the powerful wave.
I am entering the chambers I have visited.
I have floated through them sleeping and sleep-
walking and waking, drowning in passion
festooned with green bladderwrack of misery.
I have wandered these chambers in the rock
where the moon freezes the air and all hair
is black or silver. Now I will tell you
what I have learned lying under the moon
naked as women do: now I will tell you
the changes of the high and lower moon.
Out of necessity's hard stones we suck
what water we can and so we have survived,
women born of women. There is knowing
with the teeth as well as knowing with
the tongue and knowing with the fingertips
as well as knowing with words and with all
the fine flickering hungers of the brain.

—Marge Piercy

This is a damn powerful piece of writing.

I'd love to get my hands on her book..

I found it on amazon, a few months back but can't seem to find it now :(

This was written for two prompts, actually: Read Write Poem #36 ("Ekphrastic Extravaganza") and Totally Optional Prompts ("Ghazal"). The painting is "Nanda" by Rick Mobbs and is from his blog "Mine Enemy Grows Older". Enjoy.

-Nicole
----------------------------------
Wordless thin lips form a short line on a sunken face -
a folded wire woman draped in yards of soft black.

The contrast between hijab and skin gives my eye pause;
were it not for her pale skin, she would fade to black.

In stillness, only her eyes move as camera lenses
focusing beyond her corner of muted earth-brown and black.

I cannot travel behind the eyes or the cloth;
both halt my curious journey with shields of unyielding black.

“Nicole, you have your secrets. I have mine”, she declares -
I am left to speculate of the world behind the black.

Written 7/17/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

This fib chain was written for Poefusion's Friday Five prompt. This week's words were: wail, hay, scrawl, clobber, and encourage. Enjoy.

-Nicole
-------------------------------------
stones
lay
scattered
tornado
scrawled our homelessness
onto to the land in rock letters

it
made
hay of
this town – the
clobbered brick houses
wail open-mouthed laments skyward

we
stand
under
blue sky roofs
and encourage each
other to silence the wailing

Written 7/17/08
&copy 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

He was considered a poet of simple things, with a style marked by irony, profundity and technical perfection. He worked as a journalist almost all his life and translated more than one-hundred and thirty works. These literary works include In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and Words and Blood by Giovanni Papini.

Auto-biography

I was born in Alegrete, on the 30th of July of 1906. I believe that was the first thing that happened to me. And now they have asked me to speak of myself. Well! I always thought that every confession that wasn’t altered by art is indecent. My life is in my poems, my poems are myself, never have I written a comma that wasn’t a confession. Ah! but what they want are details, rawness, gossip...Here we go! I am 78 years old, but without age. Of ages, there are only two: either you are alive or dead. In the latter case, it is too old, because what was promised to us was Eternity.

I was born in the rigor of the Winter, temperature: 1 degree; and still I was premature, which would leave me kind of complex because I used to think I wasn’t ready. One day I discovered that someone as complete as Winston Churchill was born premature - the same thing happened to Sir Issac Newton! Excusez du peu...(To name a few...)

I prefer to cite the opinion of others about me. They say I am modest. On the contrary, I am so proud that I think I never reached the height of my writing. Because poetry is insatisfaction, an affliction of self-elevation. A satisfied poet doesn’t satisfy. They say I am timid. Nothing of the sort! I am very quiet, introspective. I don’t know why they subject the introverts to treatment. Only for not being as annoying at the rest? It's exactly for detesting annoyingness, the lengthiness, that I love synthesis. Another element of poetry is the search for the form (not of the form), the dosage of words. Perhaps what contributes to my safety is the fact that I have been a practitioner of pharmacy for five years. Note that the same happened with Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Alberto de Oliveira, Erico Verissimo - they well know (or knew) what a loving fight with words means.

O Que Eu Não Quero (What I Don't Want)

(an excerpt of a piece he wrote, which I translated)

"I don't want someone that dies of love for me...I only need someone that lives for me, that wants to be together with me, hugging me. I don't demand that this someone loves me like I love them, I just want that they love me, it doesn't matter with what intensity. I don't have the intention that all the people I like, like me...It's not even about if they miss me as much as I miss them, what is important for me is to know that I, in some moment, was irreplacable...and that that moment is unforgetable...I only want my feeling to be worth something."

In the Praça da Alfândega in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, one can find a sculpture with Carlos Drummond de Andrade (standing) and Mario Quintana. There is something similar of Andrade alone in Ipanema.

-Nicole
-------------------------------------
The milquetoast father, polite and serene
never dared to raise his voice or holler.

His unheard child became a ghost unseen -
she never dared to stand and holler.

Unvoiced words stuck in her throat as regret,
lodged forever as a decaying, unheard holler.

Through a kiss, I reached in and pulled the words out –
then she never ceased to stand and holler.

Silence once slit my throat and stole the sound
and from my lips came forth no song or holler.

She searched my lips for my missing honey song,
but turned and walked when she heard no holler.

Watching her leave, I feared that I had lost the words to call her;
sorrow rose up in my throat, loud and full like a field holler.

It rushed up, a river pushing my silent mouth open –
“I love you!” poured forth when I stood and hollered.

She stopped, then turned and walked back to me;
now our enjoined hands serve as our in tandem holler.

Written 6/24/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!

the salty bones of the earth raised up in a shallow pond to bake exposed for a thousand years

salty earth

white plains cracked into hexagonal regions big as pie plates

a river of salt between barren, jagged peaks

and in the distance, a faint veil lingers over the valley floor

walking with death and salty gnomes.

rain on a salty inland sea

a light crust of frost clings to up thrust brown peaks

no deluge can wash that salt away

more salt would bleed up out of that wound an blanket this barren plain again