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 Nov 2014 Nicole Holland
Audrey
Stage makeup only looks good from
The distance of an audience,
And thick foundation doesn't erase stress,
Only sleepless nights.
I’ve been wrestling this since last fall,
peeling my socks off around 2a.m.
and crawling into my nightmares
like a child on her hands and knees.
I’ve tossed my hair in the towel,
examined the scratches on my back
or the bite mark on my shoulder,
juxtaposing them to my flaws,
prying myself open and watching
the little memories flood
from my arteries like insects.
I’ve ******

the energy from my cheeks and given it
to my bones so they may carry
the weight of last year into this year,
the heavy balance between leaving your room
and sitting myself against the frame,
legs to my chest, listening to the unheard voices
telling me to stop loving you.
I’ve cut

you out like bruises on a strawberry,
throwing the bad parts into the black hole
to be grinded and deposited as to be rightfully
grown into something new. But this time,

after we made love on your floor
and counted the stars that left my mouth
every time you touched me like that,

I let myself cling to the light.
I stuffed the empty parts with your remnants,
and latched onto the goodbye kiss.
I’ve been wrestling with you

our bodies so close

since the summer ended and we rejoined
the feelings we spared just to pretend
that we didn’t hear the kettle roar
when we were finished.
she was a poet,
and he was her pen.
in him,
she always found words to write,
songs to sing,
thoughts to think.

he'd smile,
and kiss her softly,
and say,
"write me a poem."

and she would.
she'd put poe,
and whitman,
and shakespeare to shame,
and she'd write a poem that made his eyes water.

she'd compare him
to a rose with no thorns,
a book with no end,
a world with no poverty --
the things we all wish for,
but can never attain.

//

he asked her one day,
"what am i?"
and so she picked up her pen,
and began the usual:
you are the shining sun after a hurricane,
with rays that open the eyes of the blind.

but he stopped her after those two lines,
and said that this time,
he didn't want any metaphors,
or similes,
or analogies.
he wanted the truth.

and so on that night,
as he slept,
the poet picked up her pen,
and she wrote.

she wrote,
then thought better of it,
then started over again,
and this cycle continued well into the early hours of the morning,
until suddenly,
she wrote, frantic,
if i can't love you for what you really are,
have i ever really loved you at all?


this, too,
she thought better of,
condemning it to the trash.

the next morning the poet was gone,
her final work a mere two words:

i'm sorry.

(a.m.)
this is more of a story than a poem but i like how it came out so leave thoughts & comments please
I am broken and I never will be whole again. You took most of my pieces with you the day you left.
I keep hoping, senselessly, that if you were to see me just once you'd be reminded of how beautiful we were together.
But I was already broken before you found me and nobody wants a puzzle with missing pieces.
Never again will I be whole, but I keep hoping I broke you too.
I do not want to talk about love today.
I do not want to mention
affectionate contact or semi-regular ***.
The newspapers are bringing forth
welcome divisions between mankind;
fault-lines of irreconcilable differences
to justify my half-hearted attempt at solitude.

I do not want to talk about sobriety today.
I do not want to bore you
with those nervous hours between cigarettes
and how I fill each moment spent inside myself.
******* offers a ladder of perfume and hair
for me to ascend to some anaerobic bliss,
towards an isolated unity between myself

and the woman stretched out on my astral bed.
I do not want to talk about much today.
I have over-thought all that is worth a mention.
c
 Nov 2014 Nicole Holland
R
Untitled
 Nov 2014 Nicole Holland
R
Your eyes hold the truth like
My hands are holding you
All she ever wanted was someone to look into her eyes
and tell her they would rather get lost in her milky way
than in the blue skies of another.
She wanted arms to be wrapped around her in the way
the cover of a book would its pages: tight and secure,
but loose enough to let her story build on.
How many times can a person fall in love and not be loved in return?
How many words can be wasted on people who will never read them?
Why dress up sadness in beautiful metaphors?

Daydreaming of someone looking at her as if she was the metaphor
for all things beautiful and sad in life,
how though a rose may be sharp-stemmed
he'd endure the thorns and adore the petals;
dreaming of finding that someone
who will see the pink beneath the red
and know that though passionate as she is.
there's a fragile little girl hidden, scared.

How many times can you watch the sun set and rise,
only to build up fantasies and beautiful lies?
Dancing on a field of green under the colours of the world;
I swear there's a colour that has not yet been observed.
I dream I dance beneath it, with his hand in mine;
I identify with a colour that has not yet been inscribed;
who would hold a hand of one that is not confirmed?
Who will see the colour if neither can I?

She writes poetry in an attempt to become a poem herself,
in the eyes of someone else.

(NJ2014) © All Rights Reserved
 Nov 2014 Nicole Holland
R
Untitled
 Nov 2014 Nicole Holland
R
And if her lips were the sea
then I have surely drowned.
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