lori-carlson
American
Writing has always been my canvas and poetry my paintbrush. My muses whisper beautiful colors in my ear and I create them into a masterpiece of my own design. I tend to write freestyle most of the time; however, I do occasionally write blank poetry, prose poetry and in alliteration as in the poem, A Near~Miss. From 1993 until 1999, I attended Hollins University (then Hollins College) where I studied under some of the best contemporary writers of the 1990s. I received a Bachelor's and Master's degree in English with an emphasis on Poetry from Hollins. During that time, I published a few poems and prose poems under my maiden name in both collegiate publications and local and national poetry rags. I was a heavy competitor in the Poetry Slam venue around Roanoke, VA for several years, as well. In 1999, one of my poems was chosen for an online and paper magazine called Little Brown Poetry under my pseudonym, Iona Nerissa.
This night I shall dream
of your bedazzling Puple hair and Lion-eyes.
Wrapped in the echoes of your eyes-music,
I long to sip from your peachful lips.
In my dreams, I soar on your plush pinkness --
skimming vast continents with hands and lips.
The depths of all the oceans of the universe
shall never separate our entwined bodies.
Brilliant as enthralling lust,
the seas greet us from afar.
In the twilight we feast on chocolate-covered
strawberries and tender lovehearts
Adorned in white silk, we pluck
our raining love chimes from our thighs.
I press the heart that you wear around your neck
against my hands so that our hearts melt into one.
You will always be my little Aphrodite,
the Lion of my own eyes of love.
Mar 6, 2011
Mar 6, 2011 at 5:55 AM UTC
Waves flow, writing gushes,
scattering rhyme like fine mist
lines of regret rescind into the sea
while verses of love crest and fall
like the heaving of young *******
temptations crash upon rocks
daring to be undressed by your eyes
one should be careful not to get dragged
into the underbelly of this ocean
where sirens sing their enchanted songs
and pirates wait upon shorelines for your loot
there is no escape now that you've been ****** in
Mar 6, 2011
Mar 6, 2011 at 4:54 AM UTC
Beneath the blue breaths
of winter, death gratefully welcomes
the young, scattering sonnets
white with innocence, hollow rhymes.
They speak of lost love upon the seas,
fair maidens and twilight moments,
verse upon verse of nothingness,
thrills they will never know,
never feel nor see; O, these romantics!
Your works are cocooned for eternity;
Death has come too soon for you.
Mar 5, 2011
Mar 5, 2011 at 5:31 PM UTC
How could she have known
my obsession for Gothic novels?
She couldn't have known that years later
a cacoethes would emerge,
that hundreds would be spent
trying to get them back to me.
One lapse of judgement led
to a lifetime of irresistible urges...
There's another sale on eBay -
I cannot resist this deep desire any longer.
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 9:14 PM UTC
I pass her daily,
she's just like me,
but not me.
She is dark, a ghostly shell,
some alter ego
deliberately mimicking me;
Or is this my own dark soul,
the darkened wretched me?
There she goes again.
but this time she notices me in the passing.
Will she ponder the same questions as I?
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 8:55 PM UTC
While sitting in a booth, an hour before work, I try to write poetry. But the click, click, click of the cash register distracts the musings jammed into my already clustered brain. And as I try to spill words onto this page, a you child spills her soda, the tawny liquid cascades the patterns of her too-tight T-shirt and falls to the floor ~~ the floor I will mop and mop over again, as sticky footprints retrace the night's events. And the man, a cigar dangling from the sepia corner of his tightly clinched mouth, growls the angered growl of a wounded bear, bearing all to me and the child who hides behind her mother's saffron sundress. And in the child's shame, she raises two, too-large coca cola eyes to meet mine, and then lowers them as a tear trails the shadows of her sanguine face.
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 6:55 PM UTC
You, the sculptor,
shaped our lives, molded
us, your offsprings, into the model
of your desired likeness.
You created masterpieces
with the elder and younger;
they so like the perfect David,
but you are no Michelangelo,
and i, the nucleus of this family,
am not a piece of clay.
i defy your wheel, knife,
the kiln that fires your bloodline.
i take to the kiln my own David,
misshappen like a Picasso,
surreal to you.
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 6:43 PM UTC
I work with knots,
loosen ends from ends,
careful not to snag
or break fragile cords,
intricate tangles of silken affairs.
But the ends unravel
as I release tension,
and I find myself knotting the ends again.
Over and over, I bind and unbind,
until the cycle lashes out
like a madwoman in desperate straits.
I want to write the wrongs, right them,
straighten them into one long, lengthy rope,
then try my luck again.
Find strands that won't untwine;
create the perfect notaffair.
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 11:55 AM UTC
I lay upon cold steel, blinding lights loom
above my head. I hear my brain
confirm 'minor surgery' and then you
enter the room, scalpel in hand, aimed
at my chest. Not there! my mind screams,
then I feel the burn of ripped flesh;
a repugnant stench fills the room, a familiar smell,
the sickening, salty odor of blood.
Bones and cartilage moan as the scalpel shreds
with swift precision, one target in mind:
a fist-sized beating ***** Extraction.
I raise my head from frosted steel
in time to see your deed: ****** fingers,
clinched into claws, dive into the open cavity,
gouge holes into either side and wrench
the tiny ***** from its cave.
You hold it high above your head, a trophy;
crimson drips down your arm, soaks
a white sleeve like spilt wine on lace; you open
a glass jar, formaldehyde mixes with drops of blood
as the ***** plunges into your solution
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 11:36 AM UTC
As snow does to a fire, lull them asleep among the foliage;
between the oleander beautiful as snow;
like dragonflies threading! he sings and the woods sing!
In the wine of daylight the willows shiver:
- its coolness on my feet, the star has wept rose-colour.
The wolves howl back with great conquering black eyes.
- from violet forests: where the stars are sleeping.
The black gallows moan, on the calm black water
embroidered with black moss and the horizon rushes
and the murmuring waters came snowing;
I no longer feel myself; I have seen maelstroms eternal,
of the sea star-infused and the yellow-blue awakenings
the scented twilight, of silver waves.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 1:56 PM UTC