Tyler Nicholas: Favorites

Mar 2013 Tyler Nicholas

-D

I remember how your brown eyes shine in the sunlight stretching through your truck windows;
& I remember how we used to do the same,
like a bang & then oh,
such a whimper…
—-
but like a supernova, what we had brewed with so much energy
[all. too. soon.]
& it reached the point where we glowed as brightly as we possibly could be.
so our walls bounced off of each other,
& the implosion consumed the both of us.
-
so we continue to exist out in space somewhere,
mere particles of cataclysmic stardust resembling what we once were,
but what we had was lovely & brilliant;
(& isn’t that what we are:
lovely &
brilliant &
temporary?)
-
but hell, do we shine.

supernova: noun-- A rare celestial phenomenon involving the explosion of most of the material in a star, resulting in an extremely bright, short-lived object that emits vast amounts of energy.

Mar 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Crush

Mar 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Bean

Crush

Your pace to fast for me
It feels like yesterday
No one else makes me feel

Quite the same as you do
Acting without a care
You were wearing that shirt

The Revolver album
Little girl in a bow
I always like George best

Like his lyrics and like you
Maybe it was the hair
Still smell the dust and dirt

And I was on three
Ten years ago in May
You were on a two wheel

Still hear the bike wheels hum
Friends and me just a guest
John, Paul, George and Ringo

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Livie Told Her Parents.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Emily Tyler

Livie Told Her Parents.

Livie told her parents
About the cuts on her wrists
From the girls at school
And the calorie counting
In a little green notebook shoved into pockets.

Livie's parents
Fed her
To the dragon called
Mr. Therepist
Who chewed forever.

And he plumped her up
With lies
So that they spilled from her mouth
Like a fountain.
And she threw up
So many times
That she started to believe them.

And
Mr. Therepist
Spit her out
In a big
Sticky
***.
Shaped my monster spit
And
Stomach acid
From when she threw up lies.

And though she was finally in school,
Livie stayed gone.

Livie had dissolved in the dragon's stomach,
Leaving piles of bones
And shadows
Under eyes.

She never came back.

I changed her name because the word Livie flows a lot better than her name.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

In Walton, Nebraska

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

E

In Walton, Nebraska

The moon can make your eyes burn
from its brightness.
God's Canopy of Grace.
A lot of a good thing often makes you ache
for more.

We examine simplicity,
Utter awe, incurred by a moment:

Driving into the nothingnight
The wind touching everything
Two hands growing old and familiar
Staying warm together
Trying not to destroy the stillness.

Along with fragments of the sky,
     We
            Fall,
                   Golden.

How is it, that the world has not stopped shimmering
since we saw the moon drench the flatland?

Your hand still in my hand
Your eyes blink, often
slowly.
As they close, I yearn for them
to open up to me once more,
and glimmer with the warmth
you've stored away inside your soul
just for me.

Don't look away,
even if it burns.

You speak love into the shadows
Lights, again above our heads.
I'm always dazzled by light when you're around.
We pray for things like peace,
and discover that God's been giving it, all along.

J. Alfred Prufrock had it wrong:
The universe begs to be disturbed
By love like this.

Letting the wind and moon
and the stillness press upon us.
We are infinite.
And a little dizzy.
Hope expands in our chests
         So many birds scatter the sky.

We are Walton, Nebraska:
A normal surprise,
God's whispered secret about beauty
covered in the moonlight,
heard only by the wind
that pushed us together.

To be read with the song "Households," by Sleeping at Last, playing in the background.
For Ty.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

i decided the most honest thing to say is fuck you.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Sarah Wilson

i decided the most honest thing to say is *******.

so *******, honestly. because until tonight i thought i felt okay, but i think i’m lonely.

my heart sticks to the walls of my chest and i’m thankful for the cold because it means i can wear mittens and have an excuse for the spaces between my fingers to be empty.

it’s a quarter after three in the morning, and i miss you.
and i don’t even know who i’m talking to, really.

but that’s kind of the problem, too. i’m not talking to anyone.
everyone’s sleeping, and i’d be sad but i don’t want to be sad anymore.
so i sing to my dog for an hour and do some laundry, and wonder where my words went.

and soon i’ll take a shower, and soon i’ll go to bed,
and soon you’ll wake up and not think of me.
and that’s okay, because as strangers, i have no place in your life.

and as strangers, you have no place in my heart or in my head.
but you, you are everywhere else. and that’s kind of the problem, too.

but i guess i understand why they say lonely people are always up in the middle of the night, because i am. because until tonight i thought i felt okay, but i think i’m lonely.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

unsolicited visitor at 4 a.m.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

-D

unsolicited visitor at 4 a.m.

(I sometimes shake my memories
when they find themselves twisted
& highly vivid)*

this way—
no that;
I want to remember the way
your hair felt entwined in my hungry fingers—

you were sitting there beneath the tree under which I had grown for nearly 1500 days,
but you had taught me more than all of those years
in just two fortnights’ time.

I remember how chilled your face felt—
how the evening looked so good on you
(you always had such sad eyes, you know,
& the moonlight fed them in ways you never realized you hungered for).
I was there for a day or so,
just enough for me to trip (& fall),
just enough for you to push me over the edge.

I don’t quite know what brought us there that night,
halfway between you wanting to go home
& me never wanting to leave your side,
but I held my hand on your face, in your hair,
waiting with all certainty that you would wrap your arms around my waist,
drawing me in to let me
breathe you in.

(how sad I was to have such faith,
& how sad you were to have none at all.)

these days, you’ve cut your hair
(perhaps the memories of my lingering fingers weighed you down,
a blanket too warm for the season),
& I don’t even recognize your casual howareyous
(the ones that used to keep me up at night & early into the Texas sunrises;
do you remember those, too?).
no—
instead I see them for what they are:
casual.

so as I lay here in lace & nostalgia,
in the very place we once whispered our desires to each other,
& my hands so heavy with all the things I’ve gathered for our next conversation,
I will instead empty my palms, and,
like you,
release what burdens so heavily.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

The Weeping War

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

E

The Weeping War

Morning keeps weeping,
while I wage war
within myself:
Civil battles, composed
of pen-ink & lines,
of unceasing tension & grief.

I attempt surrender:
To cast off the weaponry.
To rejoice: barefoot
on my wood floor,
marred by litter:
Indolent daggers of charcoal & ink.

Time beats me down, a battle drum:
Rhythm moves me onward,
despite my cry to retreat,
Tiptoeing wordbombs & rainbullet noise:

A song to keep me alive
& the wind howls her tears against
my closed windows
& I wonder how this ends:

With ink-explosions
Or with sword-swipes.

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Said the King to the River - La Dispute

Feb 2013 Tyler Nicholas

Miranda Renea

Said the King to the River - La Dispute

"Up, M'Lady--Pack your things, this place is not your home.
Nor was it ever, sever every tie, tonight we ride. Tonight we ride.

And how we've trembled at the way that time's
assembled little fires of desire in the tundra of our skin.
So, do yourself a little favor, savor every time you waver
for that shaking in my voice was only slyly feigned chagrin.
Tonight we ride."

"Oh, Lover, uncover. I know it's warm beneath your sheets
and there is ice along the streets but listen—Lover, we will recover.
But we've no time to waste with meddling in affairs
we've locked so tightly in our dreams.
We are not clean, we are not pure, we can not rest until we're sure.
So, rob your pretty little eyes of sleep's disguise.
I'm at your bedside with a bucket full of lies.
So, clear your ears and listen---

Up, M'Lady--Pack your things, this place is not your home.

But I know what is."

And to the glorious past:

You've opened my window but broken the glass.
And I beseech thee, 'shed thy beauty.'
For as a child leaves the womb and learns the cold,
you have taught us perils in the present,
and you will bring us peril in our surely-soon-to-be. Unless…

The river's not flooded this time.

Oh, Precious Distance,
Oh, Precious Pain,
You've given me a name. And
Etched it in the stones of the river bank.

Oh, Precious Distance,
Oh, Precious Pain,
You've given us a name. You've
Given us a name.

"Rise!" Said the King to the River,
"Never let up! No, bring us a flood and bring it hard!"
"Freeze!" Said the Wind to the Water,
"Never give in! No, build us a bridge!
And build it strong and angry.
Let it stills the King's decree.
Oh, you must contemplate the current,
Boy, and command that coward cease.
The boy breathes for his love says, 'I wait.'
His love says, 'I wait.'
She's shouting out, "I will come back. Yes, I will come back!
I will come—I have lived my life so uncomfortably. Darling, come for me.
Come for me."

"Rise!" Said the Boy to his Lover,
"Darling, get up. I've brought you my love, and brought it far!"
"Leave!" Said the Girl to her lover,
"I've given in. If love is a bridge, we built it wrong!"

Curb your anger.
Still your fists.
She will never come back, she'll never come back, she'll never come—
She will never come back, she'll never come back, she'll never come—

Obviously not my work, but nonetheless brilliant so I felt the need to share. It was written by Jordan Dreyer of La Dispute, the song is called Said the King to the River.