She knows she’s young
She’s lost her fun
In so little years
She’s filled with so many fears
Her momma scolds
Tells her she’s she got no hold
She sits and reads Matilda
Momma says to go out with her sister

She’s told she’s not pretty
She says she’s just a kid
They tell her without a boyfriend
She cannot play with them
She loves to Skip
She loves her toys
She just wants friendship
Doesn’t matter with girls or with boys

And as sixth grade ends and she’s lost her friends Who are so eager to go and grow up
She decides to keep quietly to herself
Or else they’ll tell her to shut up
She loves being a kid
Still wants to play pretend
Doesn’t want to worry about makeup
Doesn’t want to worry about growth
Doesn’t want to style her hair, just wants to keep it short
Told she looks like a boy but she likes being different
Doesn’t want to be irreverent
She still feels like she’s eleven
And just wants to keep on shining
Wants to keep looking at the world as amazing

She doesn’t know what to do
She loves a man who’s 22
She knows she is much too young
And knows he thinks of her as young and dumb
He gives her a smile and walks on by
He calls her a “Pop ****” and gives her a high five
She dreams 10 years going by
When she’s allowed to be in his life
But she thinks then he’ll have a wife
And she’ll just dream of being the lonely bride
Will she have another chance
Was this her only shot?
She wonders what high school will be like
Will she be able to have another start?
She still wishes to make her mama proud
But she just wants a well primed child
She couldn’t be a beauty queen
And couldn’t dance or sing
She just likes to climb trees and read
And she still wants that into her teens
For this little twelve year old girl
Life was a nonstop whirl
The days go by too fast
She feels pretty soon she’ll be looking her last
As all her schoolmates gossip and change
She still wants to remain strange
She thinks about him everyday
And the days remain the same,
The same
She’s older
She’s getting older
She’s getting older and she wants to go back
She takes old pictures, puts them in order
So that she can always look back









Copyright © James Black |

Her blood is the blood of the stars,
Haven’t you heard?
They’ve played your dismissal in the choir of misfortune
And the roses you grew have found their perish
Long before the season of blossom.
Your name can’t be read in constellations anymore,
Nor can you see what you once were.

In a moment, the world turns
And the girl you knew escapes.
From the rings of Saturn she leaps,
And from her fingertips she lets go.

I am so grateful for the way
you split me open
like an egg,
and let me run from your fingers
to settle on the cold floor.
I understand, catalysis.
I am both reactor and reaction,
sown from furrows dug
into frozen earth under a blazing sun-
grateful.
After so long,
the echo of my name off your tongue
has begun to feel like
honey pouring
into my ears,
softening every link in my spine,
warming the frozen earth-
grateful.

A subject of a black disinterest
from the corrupted mind of perverse ******,

he's a key that's opened up my sorry thoughts
a narcissistic God that warps and distorts

a pale tyrant absent in the cold light of day
instead he leaves me only with sorrow to play
it's when the sunlight dies and the darkness consumes
that his spell awakens and fully exhumes

abstaining filthy needs I meander to the pool of obscurity
in the dark corners of the Web seemingly lies security
interacting with my dark desires, I cannot think,
from the cup of a personal Judas do I slowly drink

everyone around is dying, my ego I have hidden
everybody makes mistakes but can a God be forgiven
for unable to punish others I'm punishing myself
terrified of the future that is confusion and ill health -

if I succumb will he be merciful and grudgingly help
steal the other's pain and inflict it upon myself?

Or will he plunder my soul for my most lurid temptations
and fill my world with the void of his true destructive intentions?

A Time Glitch
Hypnotised by the rattle-clank of wheel on world,
your eyelids sink, seduced into darkness
by the soporific roll of machinery.

The outside blurs and folds, the world overlaps.
Your chest begins to heave and slump with sightless breath
and mindless beat.

Caught somewhere between here and when, you slip
and fall into yourself, onto the bed,
the bed of a stranger. A soulmate.

You linger just a moment, a time glitch,
relieved by the horror, horrified by your relief
at the jolting pleasure between your parted thighs.

A molten bead of sweat, from his brow to yours,
branding you, marking you, claiming your skin
as his. You are one skin now.

And now, as if to take his newfound form,
you feel his hand at your neck, his palm on your throat,
your life in his grasp.

Surrender. He demands your submission not with his words,
but with his fingers: with the wheeze of your will
to live as it leaves.

And you do. Like you always will. For you know
that just as liberation is a form of control,
submission is its own power.

And just before your moment fades, you catch his eye;
that final instant is haunted by his furious love,
the adoring violence in his gaze.

It's over, and you wake to the strangle-gag of ghosts
to inhale the present. It fills you with sensation--
not feeling. You don't feel.

You can't.

VI**

No.
These books lie.
These words and these voices and
These photographs
Hoodwink us into thinking
Titanic is really gone.
No.
It was the Olympic, dear
Baby girl Titanic is still out there
Twanging lovely cello notes
And drifting with smooth propellers.
No.
Adrift like a ghost
Is she…
**** those photographs
They feel so untrue, because in my heart
I was there
I am there.
So I am drowned?
I am facedown in the water
Gasping for a breath my
Body cannot take?
I am dead?
NO.
My boy is still alive
I am still holding his hand deep
In the sea
Blue blue ocean
If lovely girl, Titanic, has broken
I am broken too.

I looked about my windowsill,
and there a lovely whippoorwill,
stood and sang a lovely tune,
about my birthday coming June,

Out in the middle of a real nowhere,
where the light is gently falling,
dark come soon as night comes in,
as birds so sweetly calling,

Mosquitoes bite in summer time,
this place can be quite hot,
but staying in would be a crime,
while getting out is not,

For now the lovely whippoorwill,
who sings the lonesome way,
amidst the frozen earthly loam,
and branches in decay,

I sit alone to hear that song,
the whippoorwill, my heart,
take me back to yesterday,
I rise again to start,

Just like a cancer born in June,
the whippoorwill he loves the Moon
He calls her from a lovely perch,
a tall and sturdy silver birch,

I hope to hear him once come Spring
on his flight his love he bring,
so many songs he knows to sing,
on whippoorwill and tiny wing,
a sweet and soulful little thing,

I close my eyes as I applaud,
his lovely voice entrances me,
& in his voice I'm truly awed,
staring not a choice I see,

Endangered in this place I love,
the whippoorwill, a dearest bird,

Please do your part to save the Earth,
I hope his lovely voice is heard.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

I get over you,
My heart says "I'm just kidding!"
Loving you again.