Theft I try to contemplate.
What is it that lingers,
On finger tips,
On stranger's lips.
What is mine, tell me when?

I shake the tingling weight.
Why is it, that desire,
On silver trinkets,
On breast couplets.
Hath lead me lost. In vain?

Who had it first? What god.
When is mine forever,
On eve of death,
On ****** unknown.
Who? That pleasure is beneath you.

my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

Inside my heart
nothing else there but stars
glassy broken pieces it beats in shards,
inside I fear it's growing hard,

Ever-knowing,
& ever-growing
as the light inside is ever-glowing,

I continue to turn into diamonds,
every day I wait for the night
ever-pining
the ever-shining,

in your brilliant,
distant,
waxing & waning
Moon.

Cherie Nolan© 2016

‘What a piece of work is a man!’
………           ………
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust’

From Shakespeare, through Hamlet
It rings down to generations
And falls heavily on my ears too
In vain, I attempt to probe into the mystery
Nay, the enigma called man
Both in the silence of my solitude
And in the learned circle of pundits

(Fool…..
Unable to find who you are
Can you venture to say who the other man is?)

Man is a jumble of contradictions,
I know….A hard nut to crack!
So unfathomable, so mysterious
At once a Satan and an angel

To the outer world I am someone
But in the well guarded cellars of my privacy
Aren’t I different?
Hiding my innards to light
As every other man

At times, I feel so proud
Excessively in love with my own image
Like Narcissus, the poor hunter boy
Fated by gods to languish
On the bank of a pond,
Over his own floating image!

However with all my strength within
Do I not feel as helpless as Prometheus bound?
Waiting for a Hercules to come
And save me from my plight
If Prometheus’ ******* was God willed
Mine is self willed…! Is the difference so very crucial?

Sometimes I feel I am Janus
Looking backward and forward
Into my past and my future
Never living in the present
Or am I more a Sisyphus
Eternally rolling a rock over to the hill
From where it keeps falling down

Sometimes I wonder
Amid the splendor, do I not starve?
Like Tantalus of Greece in the pool
Beneath the tree, with the low lying branches of fruits
Constantly eluding his grasp
And the water, ever receding before
He could take a drink!

As a poet how I wish I could
Equate myself with Calliope
Carving my mind on the wax tablet
With stylus, my pen and coloring it with my fancy
Or Orpheus, so skilled in music
That with my sad musings
I can make even Hades weep
And the rocks fall in line

I shudder to be a Medusa
Turning everyone to a stone
With my sinister glance!
Instead, I want to be one of the Graces
And never one among the Gorgons

Pitched in this gallery
Of queer mythological entities
I wonder how I appear to others
And whom I resemble more!

Walking in the midnight garden of lost hopes and dreams

I inhale the scents of not all it seems

It's here the Dedpoet speaks to me

He tells me things I didn't know

As away I go

further into the realm of enchanted dreams

Here, past, present, future, hold no sway.

Blindly I place one step in front of the other

Pathways are a long time gone.

All the while I hear his voice

Omnipresent, pure, urging me forward

Breath holds in my chest

Unwilling to escape,

Again I hear that voice

Leading me to clarity

Where at last I breathe

Rejoice

I crawl the floor

Collecting broken glass

To protect feet of those who do not know

Do not care

Whilst rejecting offers of company

As music moves the floor.

Later

When all is quiet

I enter the night

To walk along roads alone.

A bogeyman of myth

Stalks these streets

It's ok

For I am not the prey he seeks

I am not the prey he seeks.

Hello Monster,
I don’t know what you look like here.
But I can feel you coming back.
I knew you lived in his hands
Because it hurt
Whenever he put them on my hips
You sharpened my inhales
and they cut my heart on their way
to my lungs.
I knew how you poisoned my name
when they came out of her lips
because it sounded
like someone who looks better
with cut wrists.
she was broken anyway.
I grew to know you quite well.
You let go of my throat
and seemed to hold my hand
We were friends you
and I.
Maybe all it took was
a change of scenery.
My hair grew longer
and so did your claws.
And now I can’t see you until
I’m already bleeding.
I didn’t know how his eyes
on me, would make me
want to be skinny.
Until you were cutting away
all the parts around the edges
that had grown soft since
we stopped fighting.
Bony is beautiful
you whispered.
I didn’t know
you were in her back
until you showed me
how it bends when
it turns away from me.
I didn’t know you were in my knees
that ache now as I chase
and crave someone's lips
on me in the dark.
Because maybe someone will
want me
when they can’t see me.
When they can’t see us.
You’re back inside of me.
I know you are.
And it scares me.
Because I’m starting to see you again.
You look just like me.

Sincerely,
Emma

Memories....
Memories which I cannot seem
To put into chronological order.
As if someone took the movie reel,
Cut it into pieces,
and randomly put it together again.

Broken memories yet treasured.
They are all I have left.
This puzzle spread across the floor of my heart,
That I simply can't assemble.

9 years of shuffling these pieces,
and sometimes I think I've lost some of them,
Causing my heart to break even more,
As a treasured, priceless piece of me drifts away....
Just like he did....

Like smoke in the wind....
You watch it go but can't possibly catch it,
No matter how hard you try.
Breathe, Robin....
Just breathe.