Nicole Hammond: Favorites

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

EJ Aghassi

loneliness has come once more

the bite in the air
mimics
the similar nipping at my heart

with the drop in temperature
comes a lowering of defenses
i am overcome by vulnerability
i feel so many things i've ignored
for half a year or more

why must things be this way?
i'm invigorated by the cold,
i am human in my shivering
in this loneliness there is
love i've yet learned to embrace

just like i feel the air around
you've completely enveloped me
though just as the cold
knows not who she caresses,
you hold no particular favor for me
your embrace will permeate
absolutely and impartially,
it is far too vast for i

i've yet to feel the tingle
of sweet summer on my skin

i've reveled only in winter
now i long for you to let me in

i shiver in my longing
dreaming only of your warmth

there's a certain kind of romance
in the turmoil you've brought forth

i feel that this is only the beginning

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

ode to holden caulfield

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

heather leather

ode to holden caulfield

it is easy to become lost in the blinding lights of new york city
and the deafening sound of yellow taxi cabs and screaming
neighbors and the chatter of mundane conversations between
people who are ghosts in every sense of the word with
their paper thin hearts and transparent minds and the inability
to feel something other than the heavy weight of coffee
in their stomachs

it is easy for people to say that when new york city was made
God himself struck down and said "let their be light" but all i ever
see is the blur of motion as everyone runs to jobs they
all hate working with people they despise and then spending
their money at stars that don't even shine in poorly lit movie
theaters when the real ones are in the sky and in new york
every expensive restaurant is vegan friendly and boasts animal
rights and shames everyone who doesn't but no one
ever wonders what happens to the ducks in central park during december

it is easy to fall in love with new york city.
with the magic that it spreads with the euphoria that you feel being
surrounded by others with it's almost frightening ability to
take away your loneliness and manipulate you into thinking you
are happy, it is easy to fall in love with new york city.

it is also easy for you to say that you lost yourself in new york
because even when you say it no one will hear you
over the sound of madison square garden and it is easy to
call new york paradise it is easy to call it the city that never
sleeps because everyone stuck there is paralyzed

(h.l.)

i've often been told that i embody the catcher in the rye and i'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing

#newyorkcity #catcherintherye #odetoholdencaulfield

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

"The Burn"

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

irinia

"The Burn"

My flesh has become a candle
But I am a flame in a transparent sky,
Like dead birds,
I will weigh more than when alive.

The burning eye feeds on wax
and makes a few hot beads drip down
Once I learned to fly, once
I had proof, but I remember having flown.

My whole body is a candle
All will pass into dust in the end
The flame will melt into the blue
And you will feel the burn on your hand.

**Adrian Popescu

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

8th st

Nov 2015 Nicole Hammond

Tom Leveille

8th st

someone's in the next room over
having *** while we
are weeping
what a way to mark the occasion
the day my fingers found a wound
you let someone else doctor
it's upsetting see
the bible in drawer next to us
the way our hands still
fit together
like the torn halves
of a love letter
the way you got
all dressed up like the rain
and how we couldn't tell
the difference in the shower
it was the longest hour and a half
spent crying
the hot water wouldn't give up
so why should we
right?
even though it was scalding
neither of us touched the ****
we knew this was supposed to hurt
your hair
a black mess against my shoulder
my fingers
oil in the vinegar of your hands
our bodies
the great divide
all the sobbing
a river runs through it
without the courage
to carry or **** us
so we step out
and drip dry
down to a mute breakfast
composed of quiet
and last nights liquor
as we came back in
there were people in our room
at first i thought them detectives
dissecting things
to see who had died here
i had forgotten this
was a hotel
and they were only
cleaning up after us
i wanted to stop them
plead
that the sheets were still perfect
that if they clean the bathroom
no one will know
what happened here
someone has to remember
"please
i know
these cigarette burns
by name
i will bury the faucet
let me take the tub
i don't care how
if i have to
i will drag it home by hand"

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

screaming point (1)

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

irinia

screaming point (1)

“Johnny's always running around
Trying to find certainty”*

you know this, don’t you?
I only knew you forward, unbearable
when I felt the foam of dawn
on your lips

and how wild fields bloom backwards
in the secrets of wind
in the culture of shame

that helpless zealous boy
with his eyes turned inwards
we are light and fiction
depending on the various proportions
in the geography of sight

we haven’t found out yet
the hidden geometry of thought
I’ve carried around this silently violent lover
an offering to the disappeared
to the void between your teeth

I never knew you

but your screaming point

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

Letting Go isn't the Same as Giving Up.

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

Sarah Spang

Letting Go isn't the Same as Giving Up.

Unclasp your fingers
Your clenched fists
And know the release of
Giving in

Let him drift away
Let the ocean stand between you
As a testament
To the vast expanse
That exists there now.

Stop fighting the waves.
Stop braving the icy waters
Arm over arm
To reach him on the other side.

The water will always win.
And you never were much of a swimmer.
He's just a distant island now
Shrouded in fog
Somewhere over the horizon.

Rest now,
The fight is over.
Your mangled, frantic heart
Can slow
And begin another tempo
When it's no longer bleeding over
An unreachable coastline.

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

cataclysmic

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

heather leather

cataclysmic

we did not go crashing down like waves at a shore,
you did not scream like thunder and i did not flash like
lightning there was never a bright yellow warning sign to our
love it was not written in the cool sand of a beach untouched
we were more like carved names onto a tree that
has been weathered, there was no fighting and there were no tears
you didn't cry and neither did i there was only silence and
it was somehow louder than words but we were not
cataclysmic; we just weren't in love
and we were never a tsunami; there was never any
rapid surging ocean to begin with

(h.l.)

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

our love was a war

Oct 2015 Nicole Hammond

VVanGone

our love was a war

our love was a war against the wrong time and the wrong place
our love was a war with what should have been and what never would be
our love was a war between what we believed and what we felt
our love was a war between saving others and destroying ourselves
our love left our bodies on the battlefield waiting for vultures to strip the bones and now I've got a thousand pieces of I love you stuck like shrapnel behind my ribs