I wrote a poem on a bus
but to hear it you must
climb to the top
of the bouncing metal stairs.
  
Slither snake-like
past the rail
and sit
on the rainbow nylon bench.
  
I'll be there
at the top of the bus,
reciting my rhyme,
written as we ride along,
past shops and houses
with musty nets
and peeling paint
on dingy doors.
  
There's the old woman who
lives in a house no bigger than a shoe box
who had so many children she didn't know what to do!
But they've all grown and flown now and she's all alone
with no-one to talk to but herself.
  
Look at that kid: grimy smile and mischievous eyes,
skateboard-scuffed knees,
darting out from the roadside.
Screech!
As we stop and angry words.
The kid glances back and tosses a vee
leaving just his smile behind.
  
The bus lurches on
at a snail's pace and stops at a stop
for a giggle-girl-gang
to chatter up the stairs
with a clatter of feet and voices:  
weekends and boyfriends,
music and laughter.

The bus trundles and sways
past shops all shuttered,
old folks gathered by doorways
talking about people
dead and forgotten ...
except by them.
  
Into the town now:
a river of road-rage
as our bus ambles onward
toward car-parks and markets
and rat-racing shoppers
  
And stops by a brown pigeon-stained temple
of public philanthropy,
a gift from a long-dead civic leader
and now proud home
to dogeared tomes of PC persuasion.
  
Our bus, like some Trojan horse,
disgorges its riders
who spatter and scatter
like rays of dawn light
to shop till they drop.
  
So, just me and you seated
atop the steel stairway
and you say to me sharply,
“So where's your poem then?”
I look at you strangely:
“It's happened around you,” I tell you quite curtly.

you picked me up
and spread me apart
over and over
leaving your notes
in the margins
and fingerprints
on my pages.
now no matter
who reads me
all they can see is you,
staining each page
with blue ink
and a hopeful heart.

I wrote a poem recently.
Not so much a poem,
more like a story;
a story of love,
kind of like a love story.
Sure,
it was the best love story
we've never read.

There were romances,
struggles,
some revelations
and resurrections...
even a few bruised egos.
Blah,
blah.

Yessir,
a bayside view of
false paradise
if I'd ever seen one;
some dogeared page
ripped out of a
journal written in ink
and found in the gutter.

No beginning or end.
Just a thought.
A memoir
of a fantasy that should've just
been
and never had to explain itself.

holding on to my paper love
folded and unfolded
again and again.
the words you sent me
mean nothing now,
but oh so splendid
when they did.
the worn folds
and turned edges
fluffed and whiskered.
simple words on a note
held for many years,
and what you wrote
lay in my hands
a thousand silent
times, and perhaps
a thousand many more.

Something obscures my sight, it may be a sign of the times or the night, but I can't see too clearly, my vision is best used when I'm looking back and the tracks that I trade are like beacons which made the fires that show the way on.

I walk with the weight of some years on my frame and each year bears the name of the one gone before, if each year was a door to go through then I went through them all, not remembering when but there must have been ink in my pen somewhere along the trade of the track, looking back it's all clear and that was the end of one more time of year, one more falling tear, one more thing to fear, but it's only at times when these things bring to mind the unfortunate apocalypse into which slips the man.

I can make a wish, but I can't find the lamp if I could I would wish that I wasn't this ***** that tramps back through the years and it all ends in tears yet again I still look for some words or a book to console me when the thing that obscures my sight holds on and controls me.

Anyway,
the day has been judged and found wanting more weight,
the scaffold's been built, but my sight is of late getting worse and
it's harder to see if it's me with a rope
or the last vestige of hope,
waving goodbye.

Short dark hair under
a dogeared baseball cap
tipped my way
a perfect smile on your face
crisp  white pocketed T-shirt
dark blue Levi jeans  
worn all-weather Chippewa boots
rugged, young and handsome
holding a stop sign for children
best crossing guard ever.

Cherie Nolan  © 2016

Life is a library, but
Too many of our pages are blank,
Our words transparent
Forced into dogeared corners.
Not spineless per se,
But visiting a chiropractor regularly.  
Covering our selves in judgments
Worn with both shame and pride.
We tire of the climb and the thinning air
We bookmark the times we falter
And when we shield our eyes from the glare.
Our minds are marked by the epithets
Gifted unto us by others.  
Some arrows fly true to the bone
Others are way off the mark.
And when our final pages have been read,
The book loaned out or discarded
All that remains of us is said
In a line on granite epitaph
The truth of the dead forever guarded.

A poem you say
              that's what you need?
                      Indigo ink
                      forced out
                         I bleed
                  I feel this need
             on a Poet's paper chest
                    I am writing

                 It's spewing out
              composing it now
                 showing me how
      pounding sound upon my eardrums
                   in a constant,
           reverberating hummmmm
                    I cup my ears
      in every moment that I breathe
    my lungs are cloaked in darkness  
                          sheathed
                   I am suffocating

      As generations they are turned to dust
                     consumed by guilt
                              and fear
                              and lust
          in poetry my hearts been ******
               into the darkness I return
                           and wait

      Shattered glass in empty hallways
       Darkened Moon hangs in the sky
                     streaked in ink
                   it hangs upon us
           tender questions asking why
           looking at the flooded sky
                       I am asking

          Steering failure words we say
         In your wisdom words we pray
         Shine your light on us this day
                        I surrender

       As Human Blindness overflows
         and leveyed waters at my toes
      I want to swim in glistening wet
                 and clean from life
                       the sins and
                              sweat
         tamper sad and past regrets
                        I am forgiven

        as rain pours down so fast outside
           I hear my people's voices cry
                 and I am listening

      There's so much more left here to say
                please hear my voice
                        to all I pray
         as raining tears come out to play
                       I hear you

                   Pain comes down
                     lightning fears
                   flashing thunder
                     inside.... I peer
     inside the torn, dogeared and forgotten  
                burning pages of our minds
        and ticking past the hands of time
          as rain comes down in buckets
                         I am drowning

        Inside I think I'll find the truth
      with wisdom of my years and youth
            measuring all that I hear
          in time I hope all things be clear
                  are you listening too?
     wisdom falls from those who departed
                    my soul and spirit
                     duly outsmarted
                     chains released
        in lands my soul it goes  uncharted
                           I am free

                       Found the vein
                   that caused that pain
               and severed it's ugly head
                 releasing all its beauty
                and have laid it in a bed
                         It haunts me
                       I am dreaming
  
                       So as you read
                     just know I bleed
                 a poets blood like you
                  Our lives ...our hopes ..
                    our broken truths
                       I am learning

                       Into yearning
               honesty it pains my ears
         released in me my greatest fears
          in everything this sound is real
              .....      I am found.

  
       Something  that we all must do
                     plunging knife
                    this truth is true
             Telluric veins cascading red
         reflection of what mirrors said        
                  I see and I am blinded
                            
                        A poetic plight
                         taken flight
                             my truth
                            your truth
                            our truth
                        the Same Truth
                            and now
                        I  understand

                     I'd never dare
                  to share or care
           unless inside poetic minds
        unbroken by the hands of time
                      I am writing

        This crimson river ever flowing  
     our knowledge  we are ever knowing  
             has breached the banks
                   filled up this tank
                            I am full

       Pouring drifting seas and oceans
     Crashing rocks and bottle broken
               resting on a poet island
                     I am breathing

        I see my hand it waves saluting
     the arrival of  sun ...it has begun,

             as pain becomes a river
                     of our sins
                     and sacrifices
            victories and the costly prices
            outside it rains again today
         I am drenched in clean waters

                   I am soaked in love
         And thanking all this gift above                  
            Hearing my Poetic Plight
      say thank you for this inner light
                awakened as my heart
             on angels wings takes flight

       Releasing all its Inner brightness
on the heady winds of shadows darkness  
                    slow encroaching
                   stabbed by daggers
         evil, jealous angry poaching
                          I am bare

         What is taken from the pages
        Gifts from those imparted sages
        written with a hand enlightened
               Penning ...trembling
                      awake and
                        frightened
                      I am hoping

                      I am whole
               grateful to be home.

Cherie Nolan © 2016

We fell, for what was thought to be Love.

We held, on to what was thought to be Hope.

The Days went into Months and the Months went into Years.

We even lost count of those pages in the book of Promises we dogeared.



Those summerdays we spent traipsing in the sun

and the starless nights spent watching life slowing down in motion.

All these time we shared and get involved in each other's emotions,

The Youth we spent consumed wondering about our actions and reactions.



The carefree times lovers should have were filled with paranoia,

Even Freedom was robbed by another person's act of denial!

Disappointment and Hurt, tears and Sadness;

the desperate pleadings of the Heart were taken and thrown into the wilderness.



The bank of tears has dried up, the Heart has gone weak.

The Mind stopped working and the Body has lost its Spirit.

Finally, it is time to say goodbye.

So goodbye, goodbye. I end this with a sigh

Part I.

I tried to die
in the arches of your orchard heart
struggled for breath and bleeding
but my blood was not willing
it loves me like you never would
red lead weights
on the dogeared notes of last weekend
yellowing with antiquity
like the singing saints of Hyperborea-feigned
in paper cathedrals
if only we could see them
once
the moon waned
to these tobacco-trance stains
that creep beyond the door frame's edge
- dreams of Apollo.
You will sing in light
but your eyes will burn
and when the sky falls to night
the halls of your arms will yearn
and your song will laugh at you
in the hollow of its silence
if only my mouth could marry a love like that.
I often dreamt of lighthouses
then
you came from the water's edge
and brought the sea with you
stupid saltwater
sodium mouthfuls
nothing grows from you.

Part II.

Summer crept
in to the holes in your jeans
as the sky fell to dusk
we saw the sun die
under waves of golden clouds
summer kept us warm in to the night
now only the sea sings its praise
to the promise of the evening
a promise that will fall with Arcadia
and the loudest of silences
to the archaic indifference of apocrypha-lost
few others could speak
in a way that grew between us
with the colours of a love not yet lost.
Now all my books are burning
beneath the palm of your eye
your iris twists
and burns with the sky.

i like where we're going, we're in the same book
but right now we're not on the same page.
we're young and we're ruthless, it aint entertaining
i've experienced much at this age

you push and i pull
then i push and you stay

the corners are dogeared
the pages are yellowed
the cover is filthy and stained
the bandages wrapped up around the old volumes
are ready to be torn away

you push and i pull
then i push and you stay

i'm walking, you're watching
i'm kissing your fingers
eyes kiss lids then i kiss a ways
i kiss all the lips off of state store products
so that you won't ruin my day.

you push and i pull
then i push and you stay

so you're hanging up others' dresses?
well i'm still hung up on guessing
how much to give and to take
you catch my eye,
i blush and i shiver.
look at this fool you helped make.

now i push and you pull
then you push and i stay