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 had a scrapbook deep and thick
I read it in the night
I burned the candle to the wick
A precarious light

In it there were photographs
And clippings by the score
Of every wrong and every shaft
That'd pierced me to the core

I kept my quill at my right hand
And in the margins wrote
My hourglass had lost its sand
My eyes began to float

This book was worn with constant care
The dogeared pages bent
I was constantly to share
Of those I did resent

Time came 'round to find me sick
Ailing from the frost
Of a cold poison dark and thick
I knew that all was lost

I bent closer, smelt the book
It was the book itself!
I'd recover, all it took
Was to place it on the shelf!

And so the scrapbook lost allure
I closed it with a snap
The health of soul I then assured
I placed on pen its cap


Close your books, my dearest friends
And in the end you'll see
Your spiritual health you will amend

You'll finally be FREE!



SoulSurvivor
(C)1/28/2016

Fourteen years old
and my life was a trap -
My ankle was caught
All red and ragged
In the jaws of an age-old machine
Designed to catch boys.
But there was a missing cog –
a little *****,
because there was a way,
(There was a way)
There was a way
to
get away…

College Library,
Domed and dark,
The silence disturbed by a bluebottle’s
Rumble
And the sly ticking of my own gold watch.
Oh! Getting high on the smell of
Other people’s universes,
Tissue thin and
Dogeared immortal -
Gotcha!
I’ve got 'em all!
You can’t contain me in these walls,
I can go an – y -where.

I can get drunk on Holden’s Highballs
Or Sebastian’s brandy,
I can weep at the grave of Ignatius Riley’s
Sexually inappropriate ****-fantasy dog,
I can neatly eat Prufrock’s peach
Or a dismal breakfast in a seaside caff
With Dallow and Spicer
And dear Rosaried Rose
With one eye on the sea and
Some lukewarm tea.
I can spend a season with my namesake,
Far away from Heaven,
And shake hands with Satan as he
Finishes a speech,
Wiping his mouth on a swollen
rock,
Hot as heaven and black as a leech.
I can walk that sheep on B612,
I can whip around the Second Circle
Of Hell
Or lock myself in a toilet
With Franny,
I can live in a garret with a garrulous ****** -
I can be East of Eden,
Wonderland,
I can die in Venice,
I can shoot soldiers in the sand,
I can lust after Lo – lee – ta
Tip of the tongue,
I can be a girl,
I can be a nun,
Blow into a conch,
Diffuse a bomb,
Digest my lunch,
Be a sub,
Be a dom,

I can sparkle here,
I can be free here,
I can just be here
And there are no rules here,

Just one boy
And a book
And a bluebottle
And a watch.

Aw dear -
What a flawed design for a cage!

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

this dim light room
you protest the error
which must be why your here
but not even a flicker of interest
passes the faces
gather in the moment
digest its very essence
with an eye to its taste and texture
can it be such
that while you see the logic
thouse around only see the flaw
you protest the confusion
she laughs dull witted and mutters
that confusion isnt allowed
without proper paperwork
therefore there is no confusion
sit down and shut up
you stand and try to leave
the hired hand
stops you with a gentle hand
no friend we cant have that
sit down go with the flow
the tragedy is in her eyeless watching
she just lingers there in the shadows
with a television at full volume
cartoons of americas empire building days
running marathon back to back
with the guy who teaches how to paint
one a masterpiece of tragedy
the other a tragedy of masterpieces
life is a ironic love affair of
joyfull young pretty college girls
and the bitter old men they hide
dogeared books of poems tucked inside
old leather jackets
misery need not apply

I am smoke from a discarded cigarette.
I am a dogeared page in an obscure novel.
I am rain on the ocean.

I want to be a sunbeam dancing in a glass of pink lemonade.
I want to be a tall pine's love whisper to the silvery moon.
I want to be a baby's first smile.

I am the dark side of the moon.
I am a blank cartridge.
I am a penny on a train track, waiting.

I want to be yeast bread rising in a warm place.
I want to be newly poured concrete growing firm.
I want to be a toddler's prayer.

I am a schoolyard after recess.
I am a Saturday matinee.
I am mist dying in the mourning sun.
                    

Are we books upon the same shelf
at this stage of our lives
slightly worn and dogeared
by our ex husbands and wives

Or could we be a little closer
different pages, same book
after all we've lots in common
and not just our outlook

But perhaps we're even closer
maybe words on the same page
Although written many years apart
by a wise and noble sage

And as time it marches onward
and we get to know each other better
it turns out that we're both a part
of exactly the same letter

Which I guess is something we both knew
way back there at the start
when we saw the world in each others eyes
and loved each others hearts

I met you when we both were in recovery, sitting in a waiting room,
while Dr. Limbo shuffled our papers and told us it'd be awhile.

You were in with a heart defect. It has a hole, you said,
that nothing so far can close up, and you're not getting any younger.

I suffered from chronic chills, the kind that make people cold to the touch,
hugs are like a trip to the morgue, I said, and you nodded thoughtfully.

We discussed the articles in every dogeared magazine they had laying out,
folding back the pages and pointing at the pictures.

You explained to me the inner-workings of the common espresso machine,
and I named all my favorite cathedrals in Europe, chronologically.

When we finished with that, we checked for the doctor, but he was busy.
You nursed the weak part of your chest as I ran my hands over my arms

You know, I think the hole is getting wider as I get older, and someday it'll eat
me away like cancer. As you speak, I see the slight depression near your sternum.

Well I fear that I'll never touch a living person, I'll only touch rocks.
And my capillaries will forget how to fill, and I'll freeze from the inside out.

We looked at each other, and I thought you might try to kiss me, but instead
you wonder if the doctor is a good one; and if they'll call our names soon;

and you turned to face the door.

on the banks of the
mighty south platte river
he lay prostrate to the twin gods
with his dogeared copy of deadbase open to his first show
and the touch sensitive sky full of magic colour
raise your arms and think that madness is only as
deep as your devotion
dances barefoot on the empty road to the crickets song
ain't it sweet ain't it strong

our friends lived in lean to and
city's of cardboard
at the rivers edge
in the cool of the railroad breezeway
but he lived in the brambles
and on the sandy beach
listened to the vastness of night
dances barefoot on the empty road to the crickets song
ain't it sweet ain't it strong

his voice still echoes in my mind
as he introduced fast fingers to the skin of sky
trace out the silhouette
of her form
near as he can remember
which ain't too near at all
but his words
resembles free form skull and roses
looks like habitat for the shady
but it rolls clean
and has a kind hand for the friendly face

he was  always up for a trek through the city sleeping
dumpster diving and sky laughing
always had little extra warm gear for a cold brother
always had something to chew on for
a hungry sister
always had tunes a flutter
ready to roll on the deck

one day came to the rivers edge
and brother was gone
we searched high and low
but time pass
and river flow
he never did come back
picture him somewhere
dancing barefoot on the empty road to the crickets song
ain't it sweet ain't it strong

Tripping over his feet like so many shoelaces he danced clumsily
Calloused hands holding loosely onto the featherweight of my neglected body
Breath
alcohol tainted and stained with years of nicotine inhalation
raises goose flesh on the whole of my being
My vision is doubling
the dogeared books decorating the walls of his room
pristine white candles glowing hot and soft on the altar
wine glasses silently radiating with a deep maroon
He spins me slowly round
I imagine I look like the ceramic dancer
inside a music box
Inside a fantasy world all my own
My head is getting dizzy from the alcohol from the smokes from the movement
and I stumble
Everything round me slows to an unsure crawl as the world shifts horizontally
Hands grasp the air as my feet pinwheel
Flowing fabric floats away from my body
an angel falling
Mouth opens and a soft gasp is allowed
This happens within the seemingly unending seconds
between leaving the relative and drunken safety of his arms and
Cracking my skull upon the altar adorned in so much white flame
Everything stills and again
There is silence
I do not
hear his screams as my heartbeat matches that of a hymnal I used to sing in church and
I overflow with the memory
As my blood pools beautifully
Complimenting the darkness of the wine stained crystal
I imagine
The altar had been built for me
The corners of books folded to please my eye
The drinks the music the melancholy all exist for
My epilogue
My epitaph
My eternity

hopeless scrawls on dogeared paper
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.

In the nick of time,
You held a candle
To my hands - trembling
Just before my
Fingers turned blue;
I allure into
Your flickering flame,
Heating my bones.
The dogeared pages
Of your open book,
I could be your bookmark
For a while,
Just until the last chapter.

--Jamie F. Nugent

Fortonuate palms skim the dogeared surface
Of the snakes and ladders without clear direction--

Hot tea and foggy glasses. Familiar lips
That look as young as ever when they smile.

Sun melting in the clouds like mollases
While the breeze lifts and plays with

Our clothes.

Hollow words served as concierge
For this used up body-- orbs and a silhouette,

That's all you get as it's all I was perceived as

And all I've left to give.

But here I don't have any will to offer.

I've gave you everything and how peaceful

It is to be contempt replaying another day.

I say, "tell your story!"
No matter how many times it's been heard
Refuse the critics dogeared comments
about broken records,
get out of your rut,
let it go.

Our story is our pleasure
our experience of breath
Lived despite the presence
or non-presance of tragic moments.

Cut foot
bad catch
wrong number
missed bus

small instances of life:
lost job
low pay
Lonely Sundays
no friends.

Let me know, tell me each minute.
Share.

This room is empty now. No words in here to complete the sentiment for the feelings that sweep over you when a person you care for walks away from your life leaving you in the room you have furnished for yourself.

They walk away into the empty zone mixed with new faces, red haired ladies in tight see through black bras, excellent jobs like stock analyst, lobbyist, journalist, emergency room nurse, or worse. They don't let anyting stick to their walls, not yet, not now. They get to rewrite their songbook while yours becomes yellowed, dogeared, coffee stained.

Your room, blanketed in dust, dirt in the corners, dog hair covering your bedquilts.  ***** laundry piles up, you never become wealthier or smarter.  Your circle of friends degenerates into locals and deadenders like yourself. Days pass, you become old.

You latch on to anything that is moving.  Hopefully it is moving upward and outward. You dream about driving away, far away from where you live, driving for miles into the desert.  You want to live in a town where nobody knows who you are, you don't know anyone either; your home an isolated, small, cheap apartment like the one you had when you were a freshly freed adult.

Dreaming and dreaming about a life where you can be left alone so you will have the freedom to maybe, this time, find a life that resembles your fantasy of what it is supposed to be like.  All the promises of what education and college would bear.  Intelligent friends, moving and shaking the conciousness and politics, life, and town were supposed to surround you, invite you to dinner parties where you would drink smart wine and discuss shaping the tone of the future.

Turning over in your sleep, you wish everything around you would walk out and leave you. Everything except your child. He would stay, weather the change, ride the storm into your own empty room where you could paint the walls of life newly.

With dogeared pages and vanilla smell
old, good books are all fine and well.

But, I can say, I'd much rather mind
kissing my way
                     down a drowsy man's spine.

In the nick of time,
You held a candle
To my hands, trembling,
Just before my
Fingers turned blue;
I am allured into
Your flickering flame,
Heating my bones.
The dogeared pages
Of your open book,
I could be your bookmark,
For a while,
Just until the last chapter.

-Jamie F. Nugent

I wiped my lips with the back of my hand
And just like that
You were gone

The taste of blood, spit and ***
Smeared in my lipstick

I watched my hand lite the match, burn
And just like that
You were gone

The smell of phosphorus and
Crackle skin and
Fingernail singe

I read the book up to the end
And just like that
You were gone

The dogeared pages and corner notes
“Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth”
And you were gone

Verses from Proverbs highlighted in yellow
Dogeared pages in Mark and Matthew
A flattened rose from a previous lover  
A Home Depot coupon book marker
with a few four leaf clovers* ..

Playing daisy chains with another's mind
No quarter given
They find their own solace
and refute to look over the sun
finding weird  patterns
to ply with in the dogeared winter farrow