"nichols" poems
by Nanao Sakaki
If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
Sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you lucky happy idiot.
Nanao Sakaki
Japan
From Can I Buy a Slice of Sky
Edited by Grace Nichols
Published by Hodder Childrens Books 1996
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 4:02 AM UTC
We are Manchester. The City, The place, we’re hospitable people with a smile on our face. You can beat us, mistreat us, and blow us to hell. We have had it all before and we don’t dwell. We’re the northern powerhouse of the northwestern elite, Where the Geordie's, The Scousers, The Yorkshire’s retreat. The premier League, The Roses Cricket, The Heineken Cup Is a one way ticket. United and City two football teams with stadiums full, bursting at the seams.
We are Mancunians Of this fair City, The People, The Love, The old nitty gritty The worker, The Shirker, The Homeless, The immigrants, each one of these they are all itinerants. The Steel, The Cotton, long since forgotten the old smokey chimneys blew out smoke that was rotten. The Massacre at Peterloo. Local politicians just don’t have a clue. With all the sights this city has on show here’s something that people don’t really know. Manchester is where New Zealand Born Ernest Rutherford split the Atom.
We Are Manchester, The City, the Place, where Sir Humphrey Chetham has his musical grace a school of music with musical taste. And where a man with a paintbrush painted streets on boxes. I don’t think Lowry ever painted foxes. And A comedian from Collyhurst who was absolutely awesome, a real funny guy by the name of Les Dawson, and where a man from Chorlton on Medlock became Prime Minister back in the day. David Lloyd-George had a hell of a lot to say.
We Are Manchester and it's the place for me. And a proud Mancunian I’m glad to be. I’ll sit in a cafe watching people pass by. They are all in a hurry and I wonder why. I see a business man in a three piece suit, and the homeless guy that is counting his loot. There's the girl on the street giving out free papers she is smoking those ciggies that give off those vapours. It's pouring with rain and she’s getting wet she’s worried about money to pay off her debt.
We Are Manchester and this is our City don’t waste your time we don’t want no pity. We are Manchester we are steeped in tradition we leave other cities standing. There’s no competition. Where A man from Moss Side a Vicar not a Dean called Rev George Garrett invented the submarine. And where the great Anthony Wilson was a journalist & impresario and a man named John Nichols invented the great drink called Vimto. and so When he wrote “This Is the Place” I’m sure he did so with a smile on his face. We Are Manchester and I’ll state our case because we are Manchester and we are ace.
Mar 30, 2018
Mar 30, 2018 at 9:45 PM UTC
What’s Your Water
*If you talk to Wallace J. Nichols, Ph.D., a marine biologist and the author of Blue Mind, a book about the physical and psychological benefits of water, for long enough,
he’ll eventually ask you*,
***what’s your water?
And as it turns out, nearly everyone has an answer.***
<>
Having lived longer
than I had a right to expect,
through decades of lost years, pain imbued an attitudinal of:
‘I do not ****** care,’
find myself perplexed now by my near
escapes, death misses, graceful landings,
and now,
the fortune tellers ply me with
predictive prescription possibilities
of a good many more!
So I write this missive,
mine own “Guide to the Perplexed.”
for a longest miserable
drove me to deep despair,
and even the littlest do was a wasn’t undone,
to insure any extension, even hurry up a clusterfk,
and here I am
yet, wander-in-g & wonder-in-g,
Why, what
accidents of fortune reversal,
made my prior life a rehearsal
for a hopeful long end run,
before a Mahomes miracle touchdown
Knowingly
looking for the X Fsctor,
discovered that the solution was
W2
W squared)
where W is a
(Woman,Water) multiplier
Found a woman who
lived by waterways,
upon island bodies and seas of rivers
that led to
this little island that
gave me
the solitude unsolicited
to see inside my
history
leaving me with
no imperative imperial resources to resist,
but to make it
just one day more,
to let the celestial sun
celebrate a new daily saluted calculus,
Of
*the sum total of
every grain of water
in this world
evaporated to be rebirthed
in a million raindrops
just like me and
poetry*
writ over the spring & summer of 2024
Sep 9, 2024
Sep 9, 2024 at 11:59 AM UTC
They call me Jack! A Jack the Lad
a man who likes to go out late.
I must confess that I'm a cad
and often seen in Aldegate.
Whitechapel and Spittlefield
are other locations I frequent.
Tis where I often draw my yield
and nay for that I'll not lament.
Inspired by my ill repute,
repugnant chanting of my name,
I'll seek and find a **********
commencing to secure my fame.
Reference books cannot advise
what two skilled hands can show.
Exacting cuts when I excise,
instructing where my blade doth flow.
My first, Miss Nichols, I recall,
whom blinded by the lure of coin,
into my clutches she did fall
and she, I did indeed refine.
Chapman then I did impress
with incision so demanding.
Nothing taken to excess
an ***** now made outstanding.
Stride and Eddowes in one night
but fortune demanded I should race.
Though well presented to the light,
embarrassment is my disgrace.
My final lady played the game,
Miss Kelly whom at my insistence.
She alone recoiled my fame,
my very own Piece de Resistance.
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 12:57 PM UTC
Cinéma vérité (/ˈsɪnɪmə vɛrɪˈteɪ/; French:
[sinema veʁite]; "truthful cinema"
is a style of film making,
invented by Jean Rouch &
inspired by Dziga Vertov's
theory about Kino-Pravda & influenced
by the films of Robert Flaherty’s, it combines
improvisation with using the camera
to unveil truths of a higher order
or to highlight subjects hidden behind reality;
Cinéma vérité in relationship to direct cinema
and observational cinema:
if understood as "pure" cinema:
without a narrator's perspective;
There are subtle, important, differences
among the terms although expressing similar concepts:
"Direct Cinema" largely concerned with
recording events in which the subject
and audience become aware of the camera's
presence: operating within what Bill Nichols,
American film historian and theoretician
of documentary film, likens the observational mode
to smashing the "fly on the wall"; many therefore seeing
a paradox
in drawing attention away from
the camera while simultaneously interfering
in the reality it registers in attempting
to discover cinematic truths
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 12:04 AM UTC
Stands tall in dark cloak.
Menacing shadow smacks the alleyway.
Wall dressed in gaslight.
A bag of tricks grasped in his hand.
To turn tricks of his own on night ladies.
The night ladies cackle in raucous laughter.
In the grasp of inebriation's smile.
A stallion bedecked in funeral regalia.
Waits impatiently for his return.
Heavy shod hooves heard scratching the flag stones.
Stallion awaits acknowledgement of death.
Death soon to approach the first sweet soul.
The first of five.
Sweet Mary Ann Nichols.
Throat unceremoniously slashed.
Her abdomen was broken too.
The work of the devil maybe.
Whitechapel August 1888
Was no place for a lady of the night to be.
Despite the chapel, in the name.
This was no religious lair.
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Jul 17, 2013
Jul 17, 2013 at 12:21 PM UTC
Strangers.
Only talked once.
Till her friend dated him.
Texted him a couple times.
Then summer came along...
Friends.
Talked some more.
Then she broke up with him.
Texted him everyday.
Then a little crush came along...
Best friends.
Knew mostly everything about each other.
She like him a little, and he liked her a lot.
Texted till they passed out.
Then a question came along...
Boyfriend and Girlfriend.
We know everything about each other.
We are madly in love with each other.
Can talk about anything with each other.
Dallas Hayes Nichols and Abigail Rose Buell together at last, forever and ever.♥
Mar 7, 2011
Mar 7, 2011 at 7:30 AM UTC
The Flying Illini again
Nichols, Morgan, Tinks, Black,
go up and sometimes come down with it -
Will Groce's job be saved?
Even Lucas, Hill, Abrams, and TCL at guard
can get up there.
Rebounding has definitely
improved for the Illini
over the years
and means so much
It even seems to me to help their free throwing.
The Illini have long been a ******
in rebounding
not so this year
Hear ye, hear ye
The Illinois big men will be.
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 3:15 PM UTC
There is no hope in the future.
The greatest lie that has ever been told was
When we work hard and obey the rules we will find
There is no end for what we can achieve.
A wise man once said:
What you do today will determine your future.
I feel freed by the fact that
All people die someday.
I wanted to do something different because
Nothing changes.
This is why
I let myself sink into the deepest circles of hate.
I feel that
The future is as empty as a broken promise.
Do not believe in the liars who state:
Believe what I have to say.
The future is worth living for.
(Now read it from the bottom upwards.)
My inspiration: Our Generation
Our generation will be known for nothing.
Never will anybody say,
We were the peak of mankind.
That is wrong, the truth is
Our generation is a failure.
Thinking that
We actually succeeded
Is a waste. And we know
Living only for money and power
Is the way to go.
Being loving, respectful and kind
Was a dumb thing to do.
Forgetting about that time
Will not be easy but we will try.
Changing our world for the better
Is something we never did.
Giving up
Is how we handled our problems.
Working hard
Was a joke.
We knew that
People thought we couldn't come back.
That might be true,
Unless we turn things around.
(Read it from bottom to top now.)
Second poem credit to Jordan Nichols, a fourteen year-old boy.
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 7:59 AM UTC
It all happened
Once Upon A Time, like in the fairy tales, but
it went backwards
and backwards
and
backwards,
opposite and upside down
like he was in Alice in Wonderland
and the wicked stepmother was not a stepmother at all;
with no pointed chin or sharp daggers for eyes.
Instead she looked like a princess
with a gentle face and round, brown eyes
like a mother.
She was good at goodness
at being kind
at loving him in front of everybody’s eyes
and making him think
it wasn’t so bad, after all.
But she was also good at
shouting
and yelling
and hitting and smacking,
at giving him the belt
and the switch
and sometimes the slipper.
And in his fairy tale
there was no kind, gentle father.
There was no father.
“Gone,” she’d say of him, “drunk somewhere.
With a *****
Dying, hopefully.
If he was here
he’d **** you.”
Sometimes he
wished,
hoped
his father would come back and
live up to his promise
and ****
and ****
and ****
and ****
and ****
until there was nobody left to ****
because they were all dead and destroyed
and dead
and destroyed
and their clothes mopped up their own blood
and when he was sobered enough to realise what he’d done
he’d stand over them,
mournfully,
and weep
over his drunken mistakes
over just who he had
murdered
with his own knife, who he had cut
cut
cut
jagged shapes into their flesh,
torn pieces of them away
like he had drunk away pieces of himself;
an eye for an eye;
an equal pound of their fair flesh,
cut off and taken,
stolen,
like a jewel in the night.
But no father came,
and he stayed dissatisfied and alive
and his mother came
and belted him
whenever she pleased.
He grew up dissatisfied,
lived dissatisfied,
and anger grew in his bloodied heart,
furious,
bleeding with the pain of it
growing to despise his father’s ******
even more than he despised his father
and his mother
and himself.
He learnt all their names:
Nichols
and Chapman
and Stride and Eddowes
and Kelly.
And he stalked the streets,
searching
searching
searching
searching
searching,
for they had lain with his father
and had wronged him
by leaving him
alone with his mother
and the belt
and the switches,
and if they wronged him,
should he not revenge?
Sep 18, 2019
Sep 18, 2019 at 3:46 PM UTC
Dallas has
Abbie's heart.
Loves her for her.
Life's been rough for both
Although they found
Something they
Have to share.
Always gonna be together.
You can say different if you want.
Each of them don't believe that
****
Never doubting there love.
In each others arms
Closing there eyes.
Holding
On the
Lovers
Stay together forever.<3
Mar 7, 2011
Mar 7, 2011 at 7:30 AM UTC
Nichols and I
had a fight
in the greenhouse
the first day.
It began
with a push
and shove
by the potted plants.
Then turned
into fists
and neck holds.
Only some kid saying
Groats is coming
that we moved apart
red faced
and sweating
and gazed
at each other.
Get you playtime
Nichols said.
Anytime
Squat-face
I replied.
Next day
he passed me
into class
and said nothing
not even
a shove or elbow
(which I would
have returned
with a blow).
Then walking
to the metalwork room
he said
what part of London
you from?
Southwark
in South London
I said
eyeing him
(not wanting to say
the Elephant and Castle
in case he thought
I was taking the ****
Is it near
the Tower of London?
he asked.
Quite near
I went to school nearby
I replied.
He nodded
and said
sorry about yesterday
guess I was a bit rash
never met
a Londoner afore.
No probs
I replied.
We went into
the metalwork class
sort of friends
and that's how
this poem ends.
Jun 24, 2017
Jun 24, 2017 at 4:02 AM UTC