Theirs tears are wiped by your words

Your prayer, the prey to their sadness

Hope is the response to your call

These radio waves push them to greener shores

Yet, I pray for you

That the thousandth, millionth time
Still has that first time glow

Two and a half weeks into this quarantine
Rainy days and
no poems
No words forthcoming
All quiet
I decide that perhaps
if I just put one
Word
In front of another
And keep on for a time
Words upon words
something will come?

At 8:30 every morning
A man passes
walking a Pomeranian mix
A joyful little dog
(I’d steal him in a heartbeat)
They walk
He twirling the leash round and round
The dog leaping higher and higher still.
They dance together eyes meeting
and smile as I know a dog can
and I remember
how I would dance with my last greyhound.
We would tango and box-step.
I always led.

These days the little
Pomeranian can’t get his attention
anymore
The leash doesn’t twirl above its head
He’s pulled along impatiently
There are no more smiles
Their eyes won’t meet
He’s slow to realize that he’s become a drudgery
I want to yell out the window
I see you
EVERY MORNING AROUND 8:30!
Where’s your joy gone buddy?
Don’t you know that’s all you’ve got?
You’re bumming me out for real
and your dog loves you!
Wake up! You fool wake up!

I think that now I’ll walk to Ralph’s
I have various thoughts while doing so
Children race their bikes passed me
as if they’re in an entirely other reality
altogether
and
maybe they are.
The wind blows through their hair
effortlessly
As if it couldn’t mine.

Front lawns offer up fields of dandelions
as if their orbs the most prized bounty
Freshly mown grass smells new and clean instead of putrid, rotting in the sunshine
The fulsome wafts of springtime’s
jasmine and osmanthus heaving with citrus and pepper evade me as I pass their blossoms
Yet on the rare occasion a fragrant rose pierces through the weft and hits a nostril
but I can’t tell which bloom.

The smooth talking
homeless girl
has finally covered up that
diabetic open sore on her left ankle
the size of a flattened crimson football
which is something,
although I can see that
she’s being told to move along as
she just can’t sit anywhere she pleases.

I’m counting every time I see the word “dead” along my way.

In the store the ladies that buy
their bottles of white wine in the afternoon
are starting earlier now
with supplies and deliveries
unsure
It’s one thirty and I see
Two bottles of Clos du Bois
And four Domaine St. Michelles
in the cart to my right
and nothing else
as they do.
I’m not going to ask her
about her dinner party.

While I stare at packages of coffee
A man pulls off his mask to sneeze into the air before him
And I say to the older man approaching
I don’t think that you’ll be going any farther
in that direction.
It was under my breath.
He didn’t hear me.
I have a mask on.
He turned his cart around and walked back
the way he came.

I have this urge to talk to everyone.
I have this relentless desire for ice cream.
I miss everything.
Nothing here
will satisfy anything
to do with me.
Can one survive a global catastrophe
with candy and magical thinking?

Older people
And by that
I mean really old people
Eye me suspiciously
Almost fearful
As if I myself alone
embody
the menacing contagion
and I guess I could.
Perhaps I do.
It’s hard to read emotions with these masks
But their eyes seem terribly unkind and
brows, furrowed
One stares at me hard
with beady anger and a ready insult
another will jump me in the checkout line
and with great solicitude
unwrap her money from
the white notebook paper
pulled from the manila envelope
Now re-folded with
rubber bands and string
And placed back
into her chest
She is so sweet to the cashier
with her black acrylic wig askew
that he seems quite shocked to hear
she cut in front of
fifteen people
without so much as a word.
Who cares really?

My first mask made me sneeze for four hours straight and made my nose burn like a hit of **** *******.
I’ve been handed a free mask by
a representative
from my local assemblyman
made of a softer material
I find that
it won’t stay up and fogs the base of my glasses.
I don’t think it’s working.
It reads
We’re All In This Together.

I still can’t breathe.

The doomed asthmatic
selling his single ciggies on the sidewalk
dies on Staten Island
from a policeman’s chokehold.
Eric Garner
In those desperate last moments
of
his
2014
despite his pleas and confusion
surely there before him appeared
although not quite the end that he’d envisioned or feared
what with steroid inhalers from the pharmacy
a crystalline moment
when he knew without a doubt that
he’d never take another gasp of air
like a bloated goldfish on its side
expressionless and saucer eyed
outside its bowl
What happened to his mind then?
What will happen to mine?

It has been said that
certain tribal kings
have brought before them
after battle
their most worthy enemy
in the process of imminent death
while they sit in numinous splendor
and wait for that perfect moment
to lean in close to the mouth
and inspire greedily
the purest
most sublime
expiration of their life force,
now a pristine delicacy of the infinite,
for themselves alone.

Eric Bischoff ran World Championship Wrestling
Otherwise known as WCW
The only wrestling company to beat the WWF/WWE in the ratings
(At least in the modern era)
Eric Bischoff made many mistakes
And they're well documented
He had many triumphs
And they're well documented
But on top of his successes and failures
Is a mountain of lies
Which are well documented
By wrestling's version of tabloid journalists
Otherwise known as "dirt sheet writers"
Who sell lies and gossip to their marks
They sell the delusion of knowing the inner workings of wrestling
They sell the inner workings of a dirt sheet writer's imagination
Negativity, cynicism, petulance and paranoia
Eric Bischoff has a distaste for these writers
Because their lies taint the viewer's experience
He tries to fight their lies with truth
But his effort is futile
Because there's an endless amount of pessimists
Willing to believe any cynical narrative thrown their way
And there's only one Eric Bischoff

in a holy room
she weeps
it is a Blue Sunday,
—don’t you hear her, Jim?

roses weeping
she dances
in the dark
it is pouring
and she is empty
— oh Axl, don’t you see her ?

she hopes she can touch heaven
she feels like gold
her blood is full of it !
dreamy,
oblivious
spiraling
she’s become numb
—Don’t you feel her, Roger?

she tries to find her way to heaven
a new life
but her wings are scarred
— can you get her there, Eric?

in times of
complete
and utter ruin

the image that
runs laps
around my head

is that of:

eric andre
staring
into nothingness

and hannibal buress
screaming
for help

Thank you Eric for being my friend. YOu
Have taught me how it feels to be Have Real Love,
how it feels to have someone there for you
when you need them the most !you're taught me to love Jesus you taught me that people are all different and unique in their own ways and it's okay to love them just the way they are
with no judgement.
you've also taught me that being in love means you have to think about the other person before you think about yourself! for example you think about the things that you're lover wants and you get them those things. for you thinking  about what they want
Makes you happy
you tell me that people struggle but having people that trust you is very important because without having trust without having the ability to believe in someone fully you are nothing you're not worth anything and you are worthless as a person
you have to actually give your word and have it mean something in order for you to completely give yourself to the other person I trust you with my life you are my best friend you never give up on me
.
you never stay mad at me.
I know it's because you have Jesus! you are the reason I have more faith! The reason  I seek the Lord if it wasn't for you I probably would be dead!!! I have heard so many things about people saying that you are crazy maniac and that you would **** me in a heartbeat
You might hurt me
but you have never done that besides the words verbal abase.
But that's yours only defense
Against
Me because that's your only  way of hurting me and you know that it does that exactly you. But most the time I do deserve it Cuz im not the easiest person sometimes im stubborn and selfish and rude and ******.. And you put up with until you can't anymore then You (Man handle the situation and put me in my place ("slap in the face")  * IM IN A REALITY CHECK .
I say sorry

Eric the amazing
Your so extremely
amazing, caring, selfless, worthy

You are a Angel that is Heaven sent a gift from God
you are a perfect example of what God meant when he said he would find me someone that would teach me how to be a better person. if I wanted to be that better person grab hold and stop messing around
Sto running.
I want to be a better person
you make me a better person!
I honestly am glad to call you my friend, my best friend, my lover, the love of my life and my guardian angel you might not ever read this but least I got it out in the open no lies just me telling it like it is!

“Graceless Ravens Envy You,” by Eric Robert Nolan

Revel in apostasy.
You are the black dove, hovering
High in an inklike arc.

Blacker, even, than
coal-colored wolves in onyx lines seeking
quarry at starless midnight.

More ebon, even, than
narrow sable blacksnakes staying
cravenly in shade at noon.

Darker, even, than
murders of crows, newly legion at Autumn, amassing
among saw-wing martins at dusk.

You’re blacker, even, then the rooks.
Graceless ravens envy you.

Remember your rebirth?
The sun rose,
Your birdsong changed and then
the questions flew from your beak
faster even than the wrens?
Faster than you could fly?
For a moment, they rendered
all the world obsidian.

Remember your feathers burning?
Sunlight striking your wings and then
all the slow alabaster there
singing, quickening into
aerodynamic black?
Remember the flock’s suspicion?

Remember your siblings, the nest?
Remember when
all their pearl heads turned
their backlit crowns in morning sun
ringed so thinly in shining ivory?

Their song was interrupted,
Yours was made a query —
empiricism’s aria.
Flustered, they fluttered
at all the low notes.
There were all immaculate;
you were the color of night.

Now you arc alone —
soar and sin and sing,
unrepentant one.

Somewhere an ordinary dog,
awakening from shadow,
howls at the sun.

(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2015

Planet earth
Was my place of birth
I need worth?
Money fortune and fame
Man i couldnt picture this
Without makin' a name
I wanted to be the black Picasso
With the picture perfect flow
So ya know
The microphone fiend
Aint went no where
And All my spectators n haters
Had to stop n stare
Listenin' to the bass thumpin'
Music n mic is so loud
Movin' the crowd
With my aesthetic poetry
Ricochetin' minds with my lyrical
Content
Once the trigger hits the bars get
More ruthless
Strikin' furious
makin' emcees toothless
Leave em with a strong lisp
Check the total Eclipse
Its temporary darkness mark this
Day and age im the new jack
So im turnin' the page
Backward bringin' real hip hop back
Yo! ,im finna cut deep as a lumberjack
And yea im black
So get ready to attack
Butll be back
For more ******* delivery
NONE could shake thee
Original master of the craft
Send the army n still they couldnt penetrate me
The black rambo of the industry
I had to take and make
My own moves show to you n prove
To ya that im the best at this
Two decades later n hip hops  gone
But now im resurrected
The flow is re-connected
Back to nineteen eighty six
Now watch me rough up the mix
Dont look any further this is a stick up
Or hold up just fold up
Cuz ya at a dead end
Dont pretend that you couldn't bend
Your way out of a jam session
Go to the **** for a quick blessin' ya stressin'
Got ya nerves shook from my verbs
Ya mind couldnt take it
So death couldnt fake it
now i know as hit up ya funeral
Payin' my dues to the fallen ones
That tried to intervene between
The jewelry the cars and my life
complex scene
Enticin' green
Cuz of the way i drop them fools
Turnin' mule
On the mic
Cuz im paid in fullllllllllllllll!!!!!


no butterflies in my stomach
I have hands in my chest
grabbing my heart
squeezing it without rest
Crushing me
I'm helpless at best
Tears welling up
salty pieces of soul
filling my eyes
down they roll
You can't ever fully escape
heartbreak
Tears
my broken self spilling out
seeping through my skin
Can't hold it all together
forever
Maybe I'm grateful for
those hands crushing my chest
Don't have to feel all the pain
desperately trying to find rest
But my soul won't stop crying
heart bleeding salty tears down my cheeks
This heartbreak doesn't heal
you just learn to live with the pain

Don't shoot!
Can't you see my white palms
Not the black end of my black hands
Guilty until proven innocent
That's the predicament I was raised in
When I walk onto the subway, privilege holds for dear life the bag her daddy gave her, and yes by privilege I mean white.
Because based on my skin I'm automatically framed as a thief that lives too cheap to afford the Kors bag that she has.
Don't shoot!
I just found out my dog passed and decided I'd run fast and hold her tight before her last gasp.
But since I'm black and I'm running, the pigs start coming after me as if I created a catastrophe since the mask of me is black.
They corrupt the laws, use excessive force and pin me down to the ground when I was just trying to get to my hound.
Don't shoot!
Yes my windows are tinted and my skin is a shade the same but when you pull me over I'm not to blame for the drug ring that has your people suffering.
I sweat in fear for my life as I see red and blue lights wondering if I will live to see tomorrow's sunlight.
Because based on my tints and my rims and my skin I must be some criminal uncaught.
So as privilege approaches my door I must place my white palms on the wheel and plead to retrieve my license from the passengers seat.
Don't shoot!
Because if I was white I wouldn't need to fight for my right to life.
And I wouldn't have to fear the man that society told me would pull my hand if I raised it in a plea for help and welp,
That just isn't the case so based on my race I must remain on thin ice for the rest of my black life, yelling
Don't shoot!