Thought of You by Nicole Barth [12/31/10]

How do I explain it?

I wish you knew every beauty mark

on my back.

Wish you knew the muffled cadence of my breaths

on your shivering skin.

I want to memorize the angularity of your jawline

as your arresting eyes swim over me.

….your piano hands running through the satin

in my hair.

It wouldn't just be about the smudged

and faded paper figures,

between the folded pages of my sketchbook.

It'd be simple—at least I think so.

The first and last thing I'd think about.

I'd do everything that I said I'd do.

...like make the world brand new. 

Stumbling by Nicole Barth [12/10/10]

I'm swinging on this pendulum of emotions

you've placed me on, clinging to all that I thought I could control.

I'm terrified, and you're nothing but a saint cloaked in my childish dreams.

My tendons are coiled springs, flinching at the next unexpected drop.

Your flawless smile stripped me of my focus;

you've set my sanity aflame.

Rubbed raw, you've scraped the secrecy off my skin.

How can I describe it?

I want your fingers running through my hair,

I want your ribcage rising against my embrace,

I want your musings in a jar of translucency.

I surrender to every word you whisper.

THE PHONE CALL by Nicole Barth [12/8/10]

I doubt I even have to tell you...

I'd been staring at the phone for a good fifteen minutes,

biting my winter-chapped lips as my stomach folded itself into figure eights.

Pools of rich emerald and smoldering oak swam over a blank document,

scrambling for any misplaced creativity

I could use tonight.

But there's an evident echo in the caverns of my mind

as every cell in me swarmed with jolts of electricity.

Hey, Mr. Bright Eyes,

What color should I paint the sky?

I've got a fistful of silenced soliloquies hiding in my pocket

and giggles to fill the varnished armoire in the corner.

Lie under the Cherry Blossom trees with me

and watch the ripples in the nearby pond.

I'm high off the sound of your voice.

Staring Blankly by Nicole Barth [12/9/10]

Beneath the talons that scrape along my vacant skin

is the frozen feeling of numbness...

Crystallized apathy

licks the disembowelment of my gut.

El Suicidio de Dorothy Hale by Nicole Barth [12/7/10]

Fluttering fingertips traced the contours of her windowsill

as the harsh beauty of a gaunt face stared back at her.

Husband….Shadow; and all things gasping in the putrid night.  

Wailing night terrors slit a gash in her side as she was left…

 A crumpled rag doll,

Weeping in the suddenness of the suede living room chair,

Two directions of the fabric: the cruel roughness of one side,

 …And the lavishness of the other.

The gaping hole in her serenity.

Her bird-like diaphragm expanding—a human humming bird,

hovering like a trembling ghost as the sudden flashes

of torn sheet-metal, feathered shrapnel and heart murmurs

whisper over her eyes.

She’s drowning her sorrows in sparkling shoes,

but they can’t spare her from the incessant jangling in her mind. 

What did she expect?

Go home, Dorothy.

Coat your sparkling shoes in crimson blood

And plunge to your death. 

        

    ***inspired by Frida Kahlo's "Suicide of Dorothy Hale"

You Already Know by Nicole Barth [12/4/10]

What if I told you this is about you?

What if I told you I've lost my filter...

The secret's out, and you've got me spluttering excuses

like a leaky faucet.

I'm tired...

I'm stressed!

I'm spacing out?

I'm actually just hyperventilating at the thought of you reading this.

You've somehow found the the tarnished key, buried

in the tight-lipped dirt of my childhood's teddy bear.

I swore I wouldn't tell you a thing.

I swore it would all end that night,

and yet you have me smiling to myself

as I think about the multiple “less than 3s” you've sent my way...

And that smile you hate so much—which, by the way, could light up a room.

You're thousands of miles away, and exactly fifteen hours

—or it is more?—ahead of me.

But here you are, figuratively sitting on my bed as your azure eyes

take in the swirls of girlish giggles dancing across my rug.

Feels as if you were reading this now.

My fingers are cemented to the keyboard

but someone has staplegunned my thoughts

to a sound-proof wall.

“It's a shame we live so far away”

….Shame you don't realize I think about it every day.

There's a stain on the page from past plagues,

strewn across moth-eaten confessions

and charred secrets.

But you've infiltrated the system

and somehow unraveled it all.

But what if you already knew all of this?

I'll never call this a love poem.

And don't try convincing me...

Because the instant it's labeled and packaged,

the worms will find their way through.

—it's cheesy, it's crummy, it's false, it's fake—and you're nothing but a string of lies.

But dear God, don't let it come to that.

Say it again... “i can't stop thinking about you.”

And say it'll be great.

Untitled by Nicole Barth [11/24/10]

Feel your ribcage rise as you immerse yourself

into the dancing keystrokes of the piano,

as your fingertips trace the curvature of the violin.

Its wooden spine shudders as you coax the secrets from its varnish.

Your blackened eyes will snap shut

as the laments of the violin are heard

over the opinionated rumbling of syncopated drums.

Find your God within the conspiring voices of the guitar.

Feel the warm breath of nights gone by on your frigid skin.

This song has seen your nightmares, floating like demonic marionettes

clinging to cat gut strings.

There, mingling with the dirt under your fingernails—

the reason why the pulsing veins in the conductor's hands

forces you back down into the grooves of your chair.

Can you immobilize yourself—your palms facing the unrelenting rain—

as the moth-eaten edges of your memories shrivel under the sun?

Do you hear the distant echoes of your regrets in the low thrumming of a drum?

The beat marches its way toward your restless lips

as they claw for meaning within the empty void of each breath you've taken.

Your insomnia is chasing you underground.

The promises you made were not enough.

Where is your God?

*inspired by "Hurricane" by 30 Seconds to Mars

Wishful Thinking by Nicole Barth [11/19/10]

And if I was stronger, I could up and go.

But here I am, and here we go again

as my my mind wanders off to you,

sitting like a shadow beside you as

your hands float over the polished oldsmobile

for the next hour.

And baby, you've got the sort of hands

that could pull me closer to you,

gently wrapping me into the steady rhythm

of your breaths;

the sludge of spluttering cars

and chuckles tucked neatly into your back pocket.

And I wouldn't care if I danced with you

dressed in a gown drenched in diamonds

or fleece pajamas.

An ancient radio and a single light bulb or

a chandelier and orchestra wouldn't make a difference.

And, baby, I can see the amber, the emerald and maple leaves

that trickle down through the air in each gust of wind
every time you catch me staring at you.

And I can picture the fresh cut grass beneath your palms in the spring.

I could take you there, you know.

And if I was stronger, I'd hum about something else.

I'd walk down the cobblestone road, sketchbook in hand.

But here I am, and here we go again.

**Inspired by “Sort Of” by Ingrid Michaelson

Tender Tattoo by Nicole Barth [11/18/10]

As always, your ivory ear buds peaked out of your

dark wash jeans as I shuffled through

the semi-conscious morning commuters.

That familiar quiescent attitude and waft of fresh laundry surrounded me.

The down of my silver jacket brushed up against your

olivaster sweater as I sat down next to you, noticing

your chestnut eyes float over to me.

The satin voice of

a familiar serenade temporarily

paused on your iPod.

My thoughts stuttered behind my lips

as I caught you glancing at me—that crooked smile and

charcoal hair of yours added a boyish charm to you.

The little schoolgirl in me couldn't help but giggle

as you shook your head like a reluctant toddler, determined

not to speak a word of English today—just like every other day.

You won't believe me, but your Spanish accent is adorable.

Yes, adorable...

And don't think I'm trying to make you any less manly.

Your use of smiles as adjectives and verb tenses was better

than having an immaculate conversation.

A sleepy silence washed over the two of us

as the train conductor carted us off to our destinations.

But I noticed something I suppose I had overlooked for

about a year now.

Clearly etched in ink,

on the tender part of your left hand

was an “R.I.”

Delicate fingertips traced its

contours.

Like a child's scrawled handwriting,

the imperfection of the capital letters

weaved themselves into the patchwork of a complex memory.

I suppose the question was written on my lips,

seeing as you told me it hurt quite a bit when you had it done.

A stupid idea, you explained.

I could never sit through one.

A train-car confession; I'm squeamish.

A shrug, a sigh, a smirk.

Oh, there was so much blood,

just gushing...Everywhere! You know how it is.

And the needles were like serrated knives,

piercing your skin over and over again,

you teased.

And then it happened.

I squeezed your hand,

shushing you anxiously

as the mental images of such a horror story

began to form.

You didn't let go.

On the contrary.

Your devilish grin widened

as you held my hand and

wrapped your arm around me.

Quédate conmigo.

“I don't need convincing.”

I was only waiting for this moment to arise.

Untitled by Nicole Barth [11/16/10]

The crows know your middle name

It's written in the ragdoll nun's veins

I, I see your face...always

Do it again...And I'll see you tomorrow

beneath the crumbling stone wall

where the piss and brine dance in lascivious secrecy,

clandestinely slithering through the backdoor of your illusory mind.

I, I see your face...always.

The syncopated rhythm of the ivory bones

keep time with your steps upon the frozen cheeks of your

old lovers.

Your tattered trench-coat runs its jagged

edges against the irriguous ground, licking

the bitter blades of grass as it passes by,

surreptitiously descending the hill which lies

between dripping thoughts and sandpaper skin.

You've got something to borrow

from the gaping fish's mouth

and the gnarled branches of

the oldest Oak tree

in the hollow banshee's garden.

The steel bucket laments against your white-knuckled grip;

your left hand sighs across the backs of opaque marionettes.

A warning shot is fired.

I, I see your face...always.

MONDAY MORNING by Nicole Barth [11/15/10]

If the mahogany cascade trickles down my back in the right way

and I end up planning my outfit the night before,

do you think I could will it to happen?

Could stretching my lungs until they

spontaneously combust as my shins begin to crack

on my way to the train station

will it to happen?

Or does he have to feel it churning in his gut

as he shrugs on his pitch black leather jacket

at six in the morning?

I wonder if the car grease

must choose to mingle

with his cereal bowl

so that the clock's arms

will align to our favor.

So that steel limousine can

push through the caliginosity

of its underground zip-line

and rope him into the same

container as me.

But today I'm guessing

the Spanish-speaking flirt that

reclines while bathed in sheets of silk

had plans for the the two of us.

Swirls of aged copper and lime peel

traced the contours of his burnt sienna eyes.

And I couldn't help it. Crimson paint coursed through

my veins and nestled into my cheeks.

The faint traces of after-shave and scented hair jell

wafted toward me as he sat down next to me,

slouching slightly in his customary cansado y relajado manner.

He yawned and slouched even more, but the smile that was slowly

tugging at the corner of his gentle lips told me all I needed to know.

Grogginess complicated verb conjugations in my mind as I stumbled

through Spanglitalianish in an effort to see him laugh.

The two of us were caught in a moment of silence,

eloquently cursing the perpetual Mondays in our heads

when he leaned against me.

And I could tell he wasn't about to blame it on

the man-shaped lard sitting next to him

or the jolting of the train car.

It didn't matter that speaking English

seemed like an impossible task to him this morning.

And it didn't matter that my vocabulary was muddled.

All I know is that the off-white tiles

of my stop could not have predicted this.

And no Monday morning has grinned this openly before.

“Quédate conmigo....No te vayas,” he murmured.

TO FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA by Nicole Barth [10/27/10]

Watch the floating top hats as they nonchalantly step over

the rotting carcasses, plummeting out of the chasm in the sky.

All those aspirations

lie sloshing in the sewer

by their obsidian leather shoes.

The leeches of democracy have sunk their

teeth into the very soul of your musings,

your wants,

your desires.

The grease on the street is not

merely car sludge,

but the decimation of

your naïve expectations.

What did you wish for, Señor Lorca,

when you meandered down the gaping mouth

of depravity, hunger and strife?

Surely you did not find valleys of molten gold

and heaping feasts within the hollowed eyes

of the pavement worshipers.

Crouch by the shuddering lungs that lie exposed

on the gravel beneath your feet,

and vomit the visceral nausea that you have suppressed.

Place your ear by the chapped lips

of the muttering idiot

who lies face down

and feel his abrasive cheek

as his stubble decodes the intricacies

of the blasphemous tower behind your left shoulder.

Only he can tell you

about the vanishing silks,

the fugitive meals

and the lascivious greed,

raping society in the next room.

THE "INNOCENT" by Nicole Barth [10/20/10]

Don't think that I've forgotten--

don't think that I don't know, 

that you would've sung praises 

to the Devil 

down below 

if it meant you could have 

              hidden in the spice cabinet

              for a moment longer, 

              mingling with Rosemary 

              and "unripened tomatoes" 

              while stealing my Thyme.

But did you care?

And were you there?

When the jowls 

of

a four-legged curmudgeon 

sunk into the pillows of 

Dan's three year old cheeks?

Weren't you the one 

on the other side of my frantic phone call--

his bewildered gaze immobilizing me; 

as I wallowed in a puddle of stupor and shock?

And weren't you the one 

who shrugged through your words, 

nonchalantly reminding me why rubbing alcohol 

was invented as I watched

droplets of scarlet trickle down his lips, 

eventually catapulting themselves off of his chin?

And haven't I always been the one

sprinting for the wet rag and band-aid?

And aren't I the one that tucks him in at 

night and ruffles the shock of midnight hair on his head?

...And yet you still feel entitled to those three words, 

and you still expect me to pretend.

           

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED by Nicole Barth [10/7/10]

Is there a prescription for

a repeated slap in the face?

Or would it be labeled

in God's little black book

as a glitch—

a character flaw...

A fuck-up, an oops—

when a young woman

bawls into her calloused hands

as she holds a cancer stick between

her Français plastic nails

in the menacing mouth of the night?

The black bandana's talons

grip her rounded cranium

as her body folds within itself—

her own concavity

the only haven she has

from the bullets of

ridicule,

self-loathing

and despair

that are fired her way.

What are you supposed to say

to a woman who suffocates her sorrow

with carcinogenic fumes?

Have you enough depravity to

spit at the crumbling stoop

of the brownstone

she wallows on?

Or does the knife in the gut—

[surely meant for her]

redirect its course

and twist

in your side?

Can you find the heart

to sit next to the disintegrating

countenance of a broken woman,

whose own blood has cackled in her face,

licked its greedy lips in delight

as it relished in her plight?

Will you embrace a shuddering

stranger

until she soaks your shirt?

The rivulets of shattered hopes

running down your shoulder—

you are now the earth that absorbs

and receives both malice and need

blindly.

Can you complete the orbit—

these neverending sequences

of coincidences

and gut wrenching compassion—only

to realize that you

stand on the other side of the scale?

You are implanted

into the body of a parallel universe.

For you bear the same stain

that released the floodgates

to the sobbing woman's demons.

WILL POWER by Nicole Barth [9/30/10]

Gelatinous muscles

contumaciously refuse

to galvanize themselves

up

the

stairs

as my vapid brain

sputters and stalls like a broken down car

—the engine void of vitality—

as it grumbles

an unwilling retort

to

my demands for productivity —

or some semblance of creativity.

But what is productivity

at the expense of sanity

and

physical health?

My mind sapped

of imaginative

analyses—its

topography equivalent

to that of a dried prune....

A curmudgeon's countenance.

I write my wrist to death....

Until the nebulous haze

of exhaustion usurps me.

Yin and Sometimes Yang by Nicole Barth [9/28/10]

Picture a drawing of a young woman.

Now give her mahogany hair that ripples like a current—

and blood shot eyes.

Then divide this diagram in half.

Each half ricochets against the other,

—they are grains of Aeolian sand—

perfecting and smoothing out

its neighbor,

polishing and refining

the heinousness

that lingers and loiters within

the self-berating side,

and

caressing the tender cheek

of the quivering, ever-hopeful

child that chooses to believe

—regardless of her nearly quotidian debasement—

in self worth.

For this sketch,

this drawing,

this girl whose anxious eyes

have fought back

the uncertainty

lurking behind

her leaking emotions

is both the lighthouse and the crashing waves that beat against it.

Puerile Daydreaming by Nicole Barth [9/25/10]

Give me back one day

when I was so much younger

so much younger than I am now.

When my eyes were first stained with

the deep emerald of

blades of grass

and my crooked baby teeth

parted my

primrose mouth,

making way for

my

puerile smile.

Give me back that day

                                        where I was lying down

                                         in a maroon summer dress—

the delicately opaque

colors of the floral print

jocundly playing

along the fibers—

                                     as I lay beneath the

                                                  Cherry blossom tree

                                                   in my nonna's garden,

                                                   staring up at the

                                                   clouds that frolicked

                                                   within the vast ocean of air

                                                    above me.

Give me back that day

where the sun's rays

beat down on me,

toasting my skin

as I envisioned myself

as a mermaid—

an updated kind, though.

[One in a tankini and flippers.]

Giddy...despite the gallons of pool water

I must've inhaled,

trying to teach myself how to swim.

Give me back those days

             when being three or four years old

              meant being in awe of the simplest things—

little me would have spent hours staring at the vines

growing on the building's facade next to my own.

Give me back that summer day, twelve years ago

where my pudgy hands would clap for joy because of the smallest things

[a yellow balloon floating between tree branches]

a turquoise farfalla resting on my shoulder,

my long eye lashes imitating the fluttering of its wings.

Cannonball to the Stomach by Nicole Barth [9/8/10]

Like a demon

squirming beneath my taught skin,

I feel its jagged nails sink into

the muscles in my shoulders,

tensing them

as it sends sparks of pain through me—

my stomach churning fastidiously

as anxiety clamps my mouth shut like a bear trap.

A clambering heartbeat

is the only proof that

this body of mine is still

exhaling

as my frantic eyes

dart from

the phone

to this page

to the phone

again.

They tore the clothes right off you,

exposing you—and me.

The keys have fallen off the keyboard

of your flesh.

Like ripping duct tape

off of

bare skin,

they stripped you of your privacy

and left you snarling in the corner.

A beaten dog

whose foaming mouth

screams

revenge.

A flame may flicker within

the cage of your mind

as it rages,

but I am left in a tumultuous

fog,

biting my lip

as I silently stumble

in the dark,

searching for

the right thing to say.

The right thing to think.

I'm standing on uneven ground,

slipping into a torched

dress

whose fibers

have traces

of

panic and uncertainty.

A Smudged Painting [9/6/10]

I'm drunk on the words spilling out of your lips,

like a tattered love note

written on a cracked mirror,

reflecting the outcome of myself

that could have been

that would have been

if I hadn't sucked the water out of my chest

and pulled myself out of the mire.

Like an encasing of sheet-rock

over a stumbling confidence,

like glass that has been caressed

not so gently by the sand paper

on the

ocean's floor.....

it takes effort, darling,

to see through

your secretive smile

to visualize

your

trepidations

writhing and screeching

beneath your polished skin.

Let me be your haven

from the howling

cynics in your mind.

Let my steady breaths

smooth the creases

in your brow

and calm the panic

flashing across your

azure eyes

as

my slender fingers course

through

your silky hair

and run innocently down,

caressing your face

as I pull you closer to me.

My cracked lips won't say a word, darling,

but know that my mind does not rest..

that I long to blot out your negatives

and dip the tip

of a fountain pen into

ink bluer than the sky

and remind you

what you mean to me

in a language that emulates

perfection.

For you are the actor

that has forgotten his mask.

And I am the chest that will store your worries.