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.