Jeri-Nicole Schmidt

I just turned twenty-one, live on the outer crust of Philadelphia, and order Miller Lite with every meal. I draw, I paint, but most importantly I write. I write. I write. I write. It has just only ever been that way. I don't question what I do or why I do it. I just know that without it I would have been committed by now. I can't really pin down a one certain style to my writing, but I can say that without the slightest bit of doubt that it is the most honest part of me. I feel no shame to share it.

Jeri-Nicole Schmidt's MySpace Page: www.myspace.com/babyducklips7

1.)

I want to tell you of the misery

A succinct sadness

Brought on compassion lost

Between old friends

New lies

Wink me a memory

Something to inspire fingertips

Ensnare me

Trap me in twines of hush-hush

And confidence of a place to think

Study

This lexis is yours

Take it as you will

As you took my secrets

Exposed them

My heart

Reduced to rubble

            By your allegiance

I wanted to write you something

But warm words were immersed

Someplace between my mind

And your will…

2.)

My anger throbs red, as if as the heartbeat of the sun

Intense and intended to burn back with the flames cast upon it

Even the language of my smile is different now

You couldn't see my innocence in a field of tulips

Long-stemmed like kites, they would rise

And turn to ashes, around the stench of death you bring 'round.

There is always the music, it lives under the skin

But the blood remains the same.

And I am left to listen for sound,

Above all others, there is me. Alone. As was it's will.

It is no woman though she is Venus flavored

No man, but its will is as deceitful

It is but a shell of a woman,

Blatantly void of everything inside, left only with evil

A darkness, a storehouse of electric metaphors

Of tales of his lover, how she would drink bullets and spat adulteries

All the while, it would lay down with any shaft "she" could find

Almost as if the beast would feed off it's family's lovers.

I remember tomorrow and my blood is young again

No longer will I cry, wondering where I went wrong

It was three, who destroy, and I was not a one

I am but a shimmer of a memory, the incomprehensible syllable

The white in the wind…

3.)

I dream of scents and tastes
       and ecstasy in verbs
I am a fad; capable to dream
        not man
        not woman
        no being of a breed
I have riddles I hide in jade diaries
        of majestic landscapes
             Exuberating excellence
                    and shame
My head; weighed down not by my crown of thorns
        nor the weight of my worries
But Remorse that my love,
        no matter the vigor
        conviction or disparity,
        cannot stop wars from raging
               and Cancers from spreading
Only a pledge of gleaming golden-white gates
         with a exultant finish for those who love
                 and believe in second chances
With faith they pray to me; they crave me
But when my world turns bitter
         and my eyes are but a shade of gray
Who hears my prayers?
Where
     Is
       My 
          Faith?

4.)

5.)

I need to ground myself in the bellies of mountains

So for once I can stand straight and independent

To dip the tip of my tongue into the tripping tides

And forget myself in the sour saline

To, without fear, open my eyes to the sun

And become my own earth

To plant myself and grow into a great garden

And finally become that lovely little lily

'Till then, I remain that lonely vine

Clinging to what little I have

Waiting to bloom

And kiss life