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Best Poems Written by Olivette Nomoore

Below are the all-time best Olivette Nomoore poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Olivette Nomoore Poem

Signed, From The Floor

I cannot write what I do not feel.
I cannot feel what I do not know.
To write without passion
is to kneel at the nameless grave and weep,
to mourn the soil and not the dead,
to beg meaning from dust
and call it poetry.

I lie on the floor of my bathroom
just to feel the weight of my bones.
Cool tile against warm flesh,
as if the divide between body and ground
might spark something
some rebellion of thought
against the white noise of nothing.

I scroll the blank screen,
cursor blinking like a flatline.
There is no pulse,
no poem.

And still I return
no better than the hand
that finds comfort in the bottle,
each stanza a swig,
each line a confession.
I only write when I’m bleeding.
I only bleed when I’m empty.

Details | Olivette Nomoore Poem

The Patience of Ripening

You were picked straight from the stem—
a fruit fresh atop the bowl of offerings,
something that must be
fleece laid over blade.
Not taken, but accepted.
Not bitten, but cradled.

And still, I would let you be
the spiked fruit between my teeth—
If you asked.
If not to taste your sweet,
then to feel your sting
against my tongue.
Pain can be a kind of proof,
and love, a kind of wound
you grow around.

I apologize
if I act too fast—
it’s not hunger, not wholly.
I am absent in the shape of affection—
I mistake kindness for feast.
Its a cruel thing I must train myself to hold,
like fire in the cupped hands of someone born frostbitten.

But you—
you are the first warmth
after too long buried in frost.
The breath I never meant to hold.
And now,
I do not know how to exhale
without spilling your name.

I would trace every bract down your skin.
I would cup your name like spring water,
and drink until I forget every frost that came before you.

Let me learn the patience of ripening—
to watch without reaching,
to want without wounding.
If I must love you,
let it be like dawn across a thawing field— no rush, nor taking.
Only the reverence of light
touching what it hopes to keep warm.

Details | Olivette Nomoore Poem

The Poisoning of My Mind

There are days the sun drags itself across the sky like a wounded thing,
and I follow behind it,
meek as a shadow no one asked for.
My feet walk the same road to the mailbox, rocky and too long,
and still I walk it.

Beside me, the hemlock grows.
Tall and soft, almost beautiful.
It does not beckon.
It does not need to.

Some days, I eye it the way others eye lovers.
It stands there in its stillness,
whispering in a world that shouts.
And I wonder if quiet could be a kind of mercy.

It is hard to exist here.
Harder, maybe, to pretend I want to.
To stitch meaning into mornings,
to answer the question of “why”
with anything but silence.
Some days, I am all ache and effort.
Some days, I am nothing at all.

And still I walk.
I walk, and I glance
at the hemlock.

I want to stay.
I do.
But wanting is not the same as being able.
And some days, I feel like I am made of glass
and apology.
I am tired of both.

I often see the hemlock,
I see how easy it would be to drink,
from the root, from myself.
No spectacle.
No hero.
Just stillness, at last.

I know how bitter it would taste.
But bitterness is not new to me.
I have swallowed worse.

My greatest fear
is one day replacing my reasons to stay
with the venom from the hemlock.
That I will deflower it
just as the world has deflowered me.
I will fill my cup half full,
and as I sit beside the road,
I will drink.

And as I swallow my fate,
no cars will pass,
no one will come to save me from the poison
I pulled with my own hand.

And that will be enough.

Details | Olivette Nomoore Poem

Betrayal of The Sun

There was a time
when you stood at the center of my sky,
and I, small, humble,
gazed upward in awe,
letting your brilliance shape my world.
Every word you spoke carved meaning into silence,
every gesture gave weight to the air.
I was nothing
but a shadow you cast,
grateful for the light.

But I see now
what I could not see then—
the sun blinds as easily as it warms.
Your power filled the spaces between us
until there was no room left for truth.
You were everything,
and so I became nothing,
a reflection of your glory,
a mirror for your pride.

I thought loyalty
was the strongest bond,
but loyalty bends under the weight of lies.
When the light scorches the earth,
when it burns what it swore to nourish,
what choice is left but to seek shade?
To turn my back,
to let the shadow stretch long and cold,
to kill the thing I once called divine.

Do you know the ache
of watching your own hands betray you?
The slow rebellion of the heart
against itself?
It is not hate that drives the knife—
it is love,
love that has seen too much,
felt too much,
and can no longer endure
the hollow echo of devotion.

The weight of the dagger in your flesh
is shaped by the need to save myself.
The slice in your side,
does not match the gash in my throat,
the silence you carved in me
time and time again.

You were the sun.
I was the shadow.
I wonder if I was always meant
to fade in your glow,
to burn out
before I ever had the chance
to rise.

Details | Olivette Nomoore Poem

No Gentle Hands

The master cracks his whip
across the horse’s trembling flank,
pushing the beast to its limits
until the wildness snaps and the horse reacts,
a flurry of chaos beneath the sting.

When silence falls, the master
believes the animal has learned,
believes the wounds are healed.
He reaches out with clean hands,
petting the horse's weary muzzle,
his fingers gentle, but not soft enough.

The horse, though still, does not forget.
It smells the leather polish on the master's skin, the lingering scent of cruelty woven into the fabric of his flesh.

The horse knows the weight of that smell,
knows it cannot be washed away.
And no matter how tender the touch, the horse remains wary,
the scars deeper than the skin, unforgiven.

The master must face the truth of his actions.
the horse may no longer fight,
but forgiveness does not bloom on the soil of mistreated land.

The horse is not healed,
and the master is not forgiven.

Details | Olivette Nomoore Poem

The Ballad of Alexander Wood

Last night I dreamt of a roadside stop—
an ice cream truck near a rusted shop.
Its engine was spent, its music was low,
and something inside told me I should l go.

I stepped through the door because I could,
and met a man by the name of Alexander Wood.
He wore a bowtie and a crooked smile,
a paper hat, and clothes out of style.

He spoke of great justice, broken and bent,
of love misplaced and poorly spent.
Then he paused and asked with a paper cup,
“Would you like a taste while we catch up?”

We sat in booths made of rotting wood
and talked of flavors both bad and good.
There were waffles stacked high, and scoops that stung—
some dripped with joy, and some bit the tongue.

One cone glittered like shattered glass,
another had needles, cold as brass.
He said, “Not all that’s sweet will soothe—
some truths must sting to make us move.”

He told me tales of a dog long gone,
of silence thick and nights too long.
I offered mine: the aching weight,
the brittle smile, the meals I’d fake.

He nodded slow, as if he’d bled
the same pale ghosts that I had fed.
“Vanilla,” he said, “with a heart cut deep—
for things we carry and cannot keep.”

I stared at the bowl; it looked like a wound.
He looked through me, then down at the spoon.
And softly said, “What grief won’t end,
we fold, we churn, and we learn to bend.

A wound won’t heal just because you wait—
but love will still grow in a different shape.
You can cry in the cracks or sing through the pain,
but either way, you’re not the same.”