Nicholas Coulombe
Character Sheets

Look at all these scraps of paper.

Graphite sketchmarks

Breathing life into entire worlds

Inventory, backstory, spells per day.

You wrote these character sheets

Put the devil's weed in their pockets

Spell books on their shelves.

Their numbers clasp fingers like chain mail.

You wear it like a valiant knight.


Without your charecter sheet

You feel like an infant

covered in pots and pans.

Clanging, Banging,

Holding colander to your head

playing make believe.

This world doesn't fit you right.


You've Won wars against Kingdoms you founded.

you've fallen off the backs of behemoth gods.

you've slain incomprehensible creatures from other plains

At the end of every session you collected your experience.

said "See ya next week!"


This session doesn't end.

Can't just stop playing

Gotta keep rolling dice.


Drink the +5 energy Brown beverage.

Roll to see if your car starts.

Perception check to see if you hit that baby in the crosswalk.

Nailed it.

The roll. Not the baby.


You didn't check for traps in this relationship.

Take 15 heart damage.

Spend the next six months trying to recover.


You are noticed by a woman.

Roll initiative.

She goes first.

tells you she loves you.

You're knocked prone.

Gets an attack of opportunity on your ability to sustain relationships.

You wonder why you wandered in this coffee shop to begin with.

Make a will save.

You Leave

Double your move speed.

Burst into the town bar.

You ask for quests.

They give you whiskey.


You wake up in a strange place.

Roll me a knowledge check.

The apartment of some girl you hooked up with last night.

Your eyes part drowsy open

Unveiling a beautiful...

Man.

You did not roll very high on your knowledge check.


Roll dexterity

to gracefully get up from the bed.

Fails.

You Fall flat on your face

Roll initiative.

You run out of there

Double your move speed.

Roll another Dex check to see how much of your stuff you were able to grab.

You snag your bag but you never bothered to put your clothes on

So you're running down the street in your boxers with a black backpack.


When you finally stop to take inventory of your bag.

You can't seem to find your phone.

Spend a luck point

to reroll perception to find your phone.

Fails.

Spend another luck point

to reroll perception to find your phone.

Fails.

Spend your last luck point

to reroll perception to find your

Oh, thank god.

You found your phone.

Call a cab

Get out of this town.

Roll effectiveness of taking this shower.


There's no

"That was a great session guys!"

"You all get 500 experience points!"

"See you all next week."


You just keep rolling.

And Rolling.

Until one day

You roll poorly,

Encounter something way above your level.

You can run.

Find a healer.

Go home, take a full rest.

You can't just make another character sheet.

There's nobody to look at your scraps of paper,

All the characters you rerolled to be who you are now.

All the Dragons, Quests, kingdoms.

They're you.


Remember them,

Learn from them.

Keep rolling.

Poetry
Nicholas Coulombe
Dear Future, "I've a Favor"

Dear Future, “I’ve a Favor”

Nov 25th 2018

Dear Future,

I've a favor to ask of you.

First, I'll need to clarify some pronouns.
The following contents prefer to be identified as "favor"
This favor will also sometimes go by "letter"
for survival,

but never "prayer".

It can be a vulnerable feeling.
received as a "prayer" without asking God to watch me
constricted into his warmth like
I don't get to ask who's love I bath in.

and I was curious.

What are your pronouns?
Do you go by God

or Future

or Legacy?

I don't want to be disrespectful.
I already feel like a burden,

I know you would take me in anyway.


I tried to think about your origins

If they had anything to do with 
time or if "we"
made that shit up

ask what the fuck  "dark matter" is, 
or 
if we made that shit up 
too.

I wanted to know where you 
became... 
I wanted to know if I get dementia,
obliterated in a nuclear light
or watch the sun turn off;
in a race between all three 
what burns out first?

Do I get a vote?


I'd rather be forgotten, and remember...

than be remembered, and forget....

Dear Future, "I've a Favor"
Poetry
Nicholas Coulombe
INHALE

INHALE

Jul 2017

The pharmacist at CVS says I am not prescribed an inhaler anymore.
so in it's place.
I prescribe myself cigarettes

I need something to inhale
cigarettes seem a logical alternative to inhalers

deliberatly I decide to not drive
to the cigar store.
i walk to the cigar store.

it is far enough to be inconvenient
which means maybe
If I am not destined to buy this cigarette
I will receive an overwhelming sensation to turn back

I always add time for potential divine intervention to my agenda.
It happens often enough to be logical

we may have different definitions of logical

the cashier asks my age
And I tell him 21.
I am 22.
somehow In the confusion of waiting for god to prescribe me an overwhelming emotional reaction to not buy cigarettes
Instead of an inhaler.
I forget a whole fucking year of my life.

this is great context for
How I trust myself when making decisions.
which is to say
I don't trust myself to make descisions.

I buy the cigarettes.

upon searching for the optimal location
to loiter and slowly kill myself.
I stumble upon the old teen center.
the first place I was a mentor.

Out the side of the building
There's this rock
Long enough to sit five or so children
two laying down.
it's Perferated like a candy bar
each rectangle curved slightly
custom fit to years of munchkin butt

this slump right here
this slump is my munchkin butt.

each break of chocolate
on the candy bar rock
has a ladyslipper growing behind it.
tips of the five purple flowers
stretch to align perfect with the tips of our childhood belly buttons

humbled, I brush the leaves
excavate delicately
this heirloom.
I had forgotten.

The sky is recovering When I lay myself on the rock.
light grey clouds that want to cry
an optimistic sun that won't let them

I Cover my face with an old journal
made of old book smell.
I smile into the pages.
my lips barely touching the silk threading of her binding.
I've never breathed so intimately
a new lover.
the tip of my nose tucked into her spine.
honeymoon phase, Intoxicating.
Still excited to be in love.

there's breath here
wisdom in the records of
loving young,
cherrishing this new book smell.
Filling your chest with it.

When memories are tangible
There are no more expiration dates

Fill my lungs with
the crisp of unturned pages,
worn leather covers
Soft silk crosstitches

Kiss air into me
from the space between your lines.
I know how intimate an untold story can be.

Today I started breathing
I fell in love With a metaphor.

I never did smoke that cigarette.

-

Nicholas M. Coulombe
Freeport, ME

INHALE

$5

$5,000 Oxygen machine

$5,000 Oxygen machine

$5,000 Oxygen machine

Nicholas M. Coulombe

There are two stout bodied genderless dwarves.

with beards.

hand pumping a mine-cart down

subway tracks in Boston.


I Hear their rattling cart wheels

along iron bar tracks.

the crackling fire of a lit torch

Illuminating the wooden planks

and an obvious macguffin

in the side of the tunnel.

a glimmering cracked rock.


This vision

is a testament to my attention to detail

during tunnel vision.


the minecart slows to a screaching stop

by the pull of a break lever.

the dwarves zelda bomb their way inside

Shattering the glimmering rock macguffin into a cascade of pixelated shrapnel.

through a dark tunnel

Torch held in front of them

Leaving the minecart by the tracks.


there is bed ridden naked man

the size of a mountain

bypap machine fixed like a gas mask

umbilical cord tether to a television


He is asleep

balancing three remote, two cell phones and a bacon sasauge egg and cheese breakfast sandwhich from burger king on his belly.

A roll of paper towels sits under neath his head.

And he appears to not have a penis.

they aren't sure if he is a unick, or if it is just hidden beneath all of the fat.


He wakes up and asks what time it is

He looks at his watch before they can answer and interupts them.

It is 4:00am.

the dwarves confirmed it was in fact 4 am.

He trusts his wristwatch to tell time

it was over $5,000 dollars.

He trusts this watch

about as far

as he can throw his money away.

which is to say

He collects watches.


Tell me.

is this man living? 


When you tell me it is selfish to raise a child of my own I remember taking care of this man.

holding the urinal to the spot his penis would be.

how he always told me god loved what I was doing but hated where I've been.


tubes of oxygen up our noses.

can we rip out the catheder

save, with Will power

somehow this

eugenic honey

royal bee jelly to change our whole genetic makeup into something else.

could we see a world without screens

walk in the forest again

see snow, see sun, 


See a coyote eat your face.

Once.


it would be real at least. 

The pain.

makes you wanna stop taking pills 

we label our comittments

addiction

I'm stuck constantly in tunnel vision

in place of numbing my body, I just don't let myself pay any attention to the pain.

smoke and mirrors

just looks like life

I'm going fast down these tracks

I was always told to hold my breath when I passed through fog 

to pay the spirits respect

I've been holding my breath a long time.

the fog hasn't moved.


This mountain of a man

told me to ask the man on the mountain.

to save me from hell

So I could keep helping the world.

I laughed.


it never occurred to me 

that the fog in my head 

was smoke 

until now.


how a crackling torch is more honest looking than a cell phone.

I would prefer hell So long as I don't need to bring

my god damned cell phone.


I decided to dig down,

If This is hell

I must be at the earths molten core, 

the road up 

as long in any direction

so long as I went straight.

I curved.

I still haven't hit the surface

I keep building boulders to keep the rats out.

I make them obvious, glimmering macguffins so adventurers will Zelda bomb them open

find me sitting here


watching the world go round without me

losing track of wine

checking my wrist.

in place of an expensive clock 

beautiful, free and biological.


The ticking is loud

I'm deaf to the humming

of my oxygen machine.

the television,

screeching mine carts

My front door

blown open by Zelda bombs.


I'm stagnant

my dreams and a metronome

Counting

the day I hate this television enough

to turn it off


Trust this flesh enough to turn it back.

hear the screeching subway

whirring of my bi-pap,

bombs going off

all over the world.


opening my eyes to see life here isn't a bomb shelter.


Fuck salvation. 


I am going to paint clocks melting in hell-fire.

eat non-perishables ironically

and Die an honest man.