Category: Music

World Enough (In Terms Of)

Published on by Tosha Michelle24 Comments


You’ve taught me how far
I can go toward myself.
No need to run from who
I am.

That’s how it is with us.
Windblown fragments,
two are we.
Sometimes composed in rain
We always find our
sunny composure.

We converse fluently in
a language only we understand.
Your face never lies in the
way wedding songs and
lovers sometimes do.

In my head you’ve cut a groove,
leaving your initials there
Absolute. Right. Permanent.
They tell a story even when
my mind shifts and happenstance
grabs the pen.

The darkest ink is not dark enough
to eradicate the thought of you.

Our friendship  a sonnet to pathless
woods, always ready to explore.
We reach for a state of grace,
Knowing life can only get worse, but
better too.

Tosha Michelle

The Blue Notes

Published on by Tosha Michelle34 Comments

Hey y’all This will be my last post for a couple of weeks. I have to turn my attention to writing a research proposal. I wanted to just buy it a ring and a box of chocolate, but guessing that is out. 😜 My lame sense of humor never goes out though. Seriously, it likes to hang around the house and perform standup in front of the mirror. 

But I digress, I’ve also got a couple of job interviews lined up. Wish me luck and I’m getting back into non profit work with survivors of human trafficking. It’s shocking how prevalent modern day slavery is.  There are so many atrocities in the world, I suppose it’s not that surprising. Love and action can make a difference.  We just have to break through the apathy.

On a lighter note, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for the likes. Gifts would be better. Yep, there’s that nerdy sense of humor again  Below you will find a poem and my musical attempt.  Hope you enjoy my mournful side. It constrast greatly with my silly side. All my sides wish you the best though xx

If I write it down
I can’t take it back.
When I’m gone, and
the wind of your world
is still scented with
my verse, what then?

Who will I be to you?
a bittersweet arrangement
of molecules only legible
under certain nostalgic light?

If your voice fails you
give them my words.
Tell them this is how
she adored me,
with syntax and lyrical sighs,
bleeding emotions.
The wingspan of her poetry.

I dressed you only
in the sun, too far gone
to halt our ending, but still
close enough for you to cling
to the last of light.

You’ll find me somewhere
lost between the pages of
your life. Sitting on a
porch swing singing
the blue notes, softly
as the intervals slowly fade.

Tosha Michelle

https://m.soundcloud.com/tosha-michelle2020/the-scientist-coldplay-cover

The Harvest 

Published on by Tosha Michelle36 Comments


They gave each other the sweetness of apples,
immeasurable by hand.
An orchard assembled by 
loyalty and determination,
where two horizons met
bound by soul constellations
An intimacy that went beyond a
bed of grass and fleeting endorphin
laced cider.

But no matter how bountiful the gathering,
we sometimes become too accustomed
to the beauty of the return.

We forget to take time
to savor what we hold dear,
clinging too long to
memories of past harvesting
Or we become consumed with
the yields of new fruit.

No time to fight or even mourn
for bruised apples
left to oxidize in the
toxic air.

Neglect takes root, hurt unbridles
And careless words become an
apron full of briars.
A spider lodged in the hem.

The orchard once ablaze and alive sheds
it’s golden mass becoming nothing
more than a misbegotten shadow,
a crop of blue scars, an artifact
of loss.

-Tosha Michelle

A Mindful Poem 

Published on by Tosha Michelle70 Comments


In the brief tranquil reprieve
just before dust.
You don’t notice how
high the wind is
or the bitter in the cold

The night may carry a
satchel of bramble.
But for now you close
your eyes and listen to
the music of the air.

Focusing on the amber length
of the hour.
Your dormant heart made
melodic like a harp touched
by skilled hands

You realize you deserve more
than shuttering light and
shifting shadows. 

You who are besotted with
the fever of a waltz
And moonlit rivers
on the way to sea.

No matter how awkward your
gait, you know grace is
found in a soul that won’t
be nettled and a mind
made beautiful by the swarm
of fireflies.

You, this lady and warrior
who gets by on Southern
charm and the rhythm of
a drum that beats in three-quarter time.
Here. where prim
and proper meets sas and grit.

You who are singularity lovely
but hideous too.
A mess of colors, hungry
You refuse to live a sepia life.

For a moment as you watch
the sun set, you don’t dwell
on failed arithmetic or Dostoevsky
and his sullen things.

Instead, you reflect on the wonder
of aliveness and compose yourself
in a poem, composure found in a view
redefined . You rearrange the disquieting
into a sliver canopy of serenity.
Finding peace in your eccentricity.

-Tosha Michelle

My latest cover-Sign of the Times with a little Human thrown in

Beginnings

Published on by Tosha Michelle36 Comments

Kiss me that hard,
that deep.

Punctuate the sentence of us
with your tongue.

Make a victim of the air
with your hands.

Dance with me until I can’t
stop sparking to your drumbeat
thighs and comprising hips.

Let your lightning enter and defile me.
Douse me with the sweat of roses

Write me over in thorns and
petal blossoms.

Let the bees pollinate

Honeyed and satiated.
I come unhinged.

-Tosha Michelle

Fill Me Up 

Published on by Tosha Michelle45 Comments


Because I’m an empty vessel
waiting to be filled.
I find myself flirting with sin.
I do it by way of pen
and paper. Trying to stitch
hope into my skin
I snuggle inside words. Poetry
can’t hurt me the way a
man can. In verse, I can build
anticipation again. Doors open
inside my head. Verbs press
against me, hard and
wanton. I find a sacred niche
between the lines. Here
I take the light. Here it never
darkens or leaves.
Devotion blesses me with sweetness
and excess.
Heaven is found in scenes that are
too scary and loud to live.

I’m an empty vessel.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Romancing myself with
my poetic wooings.
Damming myself to things
conjured, a Paradise
devoid of air, the shadows of
a scarred soul, and the
language of mangled spirit
Waiting to be loved again.

-Tosha Michelle

Warmth’s Inner Light

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

No longer content with the
winter life and its flannel
sleep. Self and it’s terms
finally meet

She wipes away
the frost from her soul
And sees spring illuminated
beyond the cold.
Sunlight the trinket she’s
always possesed
misplaced for awhile
shine from within.
Her sepia world
long deprived of green
become vibrant and
alive again.
She walks away in blue
with plenty of heart
by the light of her own
eyes, no longer needing
to find it in another.
-Tosha Michelle

Delicate Decadence 

Published on by Tosha Michelle47 Comments


Poetry never visits me

dressed in lace

Sipping a colorful drink

Singing and swaying

to a happy tune.

Instead, poetry likes to weep

in my ear, turned out

in black with a bottle

of scotch

Miles Davis on replay.

There’s happiness in me

to be written, to be lived.

I’m never as melancholy

as my writing would suggest.

Joy is just waiting to be

unfolded like a love

note hidden in dresser

buried under layers of clothes.

One day I’ll give into

nostalgia and find solace

in the lyrical prose.

It’s just there so much art and beauty

in the exquisite feeling of

sadnes. My strictured soul

finds solace in its untamed

sweetness. Its bluesey notes

lnown to me, heard by me,

sung by me, felt by me.

The delicate decadence

-Tosha Michelle