Category: Music

She’s

Published on by Tosha Michelle53 Comments

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She ‘s Beatrice and Delilah.
an illusion, a crime

She’s a skyscape that slips
from blue, to grey, to red.

She’s a spider web over
a bank vault.

She’s the pull swirling
in his chest.

She’s a whisper of longing
stuck in his ear.

She’s a wilder life, the sweet
seed, his heart’s core.

She’s a sigh, ragged and
melancholy.

She’s a crushing need
a helix of yearning.

She’s chemistry and anatomy.

She’s the witching hour’s
pleasures of bourbon and sin.

She’s soaked in summer,
spun in contradictions.

She’s a flame grabbing what
it wants, a tumultuous embrace.

She’s a thousand lips bruising
his skin.

She’s a back arching, guttural
moan.

She’s rhythm and release.

She’s as intrusive as a power
outage

She’s as frustrating as a
misstep.

She’s as elusive as spindrift
night.

She’s a woman set in his type,
born in ink, language spilling out.

She’s what he conjugates.
The artistry of his craft

-Tosha Michelle

If I Were King of The World

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

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This isn’t my most eloquent poem. I’m aware. My silly and playful side needs an outlet, too. For now, I’ve locked angst in the closet.

If I were king of the
world. For this poem
let’s suppose that
this is a thing.

I would never lose
touch with the details.
I would answer all
your calls.

I would be a regular
at the Starbucks you
hang out in.

There would be laugher
in thunder. I wouldn’t
pretend to be bigger
than you.

Salvation would be
found in art and folly.

The mourning doves
would learn jazz and
how to wing it.

The livable life would
be embraced. Slow on
recliners and TV viewing.

Everyone would have
a place at my table.
I would dispense milk
and clothes, but never
unsolicited advice.

Good sex and good
manners would be
cultivated.

Love would come
without conditions.
I would lay my kisses
on imperfections
and celebrate the
different and strange.

I would do my best to
catch hearts falling
from pine trees.

Everyone would be
required to read Henry
Miller and Fitzgerald.

The Karxashians and E
would be banned to their
own island. Egos and
ignorance too.

Like any king, I would
contradict myself, but
mostly, with humor and
nonsensical poetry.

Water would be
plentiful. Wine too.

I wouldn’t take away
all your burden, some
are needed. How flimsy
our characters would be
without them.

Earth would be spun
in hope. There would
be 7 days of fun. The
8th day, chocolate.

Instead of a robe
and crown, I would
wear yoga pants
and a T-shirt with
James Purefoy face
on it. Everyone would
know who James
Purefoy is.

Words would live in
evey home. Love
would hang out in
the kitchen.

The inner world would
would trump the outer,
which reminds me,
there would be no
Donald Trump.

-Tosha Michelle

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Little Boy Blue and Mary Quite Contrary

Published on by Tosha Michelle58 Comments

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Dear Past,

It’s been awhile. I come waving a
flag of peace and unarmed.
My arsenal is depleted.
I have no time for hate or malice
laced air.
I imagine like me
you want to live in peace without
the threat of guns and
claws. To awaken to the sound
of serenity, not bombs going off
in the distance.

I hope hearing from me doesn’t cause you pain.
Frankly, I miss you. Your theatrical ways,
always leaning toward a Shakespearean tragedy.
No time for much ado about nothing.
Although, everything had to be as you like it.
How you were
a master at parlor games and word play.
Your eyes a depletion
of fallen leaves and green tea.
Hair as dark as a grackle.
Arch so charming, fencing with
unseen stars. Little boy blue,
and Mary. Mary, oh, so contrary.
How our garden did grow.
Shells that pelted the ground,
causing wreckage and carnage.
It wasn’t all welts and hell.
There were days when light swelled
and sliver bells grew.

But i digress, as I climb a slide of memories,
backwards with slippery hands.
My legs lose traction,
my lungs clog with dust.

I end up on the ground negotiating
with my untapped toe.
Trying to reclaim the beat with
half recounted facts
and nostalgia’s false sense of rhythm.
Holding a few cards in the hand you deftly dealt me.
Beside me lies a map, marred
by revisions.
that reads let it go. Let it go.

I stand up, and realizes there’s a
tear in my heart, that I
mistook for my sleeve. I walk through the open gate,
ignoring the stained alleyways,
cobble stone,
and street lights shaped like a question marks.
The scent of orchids lingers in
the tired air.
My soul fighting off bees and
the counter winds.
You, dear past, will always sting.

-Tosha Michelle

Granny

Published on by Tosha Michelle59 Comments

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I’m snapping green beans
I bought at the store today,
thinking they would remind me
of Granny and sitting
at the kitchen table,
listening to her “well,
when I was your age” stories.

Hoping that just for a moment
I could hug her again,
feel the sureness of her being,
her sweet familiarly.

Go back before dementia
stole her mind,
and cancer her body.
The days of sweet tea,
peppermints, and house dresses.

Granny could solve any problem
with a hickory stick or a stern look.

I miss her, even now years later,
I can’t help but compose
her in a poem- warm hands,
dark hair, sadness
that never left her eyes,
a lifetime of hardships

For a moment I’m ten again,
and Granny gives me her Irish grin.
Something soft but fierce about her.
Finding joy in an orderly
home and things done right.

How solid and healthy
she looks laboring away
over green beans.
Singing her favorite hymn
“In the sweet bye and bye”
Light shimmering through the room.
Real but unreal.

“We shall meet on that
beautiful shore”
Her notes gradually
becoming fainter.
The words descending,
echos from the past.
Love in every syllable.

I listen as evening opens
around me.
Sorrow changes its pitch.
Thee last of the sunlight
streams in the windows.
Swelling, even as it
disappears, even as it waves goodbye.

-Tosha Michelle

The Bliss of Madness

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

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I always find meaning
in madness.

It’s hard to know
who we are at times.
Our attention wavering
before the buttons are undone.

Plans run off with good ideas.
The future -crumbling paper mache
Our art supplies scattered
on the floor.

Now what will we do
with our hands?

Let’s put on
our mad hatter shoes.
Lose the map.
No phrase book needed.
Grab your backpack of
sin.

Take my arm.
I’ll be the voo doo
you do.
Try and not trip over my
tangled spirit.

Come with me
and let’s stroll down
a road that
will never lead to Rome,
but might lead to precinct
of hell.

Don’t worry, darling,
we can play king of the hill
on the torrid slope.
We can rattle the gates
Break the windows.
Take all that’s nimble
Dine on crumb cake
and bitter tea.

Jazz up the day.
Sun up the night.
Trust in chance and
let the cocoon unravel.

Afterwards, we’ll
distract the unmoored
shadows, and frolic with
sanity’s debris, while
madness steals the sky.

-Tosha Michelle

In Search of Emily and Her Feathers

Published on by Tosha Michelle15 Comments

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Hope at times seems
to drift and waft at a distance.
Nothing more than
stray wind on my neck. My
saltless palms
trying to grasp its alluring scent.

On damselfly wings,
it soars on the breeze, passed
my open window.
Sweeping the white clouds,
while dancing on
the edge of the horizon.
Moving to the tune of prayers,
palms of faith.

The creature of
someone else’s mind.

Speech unwoken and
without weight to tether it
to the ground.

It floats here,
just out of reach.
Dim. Quietly,
with heavy laden eyes.

I’m glad to have not lost its aura
entirely, but to see it
move at the sky’s whim.

Hope resting on the updraft.
I wait here
on my knees, expectant, dreamily,
mournfully, with the
skin of my unclothed heart for
its downpour.

-Tosha Michelle

Where He Takes Me

Published on by Tosha Michelle37 Comments

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I always go where
my muse takes me.
Sometimes, he takes my hand
and walks me
down a honeysuckle road,
where the air is fragrant
with the sweetest of words.
Blossoms of paper
falling from the trees.
My muse hands me a pen.

Sometimes, my muse
takes me somewhere
I’d rather not be.
We end up in an
isolated cabin
in the middle of a storm.
At times like these,
we argue violently.
My personal history
banging on the door,
my muse deciding to
invite my past over
without my consent.
Baggage and all.

Other times my muse
takes me out to dinner,
seducing me with
conversation and a
mouthwatering eclair,
champagne and torch songs.
Whispering naughty things
in my ear.

Sometimes my muse
packs a bag and
threatens to leave me.
Taunting me with the
missing pages.
In the doorway he stands.
Sometimes I let him go.
He never goes far.
He knows we can’t live
without each other.
He’s buried too deep
in my cortex.
We both thrill to the
synaptic friction.

Sometimes my muse
questions what I am
writing for.
Reminding me, all my longings
and words will be
discarded in the end.
My muse is such a
morbid creep.
I know he’s
right, if we are here,
we are already gone
but for now
he’s the lure I cling to,
along with the delusions
of life, and
the scraps of allusions,
I put down on paper.

-Tosha Michelle

By request,  My cover of “Camouflage” Selena Gomez Cover (for Diane)

Willfully Wild

Published on by Tosha Michelle45 Comments

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If your going to love,
love wilfully and wildly,
like a leaf on the wind
soaring out,
with abandonment.
Burn yourself through
for passion.
Make an altar of greater than.
Praise longing and
its insanity

Love bold men,
the ones like red umbrellas
with strong wooden
handles, and a fancy inscription,
big and deep, that makes you
feel like the daintiest
of ladies out for an
afternoon stroll,
his sheltering arms
keeping out the misty rain.

Let every idea you have
be love.
Study him like
you would the curve
of the horizon.
Follow your instinct,
lose the pattern.
Go where he goes.
Don’t let the sun disappear.
Let it swell
and put him first,
draw him closer,
until he believes in you
and the sky trembles
when you touch.

Fall
Fall
into his eyes, his thighs,
the pulse of his being.
Fall into ripeness, rightness,
until time is stripped away,
and your soul is cast in
forethought. Forethought
brushed in red and heat.
Never to be an afterthought.

If you’re going love, love
willfully and wildly until
you are spent, until the stars
shatter over the white tips
of pillowcase as two lovers
fall out of God’s mouth into
rapture.

-Tosha Michelle

My cover of The Eagles “Desperado” for Sunny Day

Reading the Dead

Published on by Tosha Michelle43 Comments

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I love my dead relatives

like I love the broken

spine of my favorite book

I love the bent back pages

and the sad dust cover

of ruin. I’ll never discard

it. I take it out often and

bookmark it in memories.

In the chapters, I want the

words to live again. No

matter how many times

I reread the text, there is

no next scene.

I hope it plays out in

another dimension.

I’d like to think some things

are like this.

The morning light casts a

glow upon the cover,

giving it an angelic gleam.

Who could not admire the

beauty of a well loved book?

Wreckage made by years of

reading favorite passages

over again, and who could

not mourn, the sudden shock

when the pages begin

to fade?

-Tosha Michelle

Psalms of October

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

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October is the month for praise;
the beauty before winter’s gray.

It blushes the clouds with pink,
and paints the leaves canary.
The air so crisp and busy,
still warm from summer’s memory.
The sun brush stroked in red
streaking through the trees,
before their abundance
is carried away.

October is the month for praise.
Before a somber dullness
takes over.
Turning the days into
unkind nights,
when every thought we have
is nostalgic

October is fall’s long
stem rose;
trying to right the
wrong of December’s chill,
and mother nature’s
stony stare.

The red rose rises up,
as if to make amends
for what will become
of the bees and ants,
and all of us who strive
to live harmoniously;
those condemned to ice
and Jack Frost’s
fixation with noses.

October is the month to praise,
so we offer up our apple
cider alleluias,
in the field of the great pumpkin,
and await winter’s bitter thud.

-Tosha Michelle