Reading the Dead

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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

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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

Call. Don’t Answer.

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I sometimes long to be a

name no one answers, a

name that no longer

tolerates humanity. I yearn

to take the wintery chill

of my mind and go off by

myself, to live in a great

empty space, where

the breath of solitude can

falls on me like clouds,

-The only greeting needed

the green grass. I long

to belong to none, to be

elusive as residue.

The sun in my arms,

the only embrace I

need.

Then (as it always is)

Someone asked

“so how you been?”

How quickly the name

answers.

-Tosha Michelle

Wanderlust in Boots.

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In London, I finally

understood to be happy,

I can’ t regret. I can’t

be the ballerina in

a box waiting for

someone to turn

the key, trapped on

a platform of fear.

The key belongs to

me. I am the music.

I chose when I dance.

I discovered this while

navigating my way around

the city.

I became wanderlust in

leather boots, pleasantly,

disoriented by the

history. The city itself

a museum. On my own

for the first time. Alone,

with the wind of my mind.

I started to realize

that this “delicate” little

flower could survive

without water, that it

could grow anywhere.

I didn’t know it then

but my own history

was falling into place

as if Aristotle had flown

in from Greece (by way of

Great Beyond Air) to

help me make sense

of life.

It’s the little things

that change us,

that help us gain

knowledge of ourselves

the self that sometimes

needs to shatter.

Getting lost in

Greenwich Park

Sitting on a bench

unseen in the fog.

The bird that refused

my bread.
(The little bastard)

I swear I heard him chirping

stop trying to be responsible

for fixing everyone

Sitting in a cafe debating

the work of Turner after

visiting the Tate.

Just missing the

train for the airport.

Stopping by the gift

shop selling postcards

of London Bridge and

plastic keychains, making

me realizes I’ve had

enough of disposables.

Waltzing into pubs

and new situations.

Dizzy from dancing.

and finally believing

I knew the steps

Finally understanding

the beauty of missteps.

-Tosha Michelle

On The Clouds Eating His Shadow.

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The clouds drank in ravens

making the pines lucid.

His shadow fell beneath

the sky. If she listened

closely, she could hear

his melodic cadence

delivering soliloquies

adrift on the wind.

He as he was

She as she became

Awake. Aware.

Taking color and form.

Both somewhere between

what was there. What’s

not there. Someone you

remember and can’t

quite forget.

Lost mail on someone

else’s kitchen table.

The parenthesis enclosed.

Time takes away. Gone

in an instant particles

of the past.

She stays.
(She can’t stay)

Tired from this slow

burning off of yesterday.

That which was lost

will not become again.

She always thinks she

see gleams of him,

glimpsed and then gone.

The stem decimated but

drowning in rose petals.

No longer powerless

to the undertow.

His presence merely less,

but no longer wholly more.

His shadow falling,

falling into dust.

The only sound she

hears now is her

voice turning into

an early frost.

To every poem there is

a time and season.

Seasons that coagulate

into lost years.

In this one, she scourges

the past with lyrical ease

The wind no longer

contradicting itself.

Her pen drops ink

of flames, no longer

pointing to the sky.

Dr. Syntax gives her a

lollipop and a clean

bill of conscious.

-Tosha Michelle

Barbed……….and………Wired

My friend Jane just started a photography blog. Her photos are magnificent. I really hope you will check out her work and follow. She’s a wonderfully complex person. Her photos reflect that. She has an eye for beauty and all things artistic.

Thank you kindly

jane's avatar Perceptions-Photography by Jane

While I was walking by, I thought to myself……….who is being kept in and who is being kept out.

wired

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Random Wisdom

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“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

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The Dance

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I’m a fool for words.
I can’t stay away from
them. They define me
and defile me. We dance
out of step, out of time.
Occasionally, we find
our rhythm. Dancing
the language of the
soul. At those times
I like to kick my heels
up in a perfect dive.

I must confess. I’m
envious and in awe
of those dancers who
never seem to stumble,
always in sync with their
poetic voice. Never any
near misses.

I’ll never be the Steve Jobs
of poetry. My words owned
and beloved by the masses.
I’ll never master
Shakespeare’s waltz,
but I will keep swaying,
even trying is a sort
of dance

Perhaps, it’s not so much
about the dance but the
intentions of the dance.
The potential of fluidity
in our bodies as we move
across the green grass

This is the world I
feel most at home in.
My bare feet not
dancing on a rooftop
over a city that glistens
but rooted to the ground.

I’ll never stop dancing.
I will dance, my small
dance of corn maze art
for myself and for those
dancing fools like me
smitten with words.

-Tosha Michelle

“Your Song”

I’d be honored if you would listen to my rendition of Elton John’s “Your Song” I recorded this with someone special mind. Perhaps, that someone was you.

Listen to “Your Song” by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud

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She always wanted more…more chocolates…more books…more shoes…more solitude..more anarchy.. more peace.. more calm…more chaos ..more sex…more time…. more love…more stability….more heaven…more hell….more poetry… more J’s…Jon Stewart…..Jimmy Fallon…jolly rancher’s…Josie..
.more Lana Del Ray….more BBC America… more…more… more ..more…more…until there was no more.. until all the more had been used up…ingested, consumed, spent, thrown away…and more became less…and less became so much more…

Tosha Michelle

It’s my kind of town…

Chicago

BY CARL SANDBURG

Hog Butcher for the World,
   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
   Stormy, husky, brawling,
   City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
   Bareheaded,
   Shoveling,
   Wrecking,
   Planning,
   Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
                   Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
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