Category: Poems

Life, Music And The Maine

Published on by Tosha Michelle78 Comments

Things

1. Four more weeks and I’ll have my Master’s degree.  Yes! Graduating with honors too.  
2. I’m currently interviewing for criminologist jobs and adjunct professor positions. 
3. I’ve been asked to contribute one of my poem to a journal publication and another for a book
4. Planning a trip to Quebec City in the fall. It’s looks like a gorgeous, historic place.
5. On a negative note,  tired of the news. Burnt out on it all. Maybe I’ll stay in Canada. Ha!

Overall life is good and I’m please to be finding my footing. Better late than never. F. Scott was right when he said …

“For what it’s worth… it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.“

And now for some music!!


Maine isn’t just a state you know. Check it out and have a wonderful Sunday xx


“In the backseat of the taxi. When you told me we were only two punch-drunk souls all tangled in the wind. And in the backseat when you asked me”Is the sadness everlasting?” I pulled you closer, looked at you and said “Love, I think it is””

What Love Is

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

Cool Artsy Shoes

Love isn’t
a weekend in Belize.
It’s not flattery.
Rarely, the perfect fit.
It isn’t cake and schnapps
or a walk by the river
with Thoreau

Love is
a photograph cropped,
rearranged, often marred
It’s an arsenal of joy,
of pain, a loaded gun
Locked, fired, reloaded,
fired again.

It’s salty, gritty
rarely sweet, at times solid
at others, a noddle slip
off a chopstick.
It’s a Rorschach test
a complex algorithm
disordered thoughts

Films never get it right.
Songs sometimes do.

Love is
difficult,
a chalkboard lesson,
in Mechanics and
Special Relativity

Love is
a Dixie cup
full of gin
the brush of angel’s wings
horse’s hooves in hell

Love is
true.
Seldom,
but when it is,
it wears sensible shoes.

-Tosha Michelle

Catch and Release 

Published on by Tosha Michelle48 Comments

Happiness begins in summer air
when we lift our hands,
ink stained from editing a life
in need of revisions and
vision, a mid eve dream
reformed. Reborn.

Where we find comfort
in the stormy eye of
new beginnings,
in trying again
but this time in today.
Ready to risk, to breathe
to pick the window seat,
to upgrade to first class,
to meet the stranger’s gaze,
not caring if it’s a four leaf clover
or a curse.

Mistakes and Nirvana
flickering in from the West.

Happiness begins when we
finally learn to rearrange the whys
and start believing in the how,
even if we come up short,
even if we fail.
Knowing it’s all in the
catch and release anyhow.

-Tosha Michelle

Dawn

Published on by Tosha Michelle28 Comments

We are always in the midst
of letting go of something
or someone.
Untying knots
Finger by finger.

Watching as the leaf whirls
in the wind across the grass
into the air.
The sky opaque resists.

We keep searching for
what might have been,
not realizing the beauty in
what is or could be.

The scent of his cologne.
The strong arm around
your shoulder.
His finger around a lock
of your hair.
The uninterrupted gaze that
you missed while your eyes
were on another.

The gift of rapt attention.
You finally see the light’s
transformation in the beauty
of his eyes.
Looking back no more at
the unintended one.
Just a imitation you
mistook as real.
Only stars in your head
after a fall.

The possibilities of love
become endless when
there’s hope of being love
in return
The eve of a new beginning
Giving birth to the life
you were meant to live.

-Tosha Michelle

On Friendship

Published on by Tosha Michelle66 Comments

image

Dedicated to Jane and Niles.

On days that should be remembered for
their cold rain, because of you all I see
is the sun breaking through.

You wrap me in a wool coat
and we wander through years of experience-
heartache, loss, hearty elms
and wilted vines.

Our friendship knotted with the binding
thread work of love.

We are the roses on the vines

Always pausing as another
flower is cut from our lives.

Knowing in the end none
of us is spared.

We walk on hand in hand.
The light of day disperses.

The light of our friendship
never shutters, never wavers.

The tint of the years fades details.

Age will eventually tint the nuances
but time can’t touch our souls.

Our heart won’t forget.

Thank you for always being
the one constant sky
I have prayed for.

-Tosha Michelle
Listen to You ve Got a Friend2 by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud

How to be an Expert at Life

Published on by Tosha Michelle136 Comments

image

If you can’t leap
then fall.

Correlate. Equate.
Arrange. Rearrange
Be an apprentice of the years.

Sometimes breathing is in the
spinning as the still world passes.

It not the heavens that matter,
but how you soar through them.

Teach your broken spirit
how to navigate landmines.

Remember that yesterday is just as
relentless as tomorrow.

Your griefs and sorrows are not
the worst of griefs and sorrows.

Find hope in pain. The new pain,
the old pains that returns.

Teach your heart to be sensitive
to the music of your bones.

Don’t be afraid to tear your
skin away and begin again.

Don’t become immune to
the overwhelming.

Listen to your nude soul’s intuition
Let your mind await instruction.

Don’t concern yourself with the
breakable dawn.

Use your talents, the seeding
of grain to nurture survival.

You are the boat, the canopy,
the light, the decree.

Remember the eternal sleep,
the erasure, always lurks
in the shadows,
ready to loosen souls
and carry us toward some
unspecific light.

Life is all in the choosing.
Come September, come
December, then April
For today, choose to live.
Choose to be.

-Tosha Michelle

On Becoming A Raven

Published on by Tosha Michelle20 Comments


The beautiful edgy woman
with the death stare
is sure I’m a one way door.
The all American girl,
a one shot deal in
illuminated skin.

She would never suspect
that I drink in
crows like the sky,
that I find clarity in chaos.
that I drowned Barbie
in a pool of cement,
that I may look like a black and white
1950’s candy sweet darling.
But inside my heart wears
leather, tattoos, a storm brews
beneath my skin.

The years giving me
color and form.
taking me from
red blush to blood red.
as summer turns to fall.
Underscoring the
damp edges of my soul.
Finally, growing
into my backbone.
I’m the other side of her
projection now.
A soul reborn feral.

Finding beauty in asymmetry.
Nurtured by rainfall that pools
into darkness.
Filing my nails on thorns.

Naive Southern Belle no longer.
The nightingale turned
into a raven with teeth.

-Tosha Michelle