The Great Divide

Hello, WordPress, my old friend. It’s been ages. Sorry for the long hiatus. Life and time have a way of running off together, and by the time I finally find my shoes, they’ve already disappeared around the corner. Rude. 

I’m here for a brief moment but I’ll have more random nonsense to post at a later date. Lots of good things in the works, my latest poetry collection will be arriving soon, and we also have a few interesting excursions coming up that I can’t wait to share. For today, though, I simply wanted to talk about music.

One of my current favorite artists is Noah Kahan. If you aren’t familiar, please acquaint yourself with this young man’s work .He’s what would happen if Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had a baby.. Noah’s music is human in the best way possible. He has this rare ability to make songs feel both intimate and expansive.. His writing blends folk, indie, and Americana influences with deeply personal storytelling about mental health, nostalgia, loneliness, home, and the ache of growing older. His latest work aptly titled, The Great Divide captures the space between what was and what will be. Noah writes from a place of self reflection and is painfully honest with himself and his listeners. Be warned his music is melancholy, but conversely,, also so uplifting and life affirming. Pretty sure sad girl summers were invented by him. You always get the impression he’s sitting on the back porch at dust with the weight of the world on his shoulders, writing his maladies into something lyrical and beautiful.

Here are three of my favorite songs off the album/

“You know I think about you all the time
And my deep misunderstanding of your life”

“And I clutch my cloth, and I bite my tongue
I’m an aging wolf who lost the taste for blood”
“Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk about him
Let’s talk about high school, talk about death
Talk about the long ride home from the grave”

Love Me

Love me, not just my body,
but the curvature of my being.
Take me as I am, as I’ll be.
Give me the quiet music
of your heart. Teach me
the lyrics and tune.

Love me for infinity, and not
just indefinitely. Tell me
we can work, if we work
for it as if it were our livelihood.
As if it were our art.

Love me enough to make
revisions to replenish.
Let me be the black and
blue uprooting your veins.

Love me from the inside out,
where the echos are heard everywhere.
Let me be your irreplaceable.
This body, this spirit, this future corpse.
Let me translate and soothe in a language
that’s never been anywhere but us.

Love me with substance and let our love
be a love of existence. Knowing I’m flawed,
that I’m nothing special but knowing
I’m enough for you.

Love me, like an
idea fully formed, like a love poem
filling the paper to capacity, full of hope,
written at the desk by heart light.

Love me, like yours is the hand
holding the pen.
Let the rhythm belong to you.
Love me, like I’m the
syntax of your verse,
the reason behind your rhyme.

Love me,

Tosha Michelle

I Can’t Hear You.

Raise your hand if you’re tired of keeping company with anxiety, perpetuated by a relentless virus and the dwindling sanity coming out of Washington. The wind there cold and reeking of hubris and greed. Empathy becoming a supernatural thing.


Raise your hand if you’re losing your patience with narcissistic behavior and a culture more into canceling humans instead of reforming them, a society on the precipice of being nothing more than a hollow hulk.


Raise your hand if you’re done with the self absorbed and lack of regard for community. People happy to button their own coats but with no time to consider their neighbor’s thread bare wear.


Raise your hand if you’re tired of apathy, of those wrapped in a flannel sleep, Always content to let others shovel the coals.


Now instead of raising our hands, let raise our voices. Don’t wish for lungs that can sing. Sing! Step up! Be visible. Be heard. The dark blistering rain is not quite frozen yet. Prove that all the light did is far from done.

-Tosha Michelle

Deity in Diversity

image

Maybe someday we will
have written about humanity
and grace so much
that the paper we scribble on
will burn down
the forest of hate
that grows in casket-closed minds,
eradicating words like
racism, hate, bigotry.

The fire cleansing away
evil and ignorance.
Strike a match with
your pen.

Let’s try at least to
direct the language toward love.
Let’s keep moving the
adjectives higher and higher.
Trust the verbs to lead us,
the pin of light, to the fire.

Maybe as the trees come undone,
leaves igniting,
branches bursting with truth,
charity and clarity will rise.
Rustling beneath skin.
Love rising, tapping deep.
Opening eyes and cleaning tongues
in the dialect of compassion.
Hope slipping into the core.
Porous and large.
Looking out in every direction
until it is inside the sky,
the rocks, the moon.
Lacing the night and hearts with promise,
the rainy season finally over.

Until then, let your pens sway
against the dark waves.
Let’s push our boats against the current.
Light the candle wick.
Kiss it with fervor.
Give flame to the wind and waves.

-Tosha Michelle

Photo, my own