This guy. This video. Check it out. It’s transformative. Be sure to follow. If you love language, literature, culture, and guys named Joseph, you won’t be disappointed
Have a great weekend. Make it one to write about.
Tag: art
Answering in Lyrical Sighs.
You don’t understand
my obsession with words,
with pen and paper.
You scoff at my lyrical sighs,
my iambic heartbeat,
my free verse of thought.
You plug your ears
as I read a Shakespearean
sonnet You don’t understand:
lilac dreams, aster stars,
or the need for a backstory.
There’s no money in poetry, you say.
You can’t fathom getting paid
in the sighs of the wind,
in quiet time, in a cathartic release.
You don’t understand
how writing saves me,
how it makes me strong.
This is where I reside best.
I’ll never get the hang of
your card game of monotony.
I’m over middle management.
I’m happy to live
in what you would call
my frivolous obsessions.
I don’t want to be
underwhelmed and uninspired,
somewhere between over the hill,
and the grass is never greener.
You can be the door slamming.
The late hours, the keeping up.
Throw your money at the wall
and call it success.
I’ll sit here with my pen and paper,
listening to the wind,
through the pine trees
releasing the hurricane
beneath my fingers,
and write a poem
about something
you’ll never understand.
-Tosha Michelle
The Sky is Falling.
If you think you are the
sun, think again.
You are the sky
holding the sun up,
trying to change the world
one dawn at a time.
Even if you don’t have time,
notice the new day.
We are so busy we forget
we’re out of milk.
We forget how we use to
hunger for a fulfilled life.
At first there was vitamin D
in excess, now just deficiency.
We can’t live if we are constantly
trying to escape our reality,
ourselves.
I’m a litany of doubts.
Wondering if I should lower
my expectations.
Maybe I’m still the sun.
Maybe the sky is your
hand.
I remember when our sky of delusions fell.
You spoke to me only in scars.
I’m trying my best to be
your nightcap, your safe route,
your whimsical merry go round.
Imagination echoes
in every chamber.
Hope lingers.
Is it enough?
The sky cries “Forget it”.
Sometimes, we are just lost.
-Tosha Michelle
My latest cover. My friend Danny requested “An American Trilogy” He also requested I sing it sans music. I did my best.
Listen to An American Trilogy (for Danny) by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud
My artsy new pal
Please check out my friend Anthony. He’s a wonderful artist. He did these lovely sketches of me. I hope you will follow him.
Wow She’s Good – http://wp.me/p6YgwJ-2P
Not Quite Love in an Elevator
Some people keep in
touch via the phone,
the internet, weekly
lunch dates.
You keep in touch by
pissing me the hell off.
Lightening up our
elevator display
of toxicity until
we’re stuck between
floors.
Listen, do you hear that?
that’s my head lacerating
on the wall.
My sense of peace
fractured.
Go ahead pick the bone.
I’m done battling
scratched glass.
Drag me through it.
It’s time to rinse
off the anger,
and nail all 1483 of my
grievances to your
sanctimonious door.
Martin Luther and me
the grand reformers
He sowed in grace.
I’m more prone to
mace.
Maybe, I’ll just try to
lose you in a place
I’ll never find again.
Unraveling your
foothold or finding
mine, up your………
I’ll save the hair pulling
spear throwing, and
obscene gestures of
distain for terrorists
and guys named Tad.
I’ll just vent my anger
in a silly poem
Snide as my temper,
but light as numbers
with no equations,
letters missing
sentences, and a
poet whistling
satirically at madness.
-Tosha Michelle
The Bliss of Madness
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
Where He Takes Me
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)
Wanderlust in Boots.
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
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
While I was walking by, I thought to myself……….who is being kept in and who is being kept out.
The Darkness
I feel a darkness coming on.
The build up is always the
worst part. The shadow
of depression sneaking
up on
me. Breathing down
my neck. I know it won’t
be long until it falls on
me, tethering my spirit
to a barren tree. The
landscape flatten
Nothing is flourishing
The devil stands near
by holding his pitchfork
of sorrow. Smirking
as he plots new
calamities for fragile
spirits like mine,
not a fundamentalist
in sight.
I lie down on the
ground.. I surrender
to the darkness.
For today, there
is no escape.
The empty glass
is broken, the
ticking clock is
silence. When I
awake, I will look
for a way out.
Knowing the
darkness can
never hold me
for too long.
The light in my
heart never
sinks. It just
hides like a
lost penny.
For now though,
I become less
and lesser.
Boneless,
empty, and
ready to go
I let the
taker, take me.
Everything I Never Told You 