Tag: art

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

World Enough (In Terms Of)

Published on by Tosha Michelle24 Comments


You’ve taught me how far
I can go toward myself.
No need to run from who
I am.

That’s how it is with us.
Windblown fragments,
two are we.
Sometimes composed in rain
We always find our
sunny composure.

We converse fluently in
a language only we understand.
Your face never lies in the
way wedding songs and
lovers sometimes do.

In my head you’ve cut a groove,
leaving your initials there
Absolute. Right. Permanent.
They tell a story even when
my mind shifts and happenstance
grabs the pen.

The darkest ink is not dark enough
to eradicate the thought of you.

Our friendship  a sonnet to pathless
woods, always ready to explore.
We reach for a state of grace,
Knowing life can only get worse, but
better too.

Tosha Michelle

The Harvest 

Published on by Tosha Michelle36 Comments


They gave each other the sweetness of apples,
immeasurable by hand.
An orchard assembled by 
loyalty and determination,
where two horizons met
bound by soul constellations
An intimacy that went beyond a
bed of grass and fleeting endorphin
laced cider.

But no matter how bountiful the gathering,
we sometimes become too accustomed
to the beauty of the return.

We forget to take time
to savor what we hold dear,
clinging too long to
memories of past harvesting
Or we become consumed with
the yields of new fruit.

No time to fight or even mourn
for bruised apples
left to oxidize in the
toxic air.

Neglect takes root, hurt unbridles
And careless words become an
apron full of briars.
A spider lodged in the hem.

The orchard once ablaze and alive sheds
it’s golden mass becoming nothing
more than a misbegotten shadow,
a crop of blue scars, an artifact
of loss.

-Tosha Michelle

A Mindful Poem 

Published on by Tosha Michelle70 Comments


In the brief tranquil reprieve
just before dust.
You don’t notice how
high the wind is
or the bitter in the cold

The night may carry a
satchel of bramble.
But for now you close
your eyes and listen to
the music of the air.

Focusing on the amber length
of the hour.
Your dormant heart made
melodic like a harp touched
by skilled hands

You realize you deserve more
than shuttering light and
shifting shadows. 

You who are besotted with
the fever of a waltz
And moonlit rivers
on the way to sea.

No matter how awkward your
gait, you know grace is
found in a soul that won’t
be nettled and a mind
made beautiful by the swarm
of fireflies.

You, this lady and warrior
who gets by on Southern
charm and the rhythm of
a drum that beats in three-quarter time.
Here. where prim
and proper meets sas and grit.

You who are singularity lovely
but hideous too.
A mess of colors, hungry
You refuse to live a sepia life.

For a moment as you watch
the sun set, you don’t dwell
on failed arithmetic or Dostoevsky
and his sullen things.

Instead, you reflect on the wonder
of aliveness and compose yourself
in a poem, composure found in a view
redefined . You rearrange the disquieting
into a sliver canopy of serenity.
Finding peace in your eccentricity.

-Tosha Michelle

My latest cover-Sign of the Times with a little Human thrown in

Sanity 

Published on by Tosha Michelle20 Comments

You have to let go of what is hurting you. You can’t keep rewriting the same story, especially when the ending never changes. There’s only so many revisions you can make. Some stories weren’t meant to have a happy ending, some stories were meant to be left incomplete
Sometimes you have to find the courage to put the old narrative away and write a new story.
Have a great weekend everyone 💕

Fill Me Up 

Published on by Tosha Michelle45 Comments


Because I’m an empty vessel
waiting to be filled.
I find myself flirting with sin.
I do it by way of pen
and paper. Trying to stitch
hope into my skin
I snuggle inside words. Poetry
can’t hurt me the way a
man can. In verse, I can build
anticipation again. Doors open
inside my head. Verbs press
against me, hard and
wanton. I find a sacred niche
between the lines. Here
I take the light. Here it never
darkens or leaves.
Devotion blesses me with sweetness
and excess.
Heaven is found in scenes that are
too scary and loud to live.

I’m an empty vessel.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Romancing myself with
my poetic wooings.
Damming myself to things
conjured, a Paradise
devoid of air, the shadows of
a scarred soul, and the
language of mangled spirit
Waiting to be loved again.

-Tosha Michelle

Warmth’s Inner Light

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

No longer content with the
winter life and its flannel
sleep. Self and it’s terms
finally meet

She wipes away
the frost from her soul
And sees spring illuminated
beyond the cold.
Sunlight the trinket she’s
always possesed
misplaced for awhile
shine from within.
Her sepia world
long deprived of green
become vibrant and
alive again.
She walks away in blue
with plenty of heart
by the light of her own
eyes, no longer needing
to find it in another.
-Tosha Michelle