Tag: art

And then the Frost Came

Published on by Tosha Michelle25 Comments

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
wake. Aware.
Taking color and form.
Both somewhere between
what was there.
What’s not there. (What
was never there)

Someone you think you 
remember and can’t
quite forget.
Lost mail belonging on someone
else’s kitchen table.

The parenthesis enclosed.
No comma, no pauses.
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 (never was)
will not become again.

She always thinks she
see gleams of him,
The one she thought
she knew,
glimpsed and then gone.

The heart can only be
deceived for so long.
The stem decimated,
drowning in crushed rose petals.
No longer powerless
to the storm.

Wind that never really
blew for her.
Easier now to withstand
His presence merely less,
but no longer wholly more.

His shadow falling,
falling into dust.
The only sound she
hears in this moment is her
voice turning into
an early frost.

To every poem there is
a time and season.
Seasons that coagulate
into lost years,
time wasted.

In this one, she scourges
the past with lyrical ease
The breeze no longer
contradicting itself.

Her pen drops ink
of ice, no longer
pointing to the sky.
The view always distorted
anyway. The final chapter
written. She no longer
cares about heart revisions. 

-Tosha Michelle

The Last of It

Published on by Tosha Michelle29 Comments

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I’m always sure enough of
your rain to walk into it.

I wander, and your downpour
wanders.

You light the way
with laments and oxygen.

By nightfall the wind has
scattered you so that the
stars can peak through.

By dawn, you are the
darkness that has passed
through my eyes.

I see your shadow
stenciled in by the sun.

There’s a translucence
between us, as memories
vaporize, steaming away
the last of the rain.

-Tosha Michelle

The Chill Factor

Published on by Tosha Michelle88 Comments

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I just want a corner to lie
down in.

Pull the covers over
my heart.

Let it get buried in
snow.

Somewhere underground
where the coordinates get lost

A hideout from worry and the
slow burn out of life.

My calendar whited out.
My fingers too cold to hold.
My lips too raw to kiss the end note.

And I can live in the moment
before.

A frozen vessel alone
in the stillness.

My soul encased in a thousand
miles of Arctic air.

-Tosha Michelle

I Wish

Published on by Tosha Michelle21 Comments

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I’m tired of being love’s
recruit. I want to enlist
in hate

I wish there was a dose
of something that would
make me care less.

I’m tired of doing math, I
forgot a long time ago.

Tonight, I want to get
wrecked and call it
victory.

I want to sleep on the
deathbed of empathy.
and be reborn a cynic.

Instead, I’ll wake
tomorrow. Victory
sinking and thinking
love is as necessary
as a soul patch to
a hipster.

Never content to let
it rest. Always trying
to stitch it and people
back together.

Always a sucker
for Mahler and his
tragedies.

Always in tune with
the birds weeping
in the trees.

Never content to
hide in dark places
with the moon.

Always making
something out of
nothing that
isn’t there.

-Tosha Michelle

Lost Lines

Published on by Tosha Michelle18 Comments

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This is my elegy for those lost lines of poetry.
The ones that died in my mind,
when I was in the store, out on the town
or walking in the park.
Those times when pen and paper chose to stay
home and take a nap. My usually
fruitful memory-barren.

Go, little poem off to the land of word limbo,
out into nothingness.
The braids of forgotten syntax and out of sync time
will guide you. You’ll forever dwell with untold
stories, names unrecalled, and dreams unremembered.
What if and
what never was will comfort you.

I’ll mourn for you as I sit at my desk
staring at the unfulfilled pages, lonely,
for lines that came and died suddenly.
Erased between here and there.
Sentences that turned into ashes,
leaving only the residue of punctuation
and a memory of the moment
just before I forgot to remember.

-Tosha Michelle

Just Walk On By

Published on by Tosha Michelle13 Comments

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Do you see him the man on the street?
His eyes that beseech
His lips that speak of
hopelessness and despair.
His thoughts and dignity
stolen by society,
and an anguished mind
The icy hands of circumstances,
taking his livelihood
held captive in poverty’s relentless grip

People walk by him in a rush
chasing unattainable goals,
slaves to the impotent narrative
of success. trying to impress,
spurred on by imperatives
devoid of substance

Passersby consumed by time
always in a race, a constant haste
teetered to an elusive dream
bankrolled by the Joneses
their blood and sweat
revenue in the stream of greed

Lusty mortals seduced by the
whorish temptress
that is corporate America
specializing in the cremation
of aspirations and inspiration
climaxing in the loss of morals

Strangers immune to plight of the homeless
They are too busy wagging the tail of the dog
Mindless sheep devoid of sovereign reason
spineless and passive, sowing empty seeds
paying on mind to the tolling of the bell
or the beggar on the street.

-Tosha Michelle

Life’s Poetry

Published on by Tosha Michelle69 Comments

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I sit. Heart in hand. I
create. Some of you
may turn away from
the blood. The red
spilling over. It’s OK
if you do.

Sometimes it scares
me too, but still I
hold it. Palms out.
I’m giving you what
frightens me. This
is me saying, yes, I’m
still here.

I give you my less than
moments, my insecurities,
my madness, my ideas
about life and love, my
shrine of longing.

My heart slipping from
my hands, falling past
my knees to the floor.

Falling toward your
shadow I hope you
will pick it up.
Feel the hopeful
beat that wars
with my still
soul and chaotic
mind. I give you
my wounds.

We connect through
our pain, my friend,
my reader. Through
the hornets in our
coffee cups. Our
syllables of what
we can’t forget.

As we suffer together,
fear becomes less.
Our hearts beat stronger
Place them on the
dashboard like a
plastic Jesus.

It’s doesn’t matter if
they leak on the
floorboard. It only
matters that we travel on,
even if we’ve misplaced
the map, even if our sanity
becomes displaced, even if
we drive down a reckless road
on a moonless night.

Understand, if we want
heaven and angels,
sometimes we have
to ride around with
our demons.

Understand, sometimes,
darkness is the heart of
life, of beauty, of art.

-Tosha Michelle

Hands Over Eyes

Published on by Tosha Michelle19 Comments

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Abstract art by Yours Unruly

Hands Over Eyes

Stand behind me
Take your hands and
cover my eyes, so
I don’t see all
those doubts that
take flight in me,
so I have nothing new
to fear. No new
heartache to blindside me
Loss always coming
unannounced.

Whisper filthy things
in my ear, so I can
breathe deep your words,
drowning out the
voices in my head
screaming “be cautious”
Imploring me to not
be so reckless with
another one so
intoxicating.

Give me new skin
to touch
so I no longer feel
like a castaway
in dark harbor
full of scabs and scales

Let me feel your warmth,
as hope slips inside me.
Face to face now.
You teach me that
everything opens
with time- eyes. minds,
and even a heart damaged
by love undone.

-Tosha Michelle

Drift

Published on by Tosha Michelle28 Comments

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Longing befell me on a sharp
right turn, wrong.
A dark disciple rose up in me
I call her nostalgia

Our love is like snow
that refuses to stick.

I am always breathing in want
and exhaling regret
in your icy air.

I take water into my lungs,
and pretend it is you

I measure sugar and salt
in equal cups.
The yearning for both,
making me desperate,

Sugar.
Salt.
Drift.

I keep looking for a blizzard,
but the sidewalk is bare,
and the treacherous sky
swears snow never fell here.

-Tosha Michelle

https://m.soundcloud.com/tosha-michelle2020/the-scientist-coldplay-cover

Sage

Published on by Tosha Michelle29 Comments

Tonight I surrender everything
I have left undone to the wind
broken promises, letters I wrote,
but never sent, almost loves,
lost loves, regret. No questions.
Why or how no longer matter
They’ve been used up by yesterday.
Some just hallucinations
along my misguided way.

I’ve lingered too long in bramble
My skin marred by briars
Looking to find my way out
by the light of others eyes.
Hoping someone would decipher
the hidden shapes of my soul.

Alone with the begotten shadows,
iilluminated by the moon
I find clarity. The answer in release..
In letting go, I become lighter
Besotted with the fever of liberation.
A lomg time gone now
I find myself.
I am free.

-Tosha Michelle