La Literati

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Hello, lovely ones. Yesterday, I posted a poem a day early to make room for today’s post. As some of you know, I host a literary podcast with my friend, Niles, called La Literati. We feature established authors, as well as up and coming writers.

Tomorrow, at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we will be celebrating the work of three talented WordPress bloggers. Information is below.

We plan to make this a regular part of our show. If you are interested in participating in the future, please get in touch via my contact information listed on this site. We would love to hear from you.

About the writers:

Geetha-
Geetha Balvannanathan Prodhom is an Indian writer born within a multicultural family and raised between India, Tunisia, Europe and the Middle East. She writes poetry in English, French and Arabic and has published a collection of French poems in 2011 with another collection of poetry in English to be published in 2016. A fervent admirer of the Japanese art of Tanka and Haiku since 2010 and writing her own Haikus in English, French and Italian since 2014, she also writes short novels in English and in French on the themes of human feelings and interaction. She is currently working on a manuscript in English depicting the varied life she has led. Her blog is:

https://geethaprodhom.wordpress.com/

Deb-
Debra (D.S.) Levy is a writer of short stories, flash fiction, and essays. She’s had work published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia, Little Fiction, The Pinch, and others. Although she’s never considered herself a “poet,” she believes that whatever she’s writing has always begun with a poet’s concerns — concision, compression, sound, and the desire to capture moments of being. Since blogging at C-Dog & Company, she has begun (shyly) to share some of her free verse. You can find her
blog here:

http://cdogco.com/

Christian-
Christian Marc is a writer and blogger born in New Jersey, who lived in L.A., but is currently moving to Seattle. He is a two time recipient of the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. He blogs at:
http:complainingisanartform.com/

You can also find my friend and cohort’s blog here:

Niles-
http://jamesdennard.com/

Link to tomorrow’s show:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/laliteraticarpelibrum/2016/01/20/la-literati-welcomes-three-talented-writers-and-friends-to-our-show

On an entirely different note. Rest in peace, Glenn Frey.

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An Apprentice of Sadness

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If you listen to the language of sadness,
you know it has much
to teach us.

There’s dignity in the monochrome
Sanctity in darkness, in the pulse
of quiet, in the rut to be dug out of
.
Sadness can be a type of burning bush,
the X on a map.
It can make the unknown, knowable.

It can help us unfold
It can rip away our untruths, like
paint torn off a congealed can,
taking skin with it.

Sadness can then suture that skin
back together.

It can birth art, music, poetry.
I write proudly with my back ink.
I take solace in words,
even the ones written in water

I choose to write my difficulties,
my grinding realities.
The fantasies under which I labor.

I write to remember-my rain of tears.
How cathartic it is when the downpour
renders everything lush and green.

Enlivening the colorful sensations of hope

I am a student of sadness so
I can become a teacher of light

-Tosha Michelle

Answering in Lyrical Sighs.

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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

She’s

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She ‘s Beatrice and Delilah.
an illusion, a crime

She’s a skyscape that slips
from blue, to grey, to red.

She’s a spider web over
a bank vault.

She’s the pull swirling
in his chest.

She’s a whisper of longing
stuck in his ear.

She’s a wilder life, the sweet
seed, his heart’s core.

She’s a sigh, ragged and
melancholy.

She’s a crushing need
a helix of yearning.

She’s chemistry and anatomy.

She’s the witching hour’s
pleasures of bourbon and sin.

She’s soaked in summer,
spun in contradictions.

She’s a flame grabbing what
it wants, a tumultuous embrace.

She’s a thousand lips bruising
his skin.

She’s a back arching, guttural
moan.

She’s rhythm and release.

She’s as intrusive as a power
outage

She’s as frustrating as a
misstep.

She’s as elusive as spindrift
night.

She’s a woman set in his type,
born in ink, language spilling out.

She’s what he conjugates.
The artistry of his craft

-Tosha Michelle

Just a Little Bit of Your Heart.

george-bernard-show-why-not-quote

Creativity is running amok. I find myself alternating between music., writing, and painting.The waves are crashing down on me hard. I may drown in a tide full of ideas, musical notes, and acrylics..My mind is a chaotic place full of tension. It never rest.and the bit** won’t shut up.  Creativity is my way of transforming the mess that is my brain into something beautiful;. I don’t always succeed, but I will forever try.

I’m currently in performance mode..

My cover of “Just a Little Bit of Your Heart”