Tag: James Purefoy

Paradoxically is Such a Fine Word.

Published on by Tosha Michelle149 Comments

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I’ve been besotted with chocolate.

I’ve been confused
by broccoli.

I’ve been stung by hornets,
but still I stirred the nest.

I’ve tripped over my mangled
spirit walking the narrow way.

I’ve prayed with fervor.
I’ve sinned with grace.

I’ve courted darkness.
I’ve loved the light.

I’ve questioned the sun.
Its answers reflected back
in the hourglass.

I’ve remembered to thank the academy of monotony:
laundry, vacuuming, dusting.

I’ve had it all: the sky, the finicky moon, the unfolded map.

I’ve got lost in a roundabout,
trying to navigate my mind.

I’ve lived well in unsettled hues.

I’ve been Saturday, Sunday,
and Monday.

I’ve tasted ash, eaten roses,
demanded a life of flames.

I’ve been a lunatic and lover.

I’ve been the Patron Saint
offering my protection.

I’ve been Judas,
freely spending the silver.

I’ve nearly drowned in the past’s harsh syllables.

I’ve held a grudge.
I’ve forgiven.

I’ve found a second soul.
I transcribe it in chaos and peace.

My heart circumventing the paradox.

I’ve learned how to rearrange the letters of myself in a sentence that fits.

Casting away yesterday’s syntax.

Coming unmoored.

I move toward clarity’s
swinging door as fast as
a sip through a straw.

I make my getaway.

The quarrel with myself over.
I stand at attention,
dust free.

I’ve survived.

-Tosha Michelle

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Here, There is Pixie Dust

Published on by Tosha Michelle108 Comments

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Sometimes I am only interested in small things.

The chocolate bar, a hot bath.
The turned down corner of a book page, the beauty of the sky.

This is not unhappiness.
Yet, still I dress in layers
of sorrow.

I wrap a scarf around my heart like a tourniquet
to keep the darkness from bleeding out.

It’s winter inside of me,
but the frost has not yet taken over.
My soul still hints of blue birds,
jazz notes, Monet paintings.

My soul attuned to spring.
I hide it in the closet for later.

It’s always a balance regardless of the season.

There’s still daisies in need of planting, leaves in need of raking.

Tonight, restlessness breaks
like a coconut, open windowed,
near.

Where is serenity?
For weeks its been walks, poetry and Miles Davis.

I grow stranger with each passing year,
more sensitive, more aware.

I long to flame the wind
with a strike of a match
only it knows.

I long to praise the weeds, the wildflowers.
Who’s to say which is which?

I’m still seeking glitter, the pull of a sliver boned moon,
the litter of pixie dust.

Now before Neverland becomes never.
Now before life is tossed downriver,
spinning in time’s current.

My restless heart, wait to be taken away,
beyond the window, to starlight things.

To design a language I can dance to,
to find kismet in avoiding the side steps and serenity in the fall.

-Tosha Michelle

Hands Over Your Eyes

Published on by Tosha Michelle65 Comments

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Close your eyes.
Cover your ears.
We’ll take a train
away from here.

Somewhere greener
Anywhere warmer.

Someplace just beyond
our reach but we’ll
reach it anyhow

Leaving the delirium
of the mundane behind.

We’ll hold court in a
seaside town.

And rinse our glasses
in sugar.

Learning the music
our hearts make when
blessed with a peaceful
beat, the sound of us.

We’ll lean into each other
and come like we
never have.

Your mouth all over me.
I’ll sing you to the edge.

Your gaze only on me
as we will dance into
new revelations, and
curl like a comma
into hopeful beginnings

-Tosha Michelle

Artwork by me.

My cover of ‘Realize” for Niles, one of my best friends. Follow his blog at http://www.jamesdennard.com
He’s lovely and likes the ladies. 😃

 

 

Plotting

Published on by Tosha Michelle71 Comments

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The man I kissed on the train
was a Michelin star chef from Ireland.
We talked scallops on the way to Paris
and fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Was this scene partly real or dreamed?
After I lost my car in the parking lot,
I invented a serial killer
to give the story just the
right amount of suspense
Believe me. even James Purefoy belonged in that
bar fight at Whiskey River, but
I still can’t decide if he should
speak with a British or American accent.
And when exactly should he notices me
and my long legs, because I’m 5’7 in this tale.
But sometimes I’m stuck in the world of what is
helpless to the sufficient things.
5’2 and looking at the magnolia tree in my backyard.
It’s beautiful at dusk, all tact and fact in a serene spot.
What could be better?
What could be worst?
I sigh as I sip my tea.
I can’t muster up the inclination to make it bend or sway.

-Tosha Michelle

Double Life.

Published on by Tosha Michelle54 Comments

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Remember when our nights mingled?
We paid our hours
in caresses and sighs.
The ache and the savor.
Our bodies a map of hunger?
We were red and blue
in equal measure.
Then we put desire away.
Photograph ourselves into today.
The clasped heart in a closed bird cage.
Clothed in yesterday’s what might have been.
Colorless. Now when people look at us
I wonder if they know
we are inside who we used to be.

-Tosha Michelle

On Longing

Published on by Tosha Michelle74 Comments

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I long for you to choose me,
not for my silken tresses or girlish waist,
but for my soul made of ice, fire, and woman.

I long for your hands to find me
where there’s no math,
only the precision of desire.
I could dwell with you forever
without a map.

In a place where even outside, you are inside my city
And landmark aren’t mutable
and you aren’t removable.
Where we could hold something real ever after.

I long for your cloak and resolve to fall.
Come cling, devour, captures. Feel me shiver and shake.
Lead me where no one has invented goodbye
and ardor in high demand.
A place where you love me and you love me Where we savor the ache.

Let my hips, under yours, grow to fit your loneliness.
Let your arms make a soft place for me on your bed of granite.
Shadow me in yourself. Your light bending through me.
Changing me into something other than what I was.
A queen. A goddess. Let your lips tell me
you’ve been expecting me.

-Tosha Michelle

Andromeda

Published on by Tosha Michelle106 Comments

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I eat sadness like bread.
It’s an aesthetic choice.

It inspires the creative thoughts
inside my head

I look for the crack,
the draft, the spider on the wall.

I walk out into winter
with just my nightgown on.

I leave crumbs to return back
the way I came.
There’ll be time enough to reclaim the green.

I find words in the clouds
I scribble notes underneath my bones.

I walk barefoot on white
spruce cones.

I shake the beehive to
stir the nest.

I beg the wind to pull my
skin.

As day turns to night. I find
truth in the demarcation of
the dark.

I go down to the icy river.
I plunge in.

I baptize myself in Sexton
and Plath.

I float like a spirit above my life.
Then I descend into pen and paper
I write my riddle of release

Reincarnated. Articulating
my way out of the ghost.
I reattach myself line by line.

Poetry and lavender
grow in rocky soil.

I touch both with my
pen.

Shells full of thunder,
falling from my fingertips

-Tosha Michelle

See you on Sunday. x

How to Write a Love Scene Blue

Published on by Tosha Michelle78 Comments

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She remembers the fallen leaves and wild berries. The days between light and flame. Grace and grit. It must have been November.

She takes up her pen and begins with heart lines and red hours lost long ago.

That was the month when two lovers sought love’s lure. Committing all its crime. They created their own film -noir.

Silhouettes on the hardwood. He and she dancing in the darkness, into chemistry, heated stares, into the witching hour’s pleasures of sensual things.

A sultriness between them. His hand in her hair. Beauty. The flicker of a lamplight, as bodies ignite. Wildfire embracing the roundabout.

The flame grabs what it wants. Naturally, without thought. She knows they are going to give themselves to it The heat, the delights of nakedness and fresh sheets.

Foggy window..Clothes on the floor. Lost in music and a wordless fathom where nothing exist yet, but this moment.

Her heart remembers. Storm beneath the skin. Orange leaves igniting. Branches entwined. Bursting buds. His essence inside her. Plunging toward the place only he’s allowed to go. Deepening each moment. Casting a cinematic sheen.

She remembers the girl she was clothed in him, suffused with hope and exclamation points. Desire so fresh, it felt palpable before it burned away.

Now she writes of lost fire in her notebook of blue. Trying to decipher what the past really wants. Letting language fall out between half moons and melancholy stars. She lives off the leftover syllables, a love unsustainable, and everything she never told him.

-Tosha Michelle

My cover of Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” for Danny and Diane.

Kindergarten baby

Published on by Tosha Michelle53 Comments

Her poetry so simple.
God, strictly elementary.

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Sometimes the poet wishes
to sing what she means.

She has no time for red velvet stars
or a cinnamon moon.

The flash of alliteration
or wandering couplets.

She prefers the bunny
in the hat.

She’s not trying to entertain
or get your cash.

She doesn’t mix her ink
or words.

She sometimes speaks in doubt,
she writes with her crayons out.

Her instructions are easy to read
but this isn’t some syntax
by numbers kit.

She cultivated metaphors and
coordinates for her mind.

Schooled in sadness,
she attempts enlightenment.

Prays to the paper on her desk,
while turned to some interior
door covered in blue.

Offers her soul in heartstrings
and unencumbered truth.

Sometimes the poet wants you
to understand the music
under the air,
to notice the
Milky Way
of scars.

The complexity of cotton.
that goes beyond shimmer
and lace.

She doesn’t need you to toss her
a rose or two.

She just hopes you understand
the subtle cadences of her bird song,
spinning in hope’s current,
looping back art
to a natural sound.

-Tosha Michelle

The Days Come Forward.

Published on by Tosha Michelle42 Comments

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Remember when we thought we ruled the day?
The sun looked upon us with untold knowledge.
That was the year, we discovered Tennyson.
We thought to ourselves it will never be too late
to find a better world.

Little did we know then,
We were at the center of a wasteland.
Then, we were still unmapped by scars.
We had no use for a lingering ache in our souls.
We were too busy staring at whitewashed walls.
Words threaded into lilting tunes in a pristine language.
That was before the earth answered us in a sigh;
a moan. Before the fire in our bellies became compressed.

These days we drink tea in a fog.
We serve our time among monotony.
The walls have become a silhouette of shadows.
We sing a halting refrain.
Struggling in a garden where nothing stirs.
The leaves have lost their luster, or there are no leaves left.
We pray for love, for mercy, to see the lone bird lifted.
Watching as daylight weaves evening.
The tree steeped in twilight.
We try desperately to unravel
the thread.

-Tosha Michelle