A mind should implode, unfold, and behold all beauty, all monstrosities, lions, joined with lambs, with whales, the ocean, living words, flowing emotions, before the forest dies. Before the notes become too high to scale. Before the sliver coin flips over Before we realizes we are all mice and the serpent awaits.
-Tosha Michelle
I’m the woman who believes in thorns,
the beauty of fallen fruit,
and lavishing love on the lovable
and unlovable.
I’m generous, difficult, and incomplete.
I have spells of sullen iciness,
and moments of hot tea and clarity.
I’m the woman who can only be
of this world for moments at a time.
My soul affixed to solitude
and one darkness after another.
When the lights finally come back on,
I confess I like a warm arm around my waist
and a strong shoulder to rest my chaotic head.
I’m also partial to masculine fingers
that know how to coax my color back,
under silk sheets, with creative words,
and hands of purpose.
I’m often confused. Do I succumb
to the screeching crow
or pay homage to the nightingale?
I’m the woman who would go
anywhere to leave you,
but will beg you to come with me.
When we get there, I’ll fight with you
over the map and then kiss you
on the street.
I’m an expert at backbends.
I practice them every night
under memory’s disco light.
I hide an extra heart under my bed
in a packed suitcase of longing.
I’m the woman waiting for good enough
to be enough. Still, always wanting
more of much. Knowing life, like art,
is what we make it.
We all deserve something more than nothing.
I’m insignificant, and at times narcissistic.
I’m the broken woman.
cracked, bent. Damaged.
I’m the woman becoming whole,
becoming more me with each new break, with each new tear in my heart
-Tosha Michelle
My cover of “Night Changes”
Listen to Night Changes by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud
That’s a thing righr. In a popish mood. No judgment please 😜
Wide Awake
Katy Perry
I wish I knew then
What I know now
Wouldn’t dive in
Wouldn’t bow down
Gravity hurts
You made it so sweet
Till I woke up on
On the concrete
Falling from cloud nine
Crashing from the high
I’m letting go tonight
Hello everyone. “My gift is my song and this one’s for you” This cover goes out to one of the wittiest and sweetest guys I know. Everyone’s favorite Brit, Alex.
Find his blog here: https://alexraphael.wordpress.com/
Hope you all enjoy. Thanks for always supporting the blog. I appreciate every last one of you.
Big ideas are everywhere,
from religion to capitalism.
There’s always someone
trying to sell us something.
I’m burnt out on the peddling.
I just want to be left on the
side of the road while I still
have a little sanity.
Let nature stand for all I believe in.
As for faith, I’ll leave that to the sun.
We all die in the end,
the good, the bad,
the blissfully indifferent.
It doesn’t matter how well
you sing the hymn,
or if you know the slogan
by memory.
Life is freshly pressed and
the creases only hold for so long.
I’d like to believe in
the lottery, mail in rebates,
and a free trip to Hawaii.
In my crisis of faith,
I have moments where I wonder
if we all just fade to dust.
Our molecules scattered
in the wind.
Left with nothing but our
collective darkness,
where there are no charge
off or loopholes.
All I know for certain
is I know nothing.
Oh to have the wisdom of Solomon.
I look for assurance
in the clouds.
Punching the fog.
I fall back on my upbringing.
close my eyes and
pray for grace.
-Tosha Michelle
That fall he carried his notepad everywhere.
And on those crisp evenings,
I felt him shape and merge
words with paper.
Above us an inky sky,
and I longed to be nothing
but the syntax and nuances
taking form in his mind.
I rest my head on his shoulder,
watching the swaying of his pen.
I become one with the shuddering lines,
that won’t be still.
They reach out and caress my heart.
Stalling my breath.
Touching me here and here.
For a moment, I’m what he shapes.
What he imagines.
I glimmer in edges of the dark lines,
until the words splinter from me
The lines, like the writer,
elusive as the stray wind.
-Tosha Michelle
“Everytime I think of you, I always catch my breath
And I’m still standing here, and you’re miles away
And I’m wonderin’ why you left
And there’s a storm that’s raging
through my frozen heart tonight”
My cover of “missing You” by John Waite (For Alex)
Find him here:
“And the songbirds are singing,
Like they know the score,
And I love you, I love you, I love you,
Like never before.”
My cover of Songbird, Many thanks to my friend Danny for the piano accompaniment
Sometimes I sing in incomplete rhymes.
I write in crayon and leave
my shoes beside the sandbox.
I sign my letters with x and o.
I ponder in doubt, the crisscross musings
speaking out loud.
Sometimes a woman needs
flowers out of season, homegrown vegetables,
sex, and easy to read instructions.
Instead she meditates on ice cream
and the Home Shopping Channel.
Attempts to become enlightened.
Prays to paper and pen.
Looking for an all encompassing view.
Hoping for an all embracing embrace.
She offers herself to drumbeat and sage.
The rhythm under the air, turns her heart
to some inferior door, finding something buried
in red.
-Tosha Michelle
My cover of “Never Saw Blue Like That”
Listen to Never Saw Blue Like That by Tosha Michelle 2020 #np on #SoundCloud
You thought you were at an impasse,
a standstill. But that was just your heart
slowing down to acknowledge the pain
You don’t realize there are worst things
than missing the train, busting
your knee, the morning wasted.
Running from your past.
Drowning your demons in gin and pills.
You prefer a prescription pad
to a subscription to pain.
Widowed from your feelings.
You crave the next fix.
Anything to get you where
you’re going.
You look for a treasure map
scrawled in a dome of stupor.
Where the winds remain static
and the gravel never get stuck
between your toes.
You swim in a diluted river
by trees that don’t shrink or grow.
Nature weeps for the despondency of you.
I weep for the unlived life beneath you.
-Tosha Michelle
Everything I Never Told You 