For my lovely friend Alex. Thanks for being my pal, confidante, partner in crime, and fellow foodie.
You can follow his blog here: Lots of wonderful stuff there.
Tag: music
City of Stars
Niles, this one’s for you. xx
Misguided Ghosts
Sometimes everything is rhetorical
Everything is monochrome
My limbs wracked with rain
I tread gingerly.
I make promises I may not keep
Go on with my soltuide,
my soliloquy.
I’m almost out of words.
Knowing you cannot grasp
what you cannot hold
Things vanish all the time
And what is only left of me, is
me only.
-Tosha Michelle
Upon Viewing The World
We’re all in the dark
and it’s not early
Maybe not too late
We sleep in narrow beds
in rooms shimmering
and burning from a sickhearted
moon.
The stars reflect a defective hue.
We long for a powerful eclipse
or for a comet to appear.
Angels feet on fire.
Thinking our world is woven
by the fragile string of fate.
We waste the moonlight.
Gazing at static air.
-Tosha Michelle
Flowers in Bloom
Spring whispers when you are near.
Breathe your name into my ear.
Tell me your stories,
especially the ones
written on ancient tapestry.
Give me flower seeds I can plant.
I’ve stumbled through the bramble
to find you.
I was not seeking this knotty retreat,
but look how my leaves
have taken to the light.
Carry me to the highest treetop.
Fly with me on the wind.
Watch over me when my mind
plays peekaboo with the dark.
When I can’t locate myself on any map,
and I’m lost a land wishing to destroy me.
Give me the gold of your heart.
The stream of your resolve.
The pixie dust of your hands.
For me, at least, your magic is enough.
-Tosha Michelle
Begin Again
Upon Stealing a Kitkat
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.
We live in a shareable place
our little patch of green.
where I’d rather hear you
than all.
We converse fluently in
a language only we understand.
Your charm never lies in the
way wedding songs and
love 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 kinship, 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
Variations
I call him eccentric
He thinks it’s a reprimand
He doesn’t realize
His exquisite eccentricities
reveal his unique inner form.
like Gould last recording of
the Goldberg Varations
His illuminated soul
seemingly always in motion.
I read religiously his light.
Text etched with acid.
but cut with gentle sweetness
The light only growing brighter.
He coaxes me out of my
shadow box.
I could take refuge in his uniqueness
The magic of his mind, linger there
in the smudge of the stars.
Let him read the face of my spirit,
my wildest wishes, the lure
of eccentric things
Framed by endless strings of grace.
A concerto of serenity. defined
composition, melodic hope.
-Tosha Michelle
Heavenly Day
The sky announced the sun
on a day when the sun’s arrival
was enough.
The clouds curtseyed and then
fell away.
The dogwood branches swayed as
with divine provocation.
The poppies pondered providence
the afternoon light, and alliteration.
Lovers and children were devoting their hours
to the wind and newly sprung gardens.
Coins were tossed into fountains devoted
to wishes, on a day so bright surely all
desires were fulfilled.
All day long, the sun lingered as if
a love sick suitor hesitant to say goodbye
to the now blushing sky.
Sadly, the sun learned you can’t roll
back the hours or the day’s resolve
to fade into night.
All you can do is abide the darkness
and await the promise of another spring
struck, soulful blue day.
-Tosha Michelle
On the Clouds Eating His Shadow
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
Awake. Aware.
Taking color and form.
Both somewhere between
what was there. What’s
not there. Someone you
remember and can’t
quite forget.
Lost mail on someone
else’s kitchen table.
The parenthesis enclosed.
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
will not become again.
She always thinks she
see gleams of him,
glimpsed and then gone.
The stem decimated but
drowning in rose petals.
No longer powerless
to the undertow.
His presence merely less,
but no longer wholly more.
His shadow falling,
falling into dust.
The only sound she
hears now is her
voice turning into
an early frost.
To every poem there is
a time and season.
Seasons that coagulate
into lost years.
In this one, she scourges
the past with lyrical ease
The wind no longer
contradicting itself.
Her pen drops ink
of flames, no longer
pointing to the sky.
Dr. Syntax gives her a
lollipop and a clean
bill of closure.
-Tosha Michelle
Everything I Never Told You 