Tag: music

If I Were King of The World

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

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This isn’t my most eloquent poem. I’m aware. My silly and playful side needs an outlet, too. For now, I’ve locked angst in the closet.

If I were king of the
world. For this poem
let’s suppose that
this is a thing.

I would never lose
touch with the details.
I would answer all
your calls.

I would be a regular
at the Starbucks you
hang out in.

There would be laugher
in thunder. I wouldn’t
pretend to be bigger
than you.

Salvation would be
found in art and folly.

The mourning doves
would learn jazz and
how to wing it.

The livable life would
be embraced. Slow on
recliners and TV viewing.

Everyone would have
a place at my table.
I would dispense milk
and clothes, but never
unsolicited advice.

Good sex and good
manners would be
cultivated.

Love would come
without conditions.
I would lay my kisses
on imperfections
and celebrate the
different and strange.

I would do my best to
catch hearts falling
from pine trees.

Everyone would be
required to read Henry
Miller and Fitzgerald.

The Karxashians and E
would be banned to their
own island. Egos and
ignorance too.

Like any king, I would
contradict myself, but
mostly, with humor and
nonsensical poetry.

Water would be
plentiful. Wine too.

I wouldn’t take away
all your burden, some
are needed. How flimsy
our characters would be
without them.

Earth would be spun
in hope. There would
be 7 days of fun. The
8th day, chocolate.

Instead of a robe
and crown, I would
wear yoga pants
and a T-shirt with
James Purefoy face
on it. Everyone would
know who James
Purefoy is.

Words would live in
evey home. Love
would hang out in
the kitchen.

The inner world would
would trump the outer,
which reminds me,
there would be no
Donald Trump.

-Tosha Michelle

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Little Boy Blue and Mary Quite Contrary

Published on by Tosha Michelle58 Comments

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Dear Past,

It’s been awhile. I come waving a
flag of peace and unarmed.
My arsenal is depleted.
I have no time for hate or malice
laced air.
I imagine like me
you want to live in peace without
the threat of guns and
claws. To awaken to the sound
of serenity, not bombs going off
in the distance.

I hope hearing from me doesn’t cause you pain.
Frankly, I miss you. Your theatrical ways,
always leaning toward a Shakespearean tragedy.
No time for much ado about nothing.
Although, everything had to be as you like it.
How you were
a master at parlor games and word play.
Your eyes a depletion
of fallen leaves and green tea.
Hair as dark as a grackle.
Arch so charming, fencing with
unseen stars. Little boy blue,
and Mary. Mary, oh, so contrary.
How our garden did grow.
Shells that pelted the ground,
causing wreckage and carnage.
It wasn’t all welts and hell.
There were days when light swelled
and sliver bells grew.

But i digress, as I climb a slide of memories,
backwards with slippery hands.
My legs lose traction,
my lungs clog with dust.

I end up on the ground negotiating
with my untapped toe.
Trying to reclaim the beat with
half recounted facts
and nostalgia’s false sense of rhythm.
Holding a few cards in the hand you deftly dealt me.
Beside me lies a map, marred
by revisions.
that reads let it go. Let it go.

I stand up, and realizes there’s a
tear in my heart, that I
mistook for my sleeve. I walk through the open gate,
ignoring the stained alleyways,
cobble stone,
and street lights shaped like a question marks.
The scent of orchids lingers in
the tired air.
My soul fighting off bees and
the counter winds.
You, dear past, will always sting.

-Tosha Michelle

Granny

Published on by Tosha Michelle59 Comments

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I’m snapping green beans
I bought at the store today,
thinking they would remind me
of Granny and sitting
at the kitchen table,
listening to her “well,
when I was your age” stories.

Hoping that just for a moment
I could hug her again,
feel the sureness of her being,
her sweet familiarly.

Go back before dementia
stole her mind,
and cancer her body.
The days of sweet tea,
peppermints, and house dresses.

Granny could solve any problem
with a hickory stick or a stern look.

I miss her, even now years later,
I can’t help but compose
her in a poem- warm hands,
dark hair, sadness
that never left her eyes,
a lifetime of hardships

For a moment I’m ten again,
and Granny gives me her Irish grin.
Something soft but fierce about her.
Finding joy in an orderly
home and things done right.

How solid and healthy
she looks laboring away
over green beans.
Singing her favorite hymn
“In the sweet bye and bye”
Light shimmering through the room.
Real but unreal.

“We shall meet on that
beautiful shore”
Her notes gradually
becoming fainter.
The words descending,
echos from the past.
Love in every syllable.

I listen as evening opens
around me.
Sorrow changes its pitch.
Thee last of the sunlight
streams in the windows.
Swelling, even as it
disappears, even as it waves goodbye.

-Tosha Michelle

Not Quite Love in an Elevator

Published on by Tosha Michelle34 Comments

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Some people keep in
touch via the phone,
the internet, weekly
lunch dates.

You keep in touch by
pissing me the hell off.
Lightening up our
elevator display
of toxicity until
we’re stuck between
floors.

Listen, do you hear that?
that’s my head lacerating
on the wall.

My sense of peace
fractured.
Go ahead pick the bone.
I’m done battling
scratched glass.
Drag me through it.

It’s time to rinse
off the anger,
and nail all 1483 of my
grievances to your
sanctimonious door.

Martin Luther and me
the grand reformers
He sowed in grace.
I’m more prone to
mace.

Maybe, I’ll just try to
lose you in a place
I’ll never find again.
Unraveling your
foothold or finding
mine, up your………

I’ll save the hair pulling
spear throwing, and
obscene gestures of
distain for terrorists
and guys named Tad.

I’ll just vent my anger
in a silly poem
Snide as my temper,
but light as numbers
with no equations,
letters missing
sentences, and a
poet whistling
satirically at madness.

-Tosha Michelle

The Bliss of Madness

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

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I always find meaning
in madness.

It’s hard to know
who we are at times.
Our attention wavering
before the buttons are undone.

Plans run off with good ideas.
The future -crumbling paper mache
Our art supplies scattered
on the floor.

Now what will we do
with our hands?

Let’s put on
our mad hatter shoes.
Lose the map.
No phrase book needed.
Grab your backpack of
sin.

Take my arm.
I’ll be the voo doo
you do.
Try and not trip over my
tangled spirit.

Come with me
and let’s stroll down
a road that
will never lead to Rome,
but might lead to precinct
of hell.

Don’t worry, darling,
we can play king of the hill
on the torrid slope.
We can rattle the gates
Break the windows.
Take all that’s nimble
Dine on crumb cake
and bitter tea.

Jazz up the day.
Sun up the night.
Trust in chance and
let the cocoon unravel.

Afterwards, we’ll
distract the unmoored
shadows, and frolic with
sanity’s debris, while
madness steals the sky.

-Tosha Michelle

Reading the Dead

Published on by Tosha Michelle43 Comments

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I love my dead relatives

like I love the broken

spine of my favorite book

I love the bent back pages

and the sad dust cover

of ruin. I’ll never discard

it. I take it out often and

bookmark it in memories.

In the chapters, I want the

words to live again. No

matter how many times

I reread the text, there is

no next scene.

I hope it plays out in

another dimension.

I’d like to think some things

are like this.

The morning light casts a

glow upon the cover,

giving it an angelic gleam.

Who could not admire the

beauty of a well loved book?

Wreckage made by years of

reading favorite passages

over again, and who could

not mourn, the sudden shock

when the pages begin

to fade?

-Tosha Michelle

Psalms of October

Published on by Tosha Michelle39 Comments

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October is the month for praise;
the beauty before winter’s gray.

It blushes the clouds with pink,
and paints the leaves canary.
The air so crisp and busy,
still warm from summer’s memory.
The sun brush stroked in red
streaking through the trees,
before their abundance
is carried away.

October is the month for praise.
Before a somber dullness
takes over.
Turning the days into
unkind nights,
when every thought we have
is nostalgic

October is fall’s long
stem rose;
trying to right the
wrong of December’s chill,
and mother nature’s
stony stare.

The red rose rises up,
as if to make amends
for what will become
of the bees and ants,
and all of us who strive
to live harmoniously;
those condemned to ice
and Jack Frost’s
fixation with noses.

October is the month to praise,
so we offer up our apple
cider alleluias,
in the field of the great pumpkin,
and await winter’s bitter thud.

-Tosha Michelle

There’s NO Art in Small Talk.

Published on by Tosha Michelle52 Comments

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I hate small talk and how
it always leaves me
syllabically longing.
It’s tedious and exhausting.
It’s hard to get excited
about another conversation
attached to nothing.

I’d rather talk about rare books,
our literary gods,
elevator sex, Lexapro verses,
Wellbutrin,
the friendship between
Elizabeth Bishop
and Robert Lowell,
how sometimes in poetry
the pages weep,
the origins of the word
boeotian (I imagine it
stems from small talk),
how innocence can still thrive
underneath cynicism, and my
innate need to find trouble.

Conversation should be a Safari,
not a trip to the dentist.
It should be like champagne,
shaken and exploding
with bubbly decadence.
It shouldn’t make you feel bad
you haven’t died yet.
It should ravish you and leave you
feeling satiated, weeping
with ecstasy and profound knowledge.

So come sit beside me.
We can move the language
toward enlightenment and
starlight things that help
remind us why we are here.
Or we can beat our tongues
against monotony,
and discuss the weather.
If you choose the latter,
just know I am
dismembering you,
slowly and sadistically,
in my head
one syllable at a time.

-Tosha Michelle

Call. Don’t Answer.

Published on by Tosha Michelle35 Comments

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I sometimes long to be a

name no one answers, a

name that no longer

tolerates humanity. I yearn

to take the wintery chill

of my mind and go off by

myself, to live in a great

empty space, where

the breath of solitude can

falls on me like clouds,

-The only greeting needed

the green grass. I long

to belong to none, to be

elusive as residue.

The sun in my arms,

the only embrace I

need.

Then (as it always is)

Someone asked

“so how you been?”

How quickly the name

answers.

-Tosha Michelle

On The Clouds Eating His Shadow.

Published on by Tosha Michelle28 Comments

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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 conscious.

-Tosha Michelle